Marigold

So, ASC is back from Japan, and feeling up to contributing once again. For this post I will pass along this short paragraph. The back story involves my brit friend Malk who becomes enamored with this beautiful japanese american yonsei, Nae. They settle in to a semi urban life in Portland with chickens and numerous sheds in the yard.

-ASC

One of our chickens got attacked and half eaten by a raccoon this morning.

I feel really sad for her, Marigold.

She was slower than the other two, but would allow me to pick her up.

Nae thought she was dead when she found her,

but when I checked she was still breathing, but in terrible shape.

I told Nae to go inside and make a cup of tea.

Then I took a sharp spade and bludgeoned her to death.

I did not realize what tough birds they are.

It took about 30 strikes to finish her off, she just would not go.

Thankfully Nae didn't see it.

That is not a good thing to do to one of your animal friends.

Malk

Later Malk called me and told me they made a chicken run.

"Oh, really," I said, "don't you think it's a little soon? I mean shouldn't there be some sort of mourning period?" After much confusion it was made clear to me that a chicken run, unlike a beer run, is an outside enclosure protecting the chickens from predators.

-ASC

Dogme

The following is another manifesto.  A manifesto for honest film making.  A style known as Dogme founded by a few northern European socialists.  The following is copied from their website Dogme95

Dogme 95

.. is a collective of film directors founded in Copenhagen in spring 1995.

DOGME 95 has the expressed goal of countering “certain tendencies” in the cinema today.

DOGME 95 is a rescue action!

In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck.
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby ... false! 
To DOGME 95 cinema is not individual!

Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratisation of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the media becomes, the more important the avant-garde, It is no accident that the phrase “avant-garde” has military connotations. Discipline is the answer ... we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition! 

DOGME 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as The Vow of Chastity.

Now not only is the following a beautiful song... 

Beirut are the best indie kids out there.  A bunch of folks from Albuquerque, at least one I think from Taos “eeee”, lead by Zach Condon.  They perform each of the songs from their album The Flying Cup Club captured on the streets of New York by the La Blogoteque Dogme theory of film.  Natural lighting, hand-held cameras, no sound dubbing.  Beautiful idea and exactly the essence that gives you the feeling of amazement that only comes from an intimate live show.  Lars Von Trier missed the mark with all his films except Dancer in the Dark, why?  Because that style of filming works best with the naked performance of music and choreography.  The second rule of Dogme is the most important and the most honest.

The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa (music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).

So check this out from the Take Away Shows and Beirut.  I am inspired. 

-ASC

BEIRUT - Forks and Knives (La fête)
by flyingclubcup

T.K. And The Manifestos

On a related subject to the previous posting I would like to turn attention to another Manifesto of sorts.  One that was written in blood, insanity and a manual typewriter.  I wonder what TK thinks about text messaging?

-ASC

All, I just finished reading Ted Kaczynski's manifesto. I am now ready to live in the wilderness and commune with nature as it was intended for us in the beginning. Ted's thoughts on the perpetuation of technology and how it robs us of important natural goals such as sustaining life and replaces them with "surrogate activities" is interesting. He feels that we need to destroy the techno-industrial juggernaut and revert to living in small tribe-like communities. In addition, the only technology allowed to exist would be "small technology" things like hand tools, wells, and waterwheels.

I now want to create my own manifesto. The problem is that I am not impassioned enough about anything to pen such a doctrine. Maybe I will write a manifesto about apathy. An apathesto if you will. I will quit halfway through and try to hang myself with my own underwear. I wont have the energy or enthusiasm to kill myself though so I will end up loafing around my house with my underwear around my neck.

Captain

Let Them Eat Plants

Evolution has caused Homo sapiens sapiens the undue burden of desire.  Namely, that is the instinctual craving for sex and food.  Our large brains have led us on a doomed journey with the sole purpose of sating those desires.  Other animals are limited with what nature and primal social structures can provide.  However, we seem to be driven to add wondrous and ultimately soul and body torturing complexities to our lives. 

I won’t even get into the sex portion of this equation because it is way more painful and ultimately the endgame of sex is the over indulgence of things taken internally.  By that I mean food, booze and emotional trauma.  Nonetheless, if that be a corned beef sandwich, quart of whiskey or self absorbed guilt it all leads to the same thing, poor health.

The ability of our modern skulls to hold 1400 cc worth of brain matter has led to some horrible consequences.  Humans have evolved with an overwhelming desire for sugar.  A product that was very rare in nature.  That was until our big brains told us that we could make our own sugar from corn.  Now that sugar is in everything humans eat, especially American humans.  Corn is in water, and bread, and meat.  Sugar is so innately desirable to us that we will fool our brains.  We will disguise sugar to look like real food.  Products masquerading as the food with which humans need to thrive.  We go through all that effort to trick ourselves just so we can eat sugar instead of…  oh, say broccoli.  Homo sapiens sapiens americanesis eats so much of what he desires that he is killing himself rather masochistically.  Like love and sex we don't think about consequences until it is too late. 

Those consequences happen to be cancer, heat disease and diabetes.  American's have developed mythologies propagating this lifestyle.  Take Santa Claus the cookie eating sugar junkie who secretly had an insulin pump installed in his belly.  Don’t tell the kids, and don’t worry it still shakes when he laughs.

But more so like a bowl full of fruit flavored high fructose corn syrup. 

So while we all die of Western diet diseases, large corporations sell us medicine to keep us alive so we can continue to eat sugar and poison infused fake food.

So instead of popping another hot pocket into the microwave read Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

The book does tend to be speaking more to the upper income folk who can afford to eat well.  Everyone should eat out of their gardens (I guess, if you own enough property for a garden), or stay out of discount grocer (another financial issue), but all said, there are good rules to live by in this book.  In fact I synthesized the rules into this nice long list.  If you want more exposition on these check out the book.

1. Eat food mostly plants
   
2. Avoid food that makes health claims
   
3. Don’t eat anything your Neolithic ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (such as Go-Gurt)
   
4. Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting
   
5. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar, B) Unpronounceable, C) More than 5 in number, or that include D) High-fructose corn syrup
   
6. Bread should be flour, yeast, water and a pinch of salt
   
7. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle
   
8. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible
   
9. Food doesn’t seem like the smartest place to economize
   
10. Eat mostly plants especially leaves
    
11.  You are what what you eat eats too
    
12. If you have the space buy a freezer (for storing your grass fed cow and/or your bulk farmers market produce)
    
13. Eat like an omnivore (as in lots of different things)
    
14.  Eat well-grown food from healthy soils
    
15. Eat wild foods when you can
    
16. Be the kind of person who takes supplements and then save your money (This one is kind of lost on me)
    
17. Eat more like the French.  Or the Italians.  Or the Japanese.  Or the Indians.  Or the Greeks
    
18. Regard non-traditional foods with skepticism
    
19. Don’t look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet
    
20. Have a glass of wine with dinner
    
21. Pay more.  Eat less
    
22. Eat meals (no snacks)
    
23. Do all your eating at a table
    
24. Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does
    
25. Try not to eat alone
    
26. Consult your gut (eat till you are 80% full)
    
27. Eat slowly
    
28. Cook, and if you can, plant a garden
    

-ASC

 

DarkCast

So I'm living out my dream of being a radio dj.  Sure it's not radio and no one is listening, but it feels real.  This first episode of DarkCast is fairly mellow, but don't think that is indicative of the future direction of DarkCast.  If you don't like this one please give other shows a chance.  I do have good music in me somewhere.  Also I posted one of JB's Pacific NW in Upstate NY shows. His show starts about 4 min into the recording.

-ASC

(the recordings are to your right.  You can download or stream!)

I Fail More Often Than Not

So. Snow is falling. Rain is on its way promising to turn those fluffy crystals into wet slushy soup. I'm hitting an 11 am flight to Vegas tomorrow. I haven't packed. I've calculated my current momentum and figured I won't get to sleep tonight until at least 2 a.m.

That said, I realize submissions to Dark Cedars have lagged in the past few weeks. Four writers and not a man of action among them. In kind with our lack of creativity, this post will be short and sweet, also keeping in theme with tonight's subject.

Via NPR I came across Smith Magazine who have taken it upon themselves to solicit life stories from everyone and anyone who will submit. Famous and innocuous alike. They have even published a book (watch the video it's good) of the received memoirs. The catch. Your life story must be fairly concise. Six words concision to be exact. My Six-Word Memoir is posted to their website and I am fairly happy with it. However, in accordance with my life story it may be way off the mark. You be the judge.

I challenge you all to whittle the intricacies of you respective journeys to the bare minimum of what they represent thus far. Mine are filled with regret, but scrambling for optimism. Realism delving into animism.

In conclusion I would like you to take this opportunity to strip yourself down. By that I mean find the essence of your self at this moment in this time. And, after posting your memoir on Smith Magazine, please post them here in the comments of Dark Cedars.

-ASC

I Was An Asshole

Tyson is a man of many contradictions. He finds paper pushing as the most disgraceful of occupations.  However, he did work a number of years behind a desk surrounded on three sides by textile covered portable walls, cowed by overhead tubular lights.  He effectively collected a paycheck from the government by moving a scrap of papyrus deftly around the vinyl top of his workspace.  Every now and then when the forms and memos gave his pushing finger a break he would busy himself by composing songs about the things he abhorred most. Namely useless people getting paid for being burdens on others.  (He now has a more respectable job) 

ASC

(Sung to the tune of "Highwayman" by Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash)

I was an office clerk 
computers I did command 
databases at my hand 
I typed up memos to the management up high 
I turned off the fax and printer every night 
although I worked in that grey cube with little light 
I made it alright.

I was an auditor 
in your finances I pried 
pad and pencil by my side 
I wrote letters on behalf of the IRS 
leaving many people's bank accounts a mess 
and they would ask me how it was I rest at night 
but I was sleeping tight

I was a salesman 
many an auto I did sell 
many a white lie I did tell 
I sold a lemon to an elderly Miss Brown 
That left her stranded thirty miles out of town 
and when she asked me that her engine be replaced 
I laughed in her face

I'll fly a starship 
across the universe and hide 
And when I reach the other side 
I will start tabulating the stars in the night 
Then I will bill you for each increment of light 
perhaps you thought the entire universe was free 
I will charge a fee

Original song mp3 (Highwayman)

Notes On Sensors

Well, as my friend the Cowboy notes (Technobabble), sensors are invading the bathroom. I'd like to reflect for a moment on the fact that the reason for these sensors is the fundamental inability of humans to properly operate bathroom equipment. As evidence of this take the large sign posted above a sink at a local coffee shop, which details the instructions for washing ones hands (Of course I'm paraphrasing parts of each step here, but not the list as a whole):

1) Turn on the water.
2) Wet your hands.
3) Apply soap and lather for a while.
4) Rinse soap from hands.
5) Grab paper towel from dispenser to the right and dry hands.
6) Using paper towel turn off the water.

I doubt very much that many of us actually follow this procedure in the bathroom. In particular, the action of actually letting the water run while you dry your hands and then never touching the sink with your skin again is one that is likely observed by only the most unique of individuals. Its intent is to eliminate the likelihood that germs from your hand which had been deposited on the sink's hot and cold nobs will not be redeposited on you hands again after they have been rid of the evil microbes. Personally, I wonder whether such an action has any merit at all for me as an individual. Of course, in many of the places where these signs are posted, food handlers are using the restroom after touching raw chicken and the like, but part of me says, "My immune system could use a challenge every once in a while. I mean how long ago was it that humans never washed there hands and here we are today, not wiped out by germs, but actually killing off entire species ourselves much more efficiently then germs will ever be able too." And so on.

Anyway, the fundamental thing that the list implies is that even though, we as individuals have been trained on how to wash our hands for our entire lives and food handlers in particular have literally had training to do exactly what this list says, people still fail at doing it "properly." And so we develop technology to protect us from ourselves, and the result is we go around wiggling at sensors, which makes us feel less human; and maybe we are.

P.S. Here's a tip for those of you who want to wash your hands in something more closely resembling "the old fashioned way" when you encounter a sensor driven faucet. Affix a wet paper towel to the sensor of the faucet and enjoy the non-stop wiggle free flow of water.

More on Chicken

Port Arthur, Texas; In response to recent trade inequities relating to the price per pound of imported Mexican chicken, what is alleged to be a coalition of Arkansas chicken farmers dressed as Native Americans, illegally boarded a Mexican shipping vessel carrying 10,000 lbs of poultry and proceeded to dump it into the port.

Port Arthur police department reports that at approximately 2.30 am on May 12, a security guard called police after witnessing what he reported as "Indians dumping chicken into the bay". The police responded but not before the accused could dump approximately 8,000 lbs of the poultry into the port.

"It was quite a scene" said Port Arthur police chief Brian Dunahoe. " We boarded the boat and there they were. All dressed up in Indian garb, drunker than 7 ...chicken farmers. Throwing the chicken into the water. A couple of them were stumbling and making Indian war cries. When we tried to apprehend the perps, a few of them started chopping at us with their plastic hatchets and one of my officers took a moccasin in the face." the Chief continued. "Only one of them went quietly, stating that he would, 'fight no more forever'"

The accused were then booked into Port Arthur police station for questioning and arraignment. The names of the persons in question have not been released but it is assumed that most of the 5 men were members of the Arkansas Poultry Farmers Coalition. The APFC was unavailable for comment and it is possible that all five of its charter members were a part of the event.

The 5 men were seen earlier in the night drinking at some of Port Arthur's night spots. They were Identified as wearing full head dresses and carrying plastic hatchets and rubber tipped plastic bows and arrows. They were last seen at the Shipwreck Tavern. Approximately 1 mile from the dock that the Mexican shipping vessel "La Bonita" was ported.

"It was a strange sight indeed" said Shipwreck Bartender Larry "lar" Lalonde. "They were hootin' and hollerin' and carryin on an the like." Larry continued, "They were a nuisance to say the least. They drank a lot and tried to barter for drinks with beads and old stinky carpet they insisted was fur pelts. Eventually they paid up". Larry then said that things turned sour. " It was closing time and I told them they had to drink up. they started whooping and shouting about fire water then they started circling me shooting plastic arrows." At this point Larry with the help of some other patrons convinced them to leave. "they stumbled out the door and that's the last I saw of them".

The 5 men then proceeded on to the vessel in question. Sources say that they were trying to mimic the Boston Tea Party presumably to make a statement that Mexican chicken is no longer welcome in the United States.

Potts

Chickens Don't Fly

Is stupidity and unbridled rage directly related?  Probably not.  I've known a particularly  intelligent man who snapped from fairly innocuous torment and proceeded in attempted vehicular homicide.  Maybe I just attribute stupidity to the feeling of entitlement victims have in exacting disproportionate and unmitigated justice on the perpetrators.  Of course this isn't a universal.  I'm only referring to petty annoyances and political bullshit and not rape or genocide.  Things that get folks up in arms for no tangible reason.  

 

Top 5 topics that illicit irrational anger

1) Differences in religious beliefs 

2) Gay Marriage 

3) Foreigners 

4) Bad driving 

5) Smoking 

Yeah, I just got done reading 'High Fidelity'.  For your perusal I submit this blatant satire of # 3 on my list.  This is part 1 of 2 composed by frequent contributor Ty.

ASC

edit:  Here is a link to a creative revenge scenario on a criminal discussed on the Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier podcast Smodcast

To me this is an example of a reasonable reaction.  What do you think?

      

Arkansas chicken farmers are up in arms over tens of thousands of pounds of Mexican chicken dumped into the U.S chicken market.

Some 40,000 lbs of Mexican chicken has been shipped to grocers in the south and southwest over the past month. Mexican chicken, which sells for 75 cents a pound, is over a dollar cheaper than the 1.90 a pound chicken Arkansas farmers garner for the same bird.

"Its killing us" says Arkansas chicken farmer Paul Hamilton "We used to worry about foxes in the hen house. But now we have bigger fish to fry. I mean we have more foxes than hens now. Its time to start selling fox meat. And that's no silver bullet my friend because foxes don't lay no golden eggs!" says Hamilton.

Mexicans are whistling a different tune however. Mexican chicken farmer Jesus Lyle Menendez says

" I can't help it. I have chickens, I sell the chickens, I feed my family mostly chicken and beans, rice, tortillas" he continued " I sell chicken for .75 cents a pound. That is a good price. I feed my family on that price. What do you want from me? I cannot increase my price. I sell no chickens then. Then what do I do with my chickens? Take amusing snapshots of them posed like human beings doing human being activities like observing their pocket watch or fishing by the lake? That idea just doesn't fly.. and neither do chickens".

President George Bush in a campaign stop in Little Rock had this to say when queried about the chicken crisis. 

"I believe the people of this great nation grow excellent chicken, The chicken that I have had here was good chicken. It's time that we stand up to these people who can threaten our way of life and pander poor quality poultry to the citizens of this god fearing nation" When asked if trade sanctions and elimination of foreign aid would be levied against Mexico if such practices continued the president had this to say.

 

"I can't speak for Mexico. Do I look Mexican to you? But I can say this. This country and its god fearing citizens will back down from no one. We will not be bullied around by any country promoting cutthroat business practices. America is too good for that".

A recent FDA inspection of most chicken facilities in Arkansas tells a different tale however. Of 127 chicken farms in Arkansas, only 3 passed the FDA's poultry standards and 15 were actually told to shut down until modifications to the facilities were made to create more sanitary conditions for the birds. A recent inspection of Mr. Hamilton's chicken ranch found 67 birds that were missing beaks and were fed through catheters collected from the nearby medical waste facility. when asked about this atrocity Mr. Hamilton had this reply.

" Well that's really neither here nor there. Its somewhere in the middle." he continued " I mean birds is kind a like plants right. Who cares what you feed them or how. My birds are like Baseball players. full of steroids and chewing tobacco. makes the meat spicy. I mean look at my kids, they were raised off my chickens and their eggs." Closer inspection of the Hamilton progeny reveals that two of the three are retarded and the third is a strapping young man of 7 replete with chest hair.

Potts