The Garden of Rocks...

No more sweat or tears
no more crippling fears
I've got a place to stay
for me to rest and lay

I've untied the knot
blood's too thin to clot
driven 'round in my metal box
headed for the garden of rocks

Eerie Economics...

Over the past two weeks there have been dozens of incidents of drug addicts overdosing from a bad batch of heroin distributed on the west side of Chicago. Many have died but most were saved by paramedics that rushed to areas where bodies lay unconscious beside curbs, against fences, in public restrooms or upon a relative's floor. Police have issued warnings to addicts not to accept free samples of heroin. A former addict was stated as saying, "the overdoses would only fuel demand; if it's that potent, they're going to want it."

Incidents of overdosing are happening all over the west side, as far south as Cermak and up to Division. Drug dealers across the area distributed samples to attract new customers or bait existing ones to purchase more. The warnings by police officials have done nothing to curb the overdoses. Instead they've increased.

If the former addict is correct and deadly overdoses increase demand, then what are the dynamics governing this economic oddity? From the suppliers side, this is counter-intuitive: losing customers increases demand. On the consumer end it is irrational: desire what will kill you. It is doubtful that drug dealers, seldom having an education that includes high school, could predict the advantage of distributing deadly doses. These deaths must be due to folly, unfortunate design or conspiracy.

A folly is likely but questionable. Drugs come into a dealer's possession in a much more potent form than it is when delivered to the addict. The dealer dilutes the drug, making it safer and increases the amount to distribute. An inexperienced dealer could have accidentally mixed too strong a batch of heroin resulting in the overdoses and deaths. But this scenario is also unlikely.

The heroin that is causing these fatalities has been distributed as free samples by the dealers. Extremely potent drugs don't garner as much as would diluted drugs. Providing them to addicts for free would seem such a stupid business venture even for an uneducated street pharmacist. One must assume that the drugs weren't mixed and packaged by the drug dealers.

Unfortunate design is possible. The dealers rely upon addicts as a loyal customer base. To addict the customer large quantities of the drug must be provided, either over a long term or short term. Dealers may have intended to develop more reliable addicts by hooking them with more potent drugs. Potency must be high enough to get them addicted but low enough to keep them alive.

The addicts could have assumed that the dealer was giving away samples because they were too weak to satisfy customers at regular price. They could have doubled up the dose based upon that assumption and the result would be overdose or death. The dealers design to hook more addicts could have backfired.

A conspiracy is possible as well. Drug addicts have long been a nuisance on the west side of Chicago. No matter what the DEA and DARE programs have done, nothing has worked to eliminate the drug problem. Before the presence of addicts in slums was unavoidable. Their presence has become more a problem in recent years due to the urban revival that has been sweeping through Chicago neighborhoods. Blocks that were once home to deadly gangs, prostitutes and dealers are now lined with million dollar homes, condominiums packed with yuppies and chic coffee houses and poetry bars. These new residents have taken to squawking about the slum traditions.

Addicts present a problem because they typically cannot hold down a job and often resort to criminal means to acquire money for drugs. With the introduction of people of wealth in formerly squalor areas, the addicts have possessions to steal, people to rob, and resources to exploit. This is not a situation that would aid in decreasing the drug problem.

Was a wealthy person a victim an addict's criminal act? That person could have provided dealers with a lethally potent supply of prepackaged heroin in hopes of getting revenge. Did the plot twist to attract more addicts to the neighborhood?

Has law enforcement stepped over the line? They have often intercepted large quantities of uncut heroin. Perhaps they are resorting to deadly means to control the drug problem in the west side in hopes that the fear of death would dissuade the addict and lead them towards the righteous path of methadone or narcotics anonymous.

If that is the case, they didn't assume that addicts wouldn't be compelled to abide by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. For addicts the physiological foundation rests upon the white powder of heroin. The hierarchy dissolves in the company of a potent dope.

Addicts are flocking toward certain death like moths to a flame or lemmings to the sea. Maybe they think they'll be lucky enough to escape an overdose. Maybe they think they'll practice the restraint to take only half a dose. Either way, the attraction to a powerful high overpowers their fear of playing so recklessly with death.

Happy Increment Day ...

Here it is again, faster this time around than last, next year will probably come even sooner. I just got accustomed to answering 25 when asked my age. Now I'll have to get used to 26. The depressing thing about birthdays is realizing that one day you won't have to keep adding a digit to that number. When will that be for me? 112? 74? 59? 26???

If it was up to me I'd choose ∞, the fractalized chaos, the end of the mobius strip. Unfortunately, my life line doesn't circle my thumb and run back into itself. Luckily, death is loosing it's terror. I don't know if I'm growing desensitized to the fear or if I'm becoming assured of the immortality of the spirit.

Being quite aware that my consciousness is the confinement of relayed observation, I often convince myself that death will be the ultimate release of tension. Consciousness is tension, an enormous knot that will one day work itself out. Why then do I want to witness the end of infinity?

Maybe I don't believe, maybe I'm scared of the post release, maybe I'm afraid to lose me. I'll admit that I have a major problem with belief. Everything is fallible, experience is subjective and I am the product of decaying ideas and unproveable realities.

When I look below I see a rotting trunk and a rising tide. One day the waves will take down my tree and I will be left clinging to the branches as they roll with the surf. Ants march mindlessly along the limbs. Nimble and acrobatic squirrels leap from bough to bough. The birds, perched and ready for flight. I should figure what I'll be, just in case I'm given the choice.

Re: Yo...Yo...

Today is a holiday, but you can't eat meat... well, land meat anyway. Fish meat is still fine, although they say it has mercury lodged in its fat. An advertisement in the New Yorker stated that the toxicity of fish was from a study done on pacific islanders whose main diet was whale. The purpose of the ad was to pursuade people to go on and eat fish. So I will. My girl wants me to grill salmon today, but the weather on News radio 780 said we're in for some rain...

Now that was some good rambling. Lets see... 8 tangents. Not bad for a single paragraph. I find myself going off on tangents frequently when I blog. Occassionally I force myself to maintain focus on a single issue but the entries sound too much like descriptions in a catalog... example:

Donald Rumsfeld, a native from Chicago, is a Princeton educated politician whose service has spanned from US House Representative to defense secretary. He has served under every administration since Nixon besides Carter's and Bush the elder's. His firm political connections provided him appeal to a major pharmeceutical company where he utilized his influence to push the approval from the FDA for the oral contraceptive pill enovid and the cancer causing sweetener aspartame. He also sat on the board of ABB a company that, during his tenure, sold a nuclear reactor to North Korea. Returning to the political arena during the current Bush administration he helped bolster the Iraq war against his formerly amiable associate Saddam Husein. Rumsfeld is fond of tapioca pudding and 12 year old scotch. He buys all of his suits from Sears and is a regular subscriber to the Chicago Tribune. His favorite authors are Ayn Rand and Franz Kafka. He is available in a variety of sizes and colors at any local K-Mart store. Call or go online to order your own Rumsfeld today!

Even that required some outside facts for description. It's as though an individual alone can't provide enough to maintain interest. So a person becomes what they do, who they know, what endangered animals they've eaten, and how much liquor they can handle.

This ties into your solitary golf outings. Did you really score three under par on an 18 without taking a handicap if nobody was there to see? Is reality dictated by corroborating accounts of experience? Must a person speak the truth to make it real? Jesus thought so, and that's why we can't eat meat today... land meat anyways...

Bottom Feeders...

The individual human being is becoming less and less significant to the direction of collective progress. Each person's role is being confined and specialized-- making them a generic cog that can be fitted to a variety of wheels. Slowly man is transforming into multipurpose cell functioning in several larger organisms.

Once man was intoxicated with the promise of everlasting life. It is the institution that sells that promise that has been granted everlasting life, not those mobile piles of organic waste that pray five times a day or receive dehydrated hypoallergenic wheat wafers every Sunday. Those tithing and faithful trade their individuality so that those behemoth organizations that attempt to define the unknown can continue shaping history as they please.

Those institutions that specialize in managing the spirit, have provided the model structure for market and secular organizations to reproduce. Psalms and Sermons on the Mount have been replaced with mission statements and business plans. The history of membership upon the board of directors is substituted for the "Begot's". Agents of corporate espionage replaces the Jinn. Forty virgins are promised to employees willing to invest the entirety of their 401K's into company stock. The corporate slogan replaces the mantra and the eternal striving towards the Yang becomes the watermark below every corporate letterhead.

Companies grow to such complexities that the institutions develop a consciousness of their own. They regard human labor as a resource and the people themselves as mere cells. If the ticker tape health monitor shows that gluttony has made the company too large to fit through the doorway of competitive exploitation, then the board of directors decides that liposuction is in order. The vacuum tubes of consultants are inserted into the ass, belly and thighs, so that the trusting fat in the form of aging workers, those with scruples and the naive can be expelled into the great void of the American Dream. A leaner company with the same insatiable appetite for exploitation is released from the responsibility of pensions and pesky health care for the gullible aging that were sold the false promise.

As of yet the business world has been unable to reproduce the marketing campaign present in religious institutions. Their main obstacle is that unlike the spirituality market where the product is invisible and intangible, the secular world is less permissive. Even with the advent of information technology and the permeation of ones and zeros in every market from pornography to health care, the businesses have yet to truly capitalize on the potential of a concept alone. Certainly, agents are able to sell ideas to publishers and producers, but their survival in the industry depends upon the finished product of the talent. For religious institutions the product is post mortem and rarely do the walking dead fill chapels, temples and mosques to air their grievances.

This advantage of the spirituality market guarantees a size advantage over the lesser secular institutions. Although there are over 5 million businesses in the United States, less than a thousand of them have more than ten thousand employees. Compare that to 99.99% of the US population belongs to 20 religions and none of those has less than 40,000 members. The market is so consolidated due to the age of the product. With well over six thousand years to work out the difficulties of defining the unknown, new religions have tremendous barriers to the market and must exist as bottom feeding cults.

The secular environment for these multi-human organizations is rife with bottom feeders. 98% of businesses in the US have fewer than 100 employees. These miniature organizations survive on the scraps left over by the dominating 2%. Will the market one day be dominated by only 20 business. Will we stop at Wal-Mart to pick up our dry cleaning, groceries, and taxes then wait in the checkout line while Timmy gets a cavity filled, Earl gets a heart scan and Suzy gets her hair trimmed and dyed. Will we all tune in to the Microsoft channel where to continue watching the season finale to the 20th season of Lost, we must purchase an upgrade to our media center software. Commercials will no longer be passive opt-in advertisement. Instead if we refuse to purchase what is advertised, the house will lose electricity, Carl's pace maker will short and the brakes in our SUV's will fail. Advertisement will take the form of threats. Insurers will provide testimonials of doctors that watched a person die a preventable death because they only had an HMO. Human beings will carry no more value than we hold toward our own cuticles and eye lashes. We will become as expendable as a change of clothes.

Without a doubt there will be individuals with inflated egos that believe themselves to posses a unique characteristic that guarantees them an advantage over behemoth organizations. They may consider certain ideas that they cultivate as viruses that can infect an organization and bring upon its demise. These people will be controlled by the evolved immune system of these multi-human organizations. These conceptual viruses must rely upon vulnerabilities for infection. Organizations could easily cap these weaknesses with red tape and psychological profiles. Those deemed deviant will be denied entry and their viral presence will be brought to the attention of other organizations and the government. The blacklist will operate as the vaccine, and the deviant will be excommunicated, destined to wander the wilderness like the other animals that deny the trap their foot.

Bottom feeders will never lose their presence. Small groups of people may join together to compete with the behemoths. Unfortunately, the point where the inception of a group could develop into a dominant presence in the secular environment has either come and gone or is too near to make a difference.

The future is basically written and the existence of man will be comparable to a cell. Our heart replace the mitochondria, our arms and legs the flagella, and our brains the nucleus. We will grow more and more specialized like the Eloi and Morlocks of Wells' "Time Machine."

With constant monitoring, the deviants must take tremendous precaution from identification. To prevent conspiring between disguised deviants, organizations will fill a person's life with public spectacle and distraction. Every free minute will be accounted for and no life will be unique. People will be packed into dance clubs, stadiums and theaters filled with deafening clamor and blinding lights, scents of food will fill the air drawing pains from the stomachs of those resistant to appetite. Despite the swarming multitudes, each will have a solitary experience, universally shared with no communication between observers. The mob will react in unison to the teleprompter governed by the media monster. Deviants will stare at each other blankly from across the crowds, communicating in the binary language of controlled blinking, waiting for the lull to cry out for freedom.

The New Joker...

The recent New Yorker that hit the magazine racks April 3rd contained a financial article regarding the obstacles that will confront the newspaper industry and whether the industry leaders will react on impulse or procede with prudence. The article noted the rise of audiences acquiring their news and opinions at no charge from blogs. There was an admission that the profit margins of large newspaper syndicates were uncommonly high in relation to other businesses. No where in the article did they acknowledge the threat of bloggers to their own business.

I found it odd that the article was written with such detatchment from the issue. Do the editors of The New Yorker feel that they are immune from the blog and free information phenomenon? Are they so confident in the value of their contributors' work, that they need not worry about the pesky ravings of bloggers worldwide? Perhaps, they consider blogs as second rate writing, unreliable and prone to error, whether grammatical, factual or otherwise?

Certainly they have reason for their pompousness. A fair majority of blogs are, indeed, drivel- product on par with a grocery list or a computer program set to display random words from a dictionary in a series speckled with punctuation. If one comes across a blog that succeeds in expressing a coherent concept, often the subject is paranoid or reproduced at a frequency of an entry every month and then it is usually a reiteration of an idea that is on the verge of becoming trite.

The New Yorker presents the semblance of a magazine for the cosmopolitan sophisticant. Their articles are typically original and timely works, in depth and cohesive. They don't patronize their readers with unsupported convictions or sentiment, and they have not, for the years I have read the magazine, had one article about the deformed 'Batboy' that frequents the tabloids at the supermarket. The magazine excudes class and possesses taste befitting of a palace courtier. Never will they print the words shit, fuck, or cunt without a firm belief that the offense is coated with a thick layer of literary style to absorb any criticism from those that accuse them of promoting vulgarity.

Owned by a contemporary William Randolph Hearst, Samuel I. (Si) Newhouse Jr., The New Yorker is only a member of the large Advance Publications, Inc. family. Acting as the older, more successful and cultured brother, the magazine will never speak ill of father. The rare criticisms of the government's acquiesence to the power struggles of the media conglomerates are dulled and the impact cushioned so that the cosmopolitan sophisticant can rest assured that the views and opinions expressed in The New Yorker will continue to remain unscathed by the corporate wars that are being waged in the shadows of the world's market. Their reliance upon wit and a skillful application of the absurd will blur any scrutiny to detect a flavor of bias or pandering. They operate in the grey area of the slippery slope upon which all courtiers dance.

Dismissing the threat of individual bloggers to their market share and appeal to advertisers, The New Yorker declares that they are beyond the reach of individual reproach. If truth is knowledge, and knowledge is power, one can infer that they (and, potentially, their competitors) are the authority on reality. Utilizing an army of contributors, they can shape truth to whatever form they deem worthy.

Their contributors, after all, have included J.D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Truman Capote and Steve Martin. The conceptually pedophilic Nabokov was the sole contributor of that group to withstand the assault that reality profiteering had upon the psyche— the remaining succumbed to the weights of madness. Most contributors can cash their paychecks without ever bothering to question the motives for the publication.

The New Yorker behaves as a middleman, directing the cream of the collective mental crop across the globe for a price. Is that price a division of the souls of their contributors? We shall never know, but we do know that this publisher is the wholesaler of the gold sticker to place on the foreheads of renowned artists of most every medium. Does Si Newhouse Jr. wield influence over the stickers? Only the publishers, directors and editors know for sure.

If the blogger phenomenon coalesces into a collective and coherent force, then publications like The New Yorker may consider them a threat to their profit margin. The Newhouse’s and Murdock’s may then direct their wrath towards the freedoms of the Internet. Legislators, to which they donate, will demand censorship to prevent the corruption of the moral and chaste youth of America. The tools will be in place for casual abuses labeled as accidents of procedure, but guarantee the hold on power. The system will be to blame, but the alternative will be considered unacceptable by the marrionettes acting in agency to the monsters and Titans of capitalism.

Not to resemble the paranoid raving blogger I so cheerfully described earlier, the future may not be filled with eternal doom and gloom. The government could legislate some balls and disembowel the monstrous conglomerates that they have allowed to grow to devilish proportions. The publications may print articles that criticize daddy. Bloggers can represent the voice of dissent, the balancing force between tyranny and chaos.

Left to ones druthers and most people will blindly trust one another. A mindless characteristic that has been left unshed by evolution. This trait arises from the belief that people are inherently good and that cooperation is better for survival. Allowing this trait to predominate provides the powerful with means for oppression. We must encourage doubt, not laugh at a joke we don't find funny, get pissed off or depressed, fight for our own fucking minds...

A hilarious dream of the naive, but one I don't mind sleeping to at night. Today our own mind, tomorrow the market, and maybe someday this dream won't seem so funny.