Compatible Creatures by Bruce Maulden
War, Politics, and Life
Quiet and still this wee-early Tuesday morning on California’s northern coast, creating a false sense of all is well with the world. When it ain’t. Of course, the entire world is overwhelmed by the curious Mars landing — $2.6 billion worth of excitement, while down here on planet ground-level, the costs of everything seems to…
One of the extreme-first indications President Obama was more creative-mouth than actual action was the announced appointment in December 2008 of those two knuckle-headed financial assholes Timmy Geithner and Larry Summers to his incoming administration — a move putting conniving foxes in charge of an already-looted hen house. Wall Street, and its gun-toting ‘tarded’ cousin,…
In this the day after our Independence Day, the world looks about the same from up here on California’s northern coast, although the real word of the day yesterday (via Urban Dictionary) was “Freedom Fondle” — The honor of being screened by the TSA at airport security. Funny, but with a most-definite Orwellian feel. And…
As a single parent who raised five kids on a below-par income, there was never wasted food amongst us, and after each meal, not much left-over either. And shit never went bad in the fridge, no rotting fruit and no eatable waste — just about every crumb passed through a set of lips. Not so…
While my old stomping grounds along the Florida panhandle this morning are being banged about by stalled tropical storm Debby, and other parts of the country are fighting crazed forest fires or being jolted awake by a 3.4 earthquake, one strange item flies in the face of all that: Gasoline prices have dropped by nearly 15…
In thinking of the past, more of the structured remembrance seems in reality an illusion — all the hype of those glorious, hey-days of the 1950s and 60s, when energy was so obviously abundant all-electric homes were highly touted, even acquiring it’s own medallion, and memories of gas at $1.25 a gallon for regular. All…
Prices at the gas pump have taken the way-backseat in the old news cycle lately, but WTF — in the face of actual face eating, Chinese body parts mailed to all over by a Canadian (in Brazil, a wife kills, then cuts up husband, a “crime of passion,” she says), Scott Walker buying his way…
Last week, a regular customer and I got into a short discussion during check-out on the subject of college debt — she told me she was having trouble paying off just $4,000 in loan obligations. “It’s a pain in the ass,” she said, but agreed her total was nowhere the average for today’s young people…
“They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.” — George Carlin (Illustration found here). Yesterday, that most-august body of assholes, the US Senate, and fueled by the ugly gnashing of…
Iran not unplugged: Oil prices on Friday briefly spiked to the highest level in three weeks following a report that Iranian oil exports dropped significantly this month. … Benchmark U.S. crude rose by $1.52 to finish at $106.87 per barrel in New York. Earlier, prices jumped by $2.95 per barrel in 13 minutes to $108.25,…