Sex, Chlorophyl & Rock-N-Roll

It is barely 20 degrees outside the whorehouse this morning as the sun peeks through the brittle fingers of the trees on the horizon.  Winter crept into the neighborhood last night on tip-toes as unwelcome guests often do.  The east flank of The Blue Ridge is quiet and cold, but, the whorehouse is hopping and warm.  “Mott the Hopple” plays loud on the sound system and more Glam Rock will follow as the day progresses because if there ever was a type music that fit with orchids… Glam Rock is it.

We call the orchid room the whorehouse because, at this time of year, it reeks of sexual exhibitionism and flagrant displays of sexual anatomy.  This is Angie.  Her real name is Angraecum sesquipedale and she is the most brazen of all the hussies in the place.  To satisfy her it takes a customer armed with something at least a foot long… 16 inches would be better. Her kind was discovered in 1796 on the island of Madagascar, hanging around trees in the damp lowlands. Charles Darwin, after being sent several flowers of A. sesquipedale noted the defining characteristic of the species, its extremely long spur.  Darwin surmised, in his 1862 publication On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilized by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing,  (and what a page turner THAT is),  that there must be a pollinator moth with some kind of a “thingy” long enough to reach the nectar at the end of the spur.

Well, as you can imagine, for some time after this prediction the notion of a pollinator with a 35 cm long “thingy” was ridiculed and generally not believed to exist.   After Darwin’s publication, George Campbell published a book in 1867 titled, The Reign of Law, in which he argued that the complexity of this species implied that it was created by a “supernatural being”.  (They never give up, do they?)   However, in 1903, such a moth was discovered in Madagascar by Lionel Walter Rothschild and Karl Jordan.  This confirmed Darwin’s prediction. The moth, and a randy little bastard it turned out to be, was named Xanthopan morganii praedicta.  To this day many moths of this species make a very comfortable living starring in pornographic “Whorticultural Movies” marketed mostly to florists and lonely greenhouse workers.

David Bowie is now singing “Changes” and the lyrics certainly suit what’s going on down the other end of the whorehouse.  “Time may change me, but I can’t change time” blasts from the speakers as the Phalaenopsis Boys proudly show off their erections.  No Viagra… No Levitra… Pure Solar Power all the way!

I swear you can almost watch them grow.  In another month they will explode into flower and their true colors will be apparent.  They are sissy boys, glamor queens, all made up for saturday night and out for a good time.

Ian Hunter is singing now:

“Well billy rapped all night about his suicide 
How he kick it in the head when he was twenty-five 
Speed jive don’t want to stay alive 
When you’re twenty-five 
And wendy’s stealing clothes from marks and sparks 
And freedy’s got spots from ripping off the stars from his face 
Funky little boat race 
Television man is crazy saying we’re juvenile delinquent wrecks 
Oh man I need tv when I got t rex…”

Now T-Rex is singing what I like to think of as “Our Song”.  For years I have told people, whenever this particular song plays, that this was the song we selected to dance to as a newly married couple at our wedding, 44 years ago.  Of course it isn’t true, but, it pisses my sweetie-pie off to no end.  Then again, so does the smell of all the orchids.  I have observed that men seem to like the scent while women find it to be… just too much.

“Well you’re dirty and sweet, clad in black
Don’t look back and I love you
You’re dirty and sweet, oh yeah
Well you’re slim and you’re weak
You’ve got the teeth of a hydra upon you
You’re dirty sweet and you’re my girl.

Chorus:
Get it on, bang the gong , get it on
Get it on, bang the gong, get it on

You’re built like a car, you’ve got a hub cap diamond star halo
You’re built like a car, oh yeah
You’re an untamed youth that’s the truth with your cloak full of eagles
You’re dirty sweet and you’re my girl.”…

(So, where’s your Shakespeare now?)

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

Fecal Matters

I confess that I have never spent much time contemplating how lucky I am to have access to a flush toilet.  I learned this past week that 2.6 BILLION people have no access to any kind of a toilet at all.  They go outside and squat.  In the city.  In the country.  Along the side of the road, the railroad tracks, behind bushes, on sidewalks in big cities…. 2.6 BILLION.  Where good sanitation and toilets exist people are wealthier, healthier and cleaner.  Sanitation specialists have estimated that people who live in areas with inadequate sanitation ingest 10 grams of fecal matter every day.  A gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, and 100 worm eggs.  Diarrhea… nearly 90% of which is caused by fecally contaminated food and water kills a child every 15 seconds.  In nineteenth-century London one child in two died early.  When sewers, toilets and hand washing became normal child mortality dropped more than at any other time in recorded history.  Sanitation is estimated to add a minimum of 20 years to the average life.

In the United States 1.7 million people have no sanitation.  In 1993, in Milwaukee, 400,000 people got sick and more than 100 died when cryptosporidium found its way into Milwaukee’s drinking water.  Milwaukee gets its drinking water from Lake Michigan.  Milwaukee also discharges its treated sewage (treated to remove some things, but not all pathogens and not pharmaceuticals) into… you guessed it… Lake Michigan.  Since 1994, 935 MILLION gallons of full strength untreated sewage have been discharged into the lake as a result of storm water overloads of the sewerage system.

Even the most advanced… the richest countries in the world… with modern sanitation systems that are marvels of engineering STILL don’t know what to do with all the shit!  They move it around, get it out of site and hide it until they can find a place to discharge it into water.  A river, a lake, or, in the case of coastal cities… the ocean.  Usually into a body of water that provides the drinking water for someone else and ALWAYS into the closed loop system that provides us all with a home and the food we eat.

I live near Lynchburg, Virginia where raw sewage is discharged regularly, when it rains hard, into the James River, or, as it is known to Historians… The First River of America.  My local County politicians recently spent over a million dollars to construct a boat dock and fishing pier out into the James right in front of where the sewage discharges.  …And people wonder why I remain perpetually ashamed of my species.  But, don’t think things are any better where you live because chances are they ain’t.

I’m going to give you another picture and remind you about the 2.6 BILLION people who have no choice but to go outside and squat.  I hope you sigh to yourself and contemplate what a lucky bastard you are.  Here goes…

Now Mrs. N is going to get serious because she finds herself even MORE disappointed in her species today than usual.

The average human being produces about 77 pounds of shit a year and 132 gallons of urine.  There are approximately 7 billion people on earth, give or take a few hundred million.  That’s 270 billion tons of shit and 924 billion gallons of urine.  Add to that total the combined industrial, chemical and pharmaceutical output of mankind and you can begin to imagine the disgusting soup mankind is making and HAS MADE of this planet.

Male frogs and fish are producing eggs and that three eyed fish on the cartoon show “The Simpsons” ain’t no joke folks.  Every year the rate of autism and autoimmune disease climbs higher.  Every day more and more pharmaceuticals and chemicals make their way into human drinking water. We are bathed in pesticides, herbicides, artificial estrogens and all manner of newly created chemical compounds not of this earth.  Mothers milk is so full of dangerous chemical compounds that the full extent of the potential damage it can produce in newborn humans can’t even be measured.  I read in the New York TIMES that scientists state that my children have a poor chance of living as long as I will and this is in the most advanced civilization the world has to offer.   

People wonder why Mrs. N. can get a little “cranky” at times.  People are sometimes quite put off when she tells them to go fuck themselves rather than listen to them blather on about guns, or, “the fucking right to life”, or, homeless people, or, what the jerk-off politicians said today in Washington, or, how important it is for us to support fucking Israel.

You have to understand something.  Mrs. N. can’t deal with that today.  Mrs. N. doesn’t want to hear about your trip to “Whole Foods” and how you try to “eat organic” and how much better the peaches grown organically taste.  You see Mrs. N. knows that you are, in spite of where you shop and how much money you have, about as full of toxic chemicals as a piñata is of candy and we are supposed to be the lucky ones.  We aren’t one of the 2.6 billion taking a crap beside the road right now and wiping their ass with their hand, or, a stick.  We got it made… and we are STILL fucked!

Wait a minute.  Did Mrs. N. hear you say something?  Did you say that there is always hope and that, surely Mrs. N. is looking too much on the negative side.  Surely there is hope!…  Is that right?

Poor Baby.  What was your name again, Mrs. N. forgets?  Was it Pollyanna?

Well, Pollyanna, of course there is hope!  You will find it in the same place you find all the other things that keep you from crying yourself to sleep and shitting your pants whenever you read the paper.  You fucking MAKE IT UP!  You know… like religion and Santa Clause and free will…  You make up the reality you need to inhabit, try to sell it to yourself, then others, and, if they buy it and it helps them feel better about being alive…. BINGO… you got yourself a culture.  You get to pretend things ain’t so bad by concentrating on “other things”.

Now, Mrs. N. is sorry to tell you this, but, that is, unfortunately, what we already have… in spades actually.  We are like the guy who jumped out the window of a 50 story building overheard to say, as he passed the 10th floor….. “So far, so good.”

We are a failed experiment in evolution.  The earth will forget us and try to do better next time.  That is no reason not to try to enjoy the rest of the cruse.  Drinks and hour-devours will be served in the main lounge.  While you are waiting you are free to make up any kind of bullshit you like with regard to “reality”.  The management fully expects you to.  It is, after all, the one thing human beings are superb at.

One last little lesson for today.  This is funny…

This is REAL.

 

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

 

 

Blazing Politics

Nothing philosophical, or, in any way “deep” going on in my little observational essay today.  It’s just that, what with 6 miserable, drippy and cloudy days under my belt out of the last 6, I needed some cheering up last night and it was delivered in the form of a motion picture.  To be specific, Blazing Saddles.  

It really wasn’t until last night that I came to fully appreciate Mel Brooks’ seeming ability to not only look into the future, but, produce a metaphorical motion picture the sole purpose of which was to prepare the American people for the first black President.

He saw the future!  Mel Brooks not only accurately anticipated the reaction of our deeply intrenched political plutocratic class, but, he also gave us ample warning of EXACTLY how Congress would conduct themselves and the Nations business when and “if” a black man were elected President.

If that wasn’t enough, (and how the hell he did this I don’t know) he even accurately predicted that the Sheriff (I mean President) would be forced, again and again, to fall back on the one and only true friend he had.  The Waco Kid, or, as we have come to know him today… Joe Biden.

Can we even go further?  Can we even find uncanny similarity in the part played by the female lead?  Lili von Shtupp, AKA/Hillary Clinton

Beginning as an adversary on a mission to destroy the Black Sheriff  she finds herself drawn in and, in the end, enthralled by that certain something that stands him apart.  She is, over night, turned from enemy to friend and confidant.

So how does it all end?

Probably just like the movie does.

Very stupidly

The people of Rock Ridge (America), as dumb as rocks and preoccupied with nonsense, continue to muddle on with their pathetic lives as the aloof Sheriff eventually rides off into the sunset.  The cowboy Congress continues to do nothing but misunderstand what is happening and fart around uselessly producing noise and stink and little else.

Bill Clinton goes on to remain the powerful political force that he is…

And politics and “The Peoples Business” in Washington, go on as usual.

So was I right in thinking that Mel Brooks saw into the future and produced “Blazing Saddles” as a prediction, or, better yet a WARNING to us all with regard to… what was to come?  Or… was Oscar Wilde, who held in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life” REALLY the one who was right?

I leave that to my gentile readers to decide.

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

Human Sacrifice [And other things that make you scratch your head]

…”People were crowded five deep at the tiny counter of a gun shop near Atlanta, where a pastor from Knoxville, Tenn., was among the customers who showed up in person after the store’s Web site halted sales because of low inventory. Emptying gun cases and bare shelves gave a picked-over feel to gun stores in many states. High-capacity magazines, which some state and federal officials want to ban or restrict, were selling briskly across the country: one Iowa dealer said that 30-round magazines were fetching five times what they sold for just weeks ago.”  [Front page New York Times 1/12/13]

“Gun dealers and buyers alike said that the rapid growth in gun sales — which began climbing significantly after President Obama’s re-election and soared after the Dec. 14 shooting at a school in Newtown, Conn., prompted him to call for new gun laws — shows little sign of abating.”

1. Obama was elected again.  He is a Black man, so, quite naturally, white people think he is going to take away their guns.

2. Five and six year old children were turned into Swiss Cheese by a mentally ill kid whose mother feared the government, owned lots of guns, and taught him how to shoot.

[These] are the two primary reasons we are given for the Bonanza in gun sales.  The first one involves President Obama.  But, Obama didn’t try to take guns away from white people last time he was elected president.  To the contrary, he signed laws into being permitting hand guns to be carried in places they were never permitted before.   Yet, when he was elected for a second term, BINGO, gun sales went through the roof again.  He is the first black person to be elected President.  He is the only person elected President whose election caused gun sales to skyrocket.  There is, of course, NO connection.

The second reason, or occurrence, that prompted gun sales to go ballistic is the massacre of helpless little children in Newtown, Connecticut.   It was the latest in a long and horrible list of occasions where a crazy person armed themselves and killed as many people as they could.

As shocking as what I am about to tell you is, I assure you that it is true.

The American people divided themselves into two diametrically opposed camps on the issue of gun control.  (It’s true!)

I am not a gun owner myself.  I do not understand people who think the answer to Americas epidemic of gun deaths is more guns.  I would very much like to understand this.  People who think more guns are the answer don’t understand me.  I see this as yet one more curious example of American culture unraveling.

Don’t ask me why, but, all this killing and death got me thinking about human sacrifice.  It got me thinking about how the Romans so enjoyed watching other people killed in horrible ways…. How so many, many cultures practiced human sacrifice… How so many religions are rooted in it!

I wondered… If the Roman games, complete with children being ripped apart and eaten by wild animals, were presented today…. How many Americans would go?  How different are we than they were, psychologically?  Assuming that they loved their children every bit as much as we love ours… what, do you suppose, they “got out” of watching the bloody spectacles in the arena? Why were they so popular?  Why were ANY human sacrifices throughout history popular spectator events?  What was/is it about witnessing the death of others that so fascinates… so moves… so deeply motivates and effects people to this day and in so many different ways?

What does the sacrifice of others do for me?

They are dead and I’m not and in that there is power.  In that is the temporary end of fear because, for the moment, another has lost and I have won.  For the moment I can rest and breathe easy.  For the moment I can feel stronger.  The fear in the herd abates because the lion has chosen his victim and made the kill.  The traffic backs up for miles along the highway as cars creep past the overturned, smoking wreck.

..”The longer people looked at the death of someone else, the more pleasure they could have in sensing the security and the good fortune of their own survival.”  [Elias Canetti “Crowds and Power”]

…”The continual grinding sacrifice of animal and human life in the arenas (on TV) was all of a piece with the repressions of a society that was dedicated to war and that lived in the teeth of death.  It was the perfect pastime to work off the anxieties and show the ultimate personal control of death.  The more death you saw unfold before your eyes, the more you thrust your thumbs downward, the more you bought off your own life.”.. [Ernest Becker “Escape From Evil]

Then, of course, there is the hunting enthusiast who doesn’t need the meat, but, so deeply enjoys the hunt and the kill.

Gregory Zilboorg the Russian psychoanalyst, sociologist and historian (and pretty goofy looking guy) writes…

..”Sadism naturally absorbs the fear of death because by actively manipulating and hating [see: Liberals, Obama]  we keep our organism absorbed in the outside world; this keeps self-reflection and the fear of death in a state of low tension.  We feel we are masters of life and death when we hold the fate of others in our hands.  As long as we can continue shooting, we think more of killing than of being killed.”… 

As long as we can continue shooting, we think more of killing than of being killed.

As long as we can continue shooting, we think more of killing than of being killed.

The Aztecs did it like this.

We do it in a thousand ways, from video games to live CNN broadcasts of cruse missiles blowing up apartment buildings full of women and children in Baghdad.  We did it with napalm, cluster bombs and Agent Orange.  We do it with gas, lethal injections and the electric chair.  We do it with drones.  We do it with land mines.  We did it to hundreds of thousands of CHILDREN in Iraq and you expect us to get all bent out of shape for a handful of children in Connecticut and give up our guns?

As a wise gangster once said….. “When killers stop killing they get killed.”

We have been a Nation of Killers since the first white man’s foot hit the beach.

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

It Ain’t Rocket Surgery

My wife has been telling me that, as of late, I have been “cussin” more than usual.  My response to her is that it is only natural and to be expected in times such as these.   There are so many things that seem to upset me these days and going with the idea that when it comes to stress and aggravation it is better to let it out than keep it in… I see myself with little choice.  As the saying goes, “some artists work in oils, others in clay”, but, as of late at least, profanity is my medium of choice.

I’m getting old and the old are not as patient with nonsense and foolishness as the young.  I’m not anyway.  It doesn’t mean that I am not a pleasant person to be around, it just means that my fuse is shorter.  I find that I don’t laugh any less than I always did… and that’s a lot.  It is the in between time that seems to have lessened.  The time when you are not amused and you are not pissed off either.  The in between time I call that.  Those hours seem to make up much less of my waking hours than I remember they used to.  Those hours that used to be in between time all seem to be made up of pissed off time now.   I seem to fluctuate perpetually between laughing and being pissed off at something or somebody.   I don’t know what it means.  Perhaps I just feel the need to pay more attention.

A little over two years ago a kidney stone got my attention.  I was laying in bed reading a nice book and a strange pain began in my right flank.  It began as a feeling of pressure and progressed steadily to the point where it became impossible to stay unmoving in one place.  The pain made me move.  I had never had a kidney stone before, BUT, I knew exactly what it was!

This morning I was reminded of that unpleasant experience by a TV news personality discussing how hard, nearly impossible, it is to “get a handle” on skyrocketing health care costs.  BOY!… Did that get me cussing like a sailor.

It brought back memories of my visit to the emergency room on what I like to remember as “The Night of the Stone”. After practically crawling into the emergency room at 1:00am on a sunday morning and being subjected to a battery of indignities I am finally given a place to recline.  My wife is told that a doctor will be along soon, but, first there are a few things that need taking care of.  As I lie there, flipping around in much the same way that fishermen are accustomed to seeing newly released trout or bass flip around in the bottom of the boat, my wife and I both are informed that they will be unable to do ANYTHING for me without a CT Scan and, before they can do that, my wife will have to write them a check for $1000.  Our health insurance has a deductible that was unmet and, well, this was their policy.  (I), we, were in no position to argue with the nice lady.  She had the drugs.  I wanted the drugs.  I wanted the drugs FUCKING BAD!

You know, now that I think about it, it was around that time that my “cussin” increased, but, I digress.  I passed the stone the next day, but, that isn’t the point.  The point is that in “Civilized” places so called health care professionals don’t get to hold people hostage like that.  They don’t get to charge what ever they like for things like CT Scans & MRIs.  They see all this health care business differently.  They see themselves all in it together.  They don’t see other people’s misfortune as a golden opportunity to skin them alive economically.  We are trained to hate them for that.  We call them names like “communist” and “socialist”.   Those words are almost “cuss” words here in America.

So here is the deal.  It isn’t “hard” to find ways to reduce health care costs.  We can use me and “The Night of the Stone” as an example.  The grand my wife had to pony up before they would agree to help me down at the kindly hospital was only a fraction of the cost of the CT Scan.  It was more like $2000 in the end.  To get to the hospital that night we had to drive over a bridge that spanned a river.  Crossing over the river, on the bridge, was free.  We built the bridge and maintain it with taxpayers money, so, when we need it we have it.

So now imagine this.  Imagine you are flipping around like a trout, in pain, and you have to cross a bridge to get to the hospital.  Your wife is driving and when she stops to pay the toll on the bridge the man says… “What’s up with the guy moaning in the back seat?”  Your wife says, “That’s my poor husband and it looks like he has a kidney stone, won’t you please let us through?”

What would you think of the system (and the man) if the toll booth guy says…. “Nothing doing lady, write me a check for a grand and THEN you can pass.”

That’s how we do things in America.

In no other country in the world are CT Scan and MRI machines owned and operated for PROFIT.  Operating rooms are owned, like the rest of the modern machinery of health care, AND BRIDGES, AND AIRPORTS, AND HIGHWAYS ….. BY THE PEOPLE!  

The one simple action of admitting that it is WRONG to make huge profits from the suffering of others is how it must begin.  It isn’t rocket surgery.  It’s common sense.  I have come to understand that few people in America have any.  That’s probably the root of all my cussing if the truth be known.

 

 

My America

I should begin this by letting the reader know up front that I am not a patriot.  I’m not a tribal kind of guy.  I may be a tenth generation American, but, I had absolutely nothing to do with being born here.  I could have just as easily been born in Moscow or Timbuktu.  I wouldn’t have had anything to do with that either.

Alexis de Tocqueville called Americans a people who engaged in the “perpetual practice of self-applause”.  That was a long time ago, but, he was right then and absolutely nothing has changed since.  We love nothing more than telling each other and the rest of the world how great we are.  I think it’s stupid and dangerous and I want no part of it.   I consider myself a citizen of planet earth.  We earthlings come in all sizes, shapes and colors.  All people on earth are my brothers and sisters.  All other life forms are my cousins.   It would be nice if we all got along like peas in a pod.  That can’t happen because of the way things are set up here on earth.  To remain alive here you have to eat your cousins.  Unfortunately, if you run out of cousins to eat you may find that you have to eat your brothers and sisters, or better yet, kill your brothers and sisters so you can eat what they were eating.  None of this makes for… what would you call it?… “Smooth family relations”.

Boswell tells us that Samuel Johnson said, on the evening of April 7, 1775, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”.   He doesn’t tell us exactly what he thought Johnson meant by that.  I think it is pretty easy to guess.  I think it has to do with the business of tricking other people into thinking they are doing something good when they are only really doing something good for you.   I think it is a way to use our inherent tendency toward tribalism as a tool to gain riches and power.  A way to get other people to suffer and die so that YOU can get to have what YOU want.

As a consequence of my views on patriotism I have no choice but to view every politician as a person not to be trusted.  In my opinion any person who expresses a desire to aspire to a life in politics should be watched very closely and, by whatever means possible, forever kept from doing so.  I believe that all political offices should be filled by some kind of lottery, for specific periods of time, or, by people picked totally at random, by congenital idiots poking pencils at names in local phone books.    Anything but by voting!  Humans are far to easily tricked, fooled and lead astray by other, smarter and more unscrupulous humans, to EVER consider choosing their political representatives and leaders by what they have to say.  Anyone who doesn’t know that lots of humans will say and do anything to get what they want just… isn’t… paying… attention.

“My America” is circling the drain.  It has shot its load and I’m not the only one who knows it.  It’s not the end of the world.  If you want to understand how it all goes down from here on out you have to do this…..

There is a very good reason why our so called “leaders” don’t really give a shit about our “National Debt”.  They just pretend.  If you were them, or, the people who own them…. You wouldn’t either!

Look at it this way.  I’m going to try to make this as simple as I can.  If the people who live on your block are stupid enough to pay you $1000 to cut their lawn and it only takes you 10 minutes to do it…. you will take the money, won’t you?  If you can get someone to pay you $50 for a baloney sandwich that only costs you 25 cents to make… you will sell it to them won’t you?  If you can, through trickery, larceny, or, any other means possible, get other people to pay you truckloads of money knowing full well that no matter how crocked the deal is  you will get away with it…. you will, won’t you?  Now, even if you say “No, I have too much integrity to do that”… you do know that there will NEVER be a lack of people glad to anxiously take your place?  Right?

OK…. Now this is the important part.  The part about the “National Debt”.

Since by now you have stacked away hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars, in Swiss bank accounts and bank accounts in The Cayman Islands and Hong Kong and any place else you can think of…. What possible fucking difference would it make to you that the stupid assholes paying you $1000 to cut their lawn and $50 for a baloney sandwich and millions more for all the other scams you have going are paying you with money THEY ARE BORROWING FROM SOMEONE ELSE?  

Why the hell would you care?  42 cents on the dollar borrowed… 52 cents on the dollar…. 92 cents on the dollar…. What the fuck do you care?  Fools and their money are soon parted and besides, the south of France is beautiful this time of year.  The ONLY thing that matters is keeping the game going!  Divert their attention here… then there…. then someplace else.   Make them fight with each other over anything you can think of.  Frighten the shit out of them any way you can.  Lie like a fucking rug about anything and everything….. BUT…. Keep the game going!

That, my dear gentle reader, is what is going on here in the good old USA  I don’t blame the people who are doing it any more than I blame a dog for stealing a bone out of the back of a butcher shop when the butcher isn’t looking.  It is as much the nature of things and the nature of humans as breathing and sex.  It is completely understandable to me.  It doesn’t even piss me off.

It does something I find much worse than pissing me off.

It bores the shit out of me.  Greed I mean.

When I think of what we could have done.

Did you know that over 2.5 billion of our brothers and sisters living on this once beautiful planet have never once in their life had the opportunity to use a toilet?

… and we think we have problems?

Ha!