dateline: december 24: Nebraska:

do they know it's christmas?

my brother and i spent christmas in a mall, christmas eve day i indulged my irony for a second and stood next to the cash register where tired looking mothers stood in line with bored looking kids waiting for their chance to pay $5.99 for a photo in santa's ample lap. each child's arrival and experience was a purely photo-engineered moment: up, sit, express desire, face the flash, pop, off, next - like "A Christmas Story" (a bloudy brilliant film), there is no rapport with Santa, but something nearly as efficient as the soul of capitalism itself.

colin and i beside a -use well thy freedom- inscription at swarthmore now the parrish handicap ramp.

and my brother and i are first-class consumers to be sure. after breakfast where i had a poached egg on one half a garlic bagel, and lox on the other half, and then lunch of a full plate of a chalupa at a Mazatlan, an excellent Mexican restaurant here in Lincoln, then arby's beef and cheddar and fries and shake for a snack together, and then we returned to the house two hours later for a pork shank and bean soup i was supposed to have helped cook (for learning purposes) and a pork shoulder that was skillfully barbequed at eddie's place in helena arkansas (mail order) to the point where it was like liquid meat. so i had some right before bed, as well as a taste of the pate horsderv from pre-dinner and a cup of harry and david hot chocolate.

Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1998

here are some factoids for the top of bud.com from sierra magazine (sierra club) about meat and factory farming:

farms create more polllution than factories in the us.

the US generates 130 times more animal waste than human waste

60 % of polluted rivers are caused by factory farms...

in california 1600 dairies cause more polllution than the entire state of texas.

heh wb

[it's the cheese]

my bowls are doing the opposite of like yoga or whatever. or maybe they're doing holiday bowel yoga. whatever. i'm just glad i'm not incarnated as a toilet this lifetime.

we intended to shop for our relatives, instead i serviced amy first and then we talked quite a bit and then we hurried and found the perfect media for most all folks under our tree this year.

i feel lucky to be here, on the road, treated to a good time at my uncle's house (not to mention good/funny info)

because his wife my aunt lori works in the mayor, now govenor's office, we got to sit in on a govenor's press conference. he's newly elected, a moderate republican, nice enough guy, actually real decent straightforward seeming. i thought i might ask him about the goings on in washington over impeachment and the conduct of the officiating politicals, and then i saw that it was a far calmer atmosphere, essentially prohibiting freelance questioning, unlike the media melee i'm used to seeing on CSpan or surrounding michael jordan.

but the media there, i was amazed. here i am in nebraska, there's no new york times, no visible woodward and bernstein, but the essential function and bearing of the journalists remained the same - they listened dutifully, taking notes, and then proceeded to ask the govenor-elect some contextually challenging questions. i really respect the enterprise of media/journalism at it's core - challenging the activities of the authorities. often they work in cahoots, or they challenge too much, or not enough, but generally, media and government check each other. johanns did well to respond straightforwardly to most all of the questions. he did excuse himself from using his powers to save a convicted death row man's life, and i can't imagine having that kind of decision to make, and then not electing some small measure of mercy. but that's what makes him a moderate republican, and me a web diarist.

i was looking over my Nebraska pages, trying to do more justice to the state, and it's odd to see the link to the story of my 35th acid trip which i took in the state capital building. strange because i know my relatives here have read it, and i know it bugs them quietly under the surface (heck my descriptions of my family therein like a bunch of abusive alienlifeforms are hard for me to read, today). but i want to honour the process of educating myself that i undertook, by writing, by experimenting with drugs and contexts, and by processing it on the web. to take it down is to remove part of the story, which becomes (w)holy after being integrated.

slakthus reprise - merry christmas so perhaps my best hope is to just bury the parts of me that rare a little shallow or short sighted or just immature beneath a mountain of new content! i mean my mom and I were talking and she was saying that if i do want to teach real young folk i might have to sacrifice some of my weirder pages. do i have to choose between art and teaching? i don't think i will - i mean i will choose to honour the whole person education here and therein choose to not be a preschool chaperone. unless the teachers meet me and then i think they'd decide i was a nice enough guy. but convincing their parents would be the real bitch. i'll probably hvae to stick to college, where parents essentially pay for kids to learn how to party, and then to learn how to stop partying.

hah hah - this is funny i mean i think that's the ultimate lesson of LSD, for me, there's a time to party and there's a time to stop. and if i think through the self-censorship lesson long enough i get to the point where i realize, again, that leaving up the whole lesson is exactly what's missing from D.A.R.E. or Alice in Chains or something. although most heroin addicts pretty adequately describe their own bargain.

i love making web pages but i think i'm getting sick because i stay up at night working on the computer and then airport shuttles or my relatives wake me up early. i always think - well, when i go to lincoln i won't have access to a computer so i'll push myself now. and then there's a computer. etc. hack, snort, wheeze, chortle.

yesterday