I DO NOT ACCEPT

by Harry Tuttle
(used w/o permission)

I do not accept the death of my republic.
I do not accept that innocent children in distant lands must be murdered for gasoline.
I do not accept that people decide for me to know about what my country is doing.
I do not accept the need for mor parking lots and less trees.
I do not accept continuous warfare.
I do not accept that my government thinks it can lie to me every day and get away with it.
I do not accept that we can’t get along with every single last living creature on this planet.
I do not accept a unitary executive.
I do not accept that we can’t find better sources of energy.
I do not accept the No Child Left Behind Act.
I do not accept that tax money is spent on campaign conventions.
I do not accept that 9/11 was anything but an inside job.
I do not accept doublethink.
I do not accept wars of conquest, based on lies, started in my name.
I do not accept the lack of a paper trail in my country’s elections.
I do not accept the wholesale destruction of my environment.
I do not accept the suspensions of habeas corpus.
I do not accept a president who is less articulate than my 12 year old video game-fanatic son.
I do not accept torture. Fucking period.
I do not accept pedophiles in government paid to protect children from pedophiles.
I do not accept that women need to get married to combat poverty.
I do not accept corporate welfare.
I do not accept free speech zones.
I do not accept fear as a primary political tool.
I do not accept that all of my communications can be monitored.
I do not accept aspartame.
I do not accept signing statements.
I do not accept nuclear weapons as a reasonable alternative.
I do not accept the teaching of the religion of intelligent design instead of the science of evolution.
I do not accept an American aristocracy.
I do not accept that there are black and white answers to everything.
I do not accept that religious organizations can receive money from the government.
I do not accept the Military Commissions Act.
I do not accept the categorization of my people by skin tone, gender or sexual orientation.
I do not accept the criminalization of free thought.
I do not accept that we are hated because we are free. (we are NOT free...jr)
I do not accept a rubber stamp legislature.
I do not accept that New Orleans has been forgotten and left to rot.
I do not accept the lack of universal health care.
I do not accept that the Iraq War is a comma.
I do not accept the lack of a living wage.
I do not accept the reversal of the separation of church and state.
I do not accept that Al Gore was not my President.
I do not accept that women can’t make choices about their own bodies.
I do not accept the trickle down theory.
I do not accept that people who love each other can’t get married.
I do not accept the cultivation of a slave labor force in the guise of immigration.
I do not accept that our way is the best for everyone.
I do not accept that Kerry wasn’t in on it.
I do not accept that the people making the rules usually are the ones not following them.
I do not accept that we can’t buy medicine from Canada.
I do not accept that Condi didn’t get the memo.
I do not accept that this is a Christian nation.
I do not accept color-coded terror alerts.
I do not accept a President who is on vacation almost as much as he is not.
I do not accept more meat and fewer grains.
I do not accept that military service is becoming the only option for our young people.
I do not accept that women are penalized for having children.
I do not accept that the United States has a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
I do not accept that education is not free.
I do not accept fascism as a form of government.
I do not accept the lack of basic supplies in our schools.
I do not accept a President who thinks the internet is plural.
I do not accept that Israel always seems to get away with it.
I do not accept monosodium glutamate.
I do not accept a complacent and subservient press corps.
I do not accept war as a business.
I do not accept that only one side gets a say.
I do not accept that a plant is illegal.
I do not accept that I am only a consumer.
I do not accept that the levees just blew.
I do not accept that it’s everyone for themselves.
I do not accept that you are so different from me, that we can’t understand each other, that we have nothing in common, or that we can’t see eye to eye.


"Harry Tuttle" was the character played by Robert De Niro in the cult classic, Brazil.<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/>. "Harry Tuttle" was the monkey wrencher in the government works. The 'real' Harry Tuttle, the friend of a friend, lives off the grid, on cash alone, and under assumed names.

LIVING PRETTY HIGH ON THE THIRD WORLD HOG

So I was standing in my kitchen this weekend, moving stuff around. I picked up a 15# burlap bag of basmati rice from where it was leaning against the stove and put it on a shelf by the sink. I got that li'l deja vu thing, because it was so much like a memory I had of standing in a kitchen area in a Tunisian house, watching my hostess put a burlap bag full of couscous on a shelf. Here in Momma Culture's West, we're supposed to have fancy canisters for that stuff.

"Hmmm," I thought, "a little bit o' the 3rd world right in my own house," although it demonstrated my commitment to vegan-ness and my commitment to voluntary simplicity at the same time.

Well that thought stuck with me off and on over the weekend. By Monday I had a long list of sorta 3rd world stuff that is a daily part of my life. Molly started teasing me about how I could walk to the doctor, and I had money in my pocket, and I really wasn't living that far into the 3rd world. We laughed and took up the position that, while we are not exactly living in luxury, we're "living pretty high on the 3rd world hog."

Anyway, here's the list:

2 humans and 11 animals in a 900 sq foot dwelling. The dwelling is sheathed in lethal asbestos on 2 sides. The roof is coated with petroleum products.

No clear delineation between the floors in my house and dirt. (Those of you who have been in my house know how this looks.) All the dogs find it hard to clearly figure out whether it's okay to pee by the crack in the floor inside the back door; or whether they can pee on the slightly rougher planks of the back porch, or need to go the additional 48 inches out the back door onto the grass and dirt. Hell, there are recycle bottles in all those places, how's a dog to know? When it rains and the water is pouring off the back porch roof, the dogs find it very easy to make the decision.

Front porch is worse, off the concrete steps it's straight to a kind of mulchy dirt the exact same color as the living room floorboards. Now the reason my floors are so crude is because they've had no finish on them since the house was built in 1947, and we're only in our 5th year of remodeling the house, starting from its derelict, abandoned status. I assume you can find nicer floors in Soweto.

I have livestock in my house. A rescued bunny who lives in a big cage near the living room. There's always a layer of hay and bunny food on the floors. Since my computer is next to him, I'm getting used to the barnyard smell of bunny poop pellets and day-old veggies in his dish. Not much different from folks in the near east who have a rabbit or a goat or chickens who sleep in the house at night …. I s'pose there's a guy in Indonesia who has his computer in a similar setup.

I'm personally responsible for the sewage system and the water supply. I own them, I do maintenance on them. Nobody to call when they break down, just me.

We have 3 gas lanterns and a cardboard box full of candles and several paraffin lamps close at hand for when the power goes out.

Propane. When friends --Sarah and then Terry -- lived with us, just like any 3rd world head of household I was always hauling 5 gallon propane cylinders to get them filled, and then hooking them up to supply cooking heat and hot water to our little RV "guest house". Those cylinders and that activity are ubiquitous in the 3rd world.

We grow a significant amount of our veggies, and our medicinal herbs. Not everything, not as much as, oh, say the folks I knew in rural Greece who lived on an island and relied upon their gardens for half their pharmacopeia. We harvest the wild chamomile in our back yard all during summer. We make salads with the borage. We have apricots, we have grapevines, we have apples. Ed and Nancy supply us with organic veggies from their garden and the occasional happy chicken eggs. All without benefit of an "economy".

We cook with a set of Mexican blue enamel pots for everyday meals, just like they do in Oxaca. (We have some very nice LeCreuset stuff I've acquired, but don't seem to use it much.) My favorite pan is a $4 blue enamel omelette pan I acquired in Tunisia -- I've been cooking with it since 1977. I have a 12" cast iron skillet my mom gave me in 1967, part of the family legacy. I figure somebody in Uganda is whomping up dinner in its twin.

Our Cascades Foothills library is a precious, hard-fought-over facility that we as a little community had to build, stock and run on our own without any assistance from any government, non-profit organization, etc etc. – just like many 3rd world towns all of us know about. (We were allowed to "join" the local county library system, but they're getting the better end of the deal.)

I engage in non-christian ceremonies that give cohesion to our little community. Stuff like Winter Solstice bonfires, Summer Celebrations. Personally, I engage in an elaborate primitive technological ritual -- I am still measuring sunrise on the solstices and equinoxes and other times, ala Uriel's Machine. This, despite the fact that I have on my shelf a book that provides me with the times of all the sunsets, sunrises, moonrises and phases, transits of venus, etc., for every day and any place on earth for more years into the future than I expect to survive. But there are elders in South American villages keeping the same knowledge, more or less the same way. I dunno why. 3rd world, pagan ritual?

I can walk to the doctor, a block away down the rural road; she's not an M.D., but a "Nurse Practitioner" with a bit more of a skill set than an experienced Chinese "Barefoot Doctor". I guess this says more about the positive nature of the Chinese medical system than negative re the US system. My Nurse Practitioner is really very good.

I go to "town" (Eugene) about once or twice a month and acquire the necessities. Sort of like they do in the 3rd world, waiting for `market day' in the nearest city.

It took several weeks for me to diagnose and then fix the problem with my old pickup to get it running again, not having the money or a local repair place, or the wherewithal to get it towed to a mechanic. I can remember a similar logistics problem with the village truck in Korea. -- Of course it's my own personal truck, not exactly the only one for the `village', (and IF I HAD LISTENED TO MOLLY, I could have fixed it in the first few days.)

Now, we also use a ton of electricity; we have a very nice Ford Taurus station wagon; and I can -- so far – pay $3.20 for a gallon of Peak Oil gasoline. (3rd world prices, if you think about it ). We have the choice to avail ourselves of all the consumer products we desire. I communicate with my ISP via a highspeed DSL fiber-optic connection; I get my news via a satellite dish focused on a geosynchronous orbiting electronic miracle. In those Mexican pots, any time I choose to I can cook exotic fruits and vegetables brought to me from every corner of the 3rd world. I am very definitely NOT living a 3rd world existence.

In my life back when, and I was living in Taker, Capitalist Heaven (Vegas), none of those 3rd world echoes would have been present, except for the 2 cooking implements.

I guess the point (if any) is that little 3rd world variables are insinuating themselves into the edges of Mollita's and my life.

Howabout Y'all?

TELLING NEW STORIES

.
"We can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
"The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
"Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

—Arundhati Roy

Speech to the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 27, 2003

ABDUCTEE

(a complete story with just 55 words)

I know why their spaceships are falling. Aliens with blasters came into the bar and did their abduction thing. They carried away old Larry Talbot, whose biography's in a hundred werewolf movies. Took him up to the mother ship (they didn't know). Now their ships are falling. In space there's always a full moon.

ABDUCTEE originally appeared in Comic News, #275

WISDOM FROM OZ

Oh, shit, Sherlock. You always were [lost]. Hang some wind
chimes from your compass and let it tingle in the
pissing wind. We're supposed to be lost. Motherless
chillun. God likes it when we cry, same way we like it
when puppies whimper. We pick 'em up and snuggle 'em.
Beats bashing your head into a tree like you're gonna
knock some sense into something somewhere. Uh-uh.

We're here to fall in love with the world, as Rumi
would say, even if it's unrequited. Gotta do what
you're designed for. You can kill God in the
afterlife.

From Robin Morrison 

TERRY'S RANT ABOUT MAGIC

Steven Kayser wrote me about magic this week, and so I went and dug up Terry's old rant:

Terry used to laugh at the New-Age. All those witches and vegetarians, PC solstice lovers looking for the singular power of magic to fill up their lives.

"They know there's magic out there, they feel it," he said. "They just don't know where to look."

Patting the white plastic case of the burping Mr. Coffee, he smiled mischievously at the big joke, "Or, maybe, afraid to look in the right places; more like they'd be OH SO offended if they actually knew where the magic went."

" 'S in the machines, kiddo," he whispered, grabbing a mug from the rack. "The big boys, the robber barons, all them industrial multinational czars, that's whose got the magic. Those poor second-generation hippies would weep if they figured it out.
`
"Think about it," he said, pouring sloppily. "These proto-humans, waking up to the world a hundred, hundred and fifty thousand years ago, the magic was all around 'em, they could feel it, too. They were more in touch with it from the gitgo. It was just a question of finding out how it went together, what the rules are. They knew they had something, just had to work with it.

"They had the time, too." he called over his shoulder, knowing I'd follow him back to the cubbyhole faculty office he's conned out of some department head. "You think they just sat around those caves, painting walls and hunting and gathering? Hell no! Experiment with the magic. Every dig I've ever been on has some place in it, a proving ground, testing area, see how the magic works. You think they poured all that hard-earned knowledge into mumbo jumbo chants, god worship? Hell no! That came later, when they needed control of the feeble-minded masses (the same folks these new age types are descended from, no doubt.) The real magic went just where you and I would put it, too. In every day stuff, the tools and artifacts of life that insure survival."

"Surely, that's just discovering the laws of physics, chemistry, stuff like that," I suggested, sipping the nasty coffee.

"Nah, that's a chicken-egg thing, that viewpoint." he said, expecting me to follow the logic. Terry pointed up at the heavy wood and glass shadow box hanging on the wall. There was a series of flint points lined up on the foam rubber under the glass. A series, I knew, depicting the development of those weapons, from the earliest known arrow heads down to the last beautiful, artistic late-Neolithic points. Terry had dug up every one.

"Y' want proof? Do a wind tunnel test on the arrow-dynamics of those suckers.

"No, " he said, waving me into a corrupt naugahyde chair by the desk. "DON'T. I already have, 'n they come up unstable as hell. But they'll still kill a goddamn rhinoceros deader'n hell! The shape has to do with the magic, not the goddamn in-flight characteristics. Trust me.

"Bows, spears, knives, all the basic technology of your basic cave man, filled with magic. Oh yeah, the drums, rattles, all that shaman stuff, it's in there too. But don't miss the point, bubba, the witch doctor ain't hustling up some spell to throw on some lizard, or driving away some evil spirit with mandrake root. He's putting the magic into an atlatl so that he knows when he's got it exactly this long," he said, holding his hands a little more than two feet apart. "he knows the sonofabitch will work."

"You do leverage tests or some kind of calculus on those too?" I teased.

Terry just smiled and tossed a monograph toward me from the pile resting on the floor below the bookcase behind him. "In there somewhere..."

"OK, OK, but..."

"No buts! Today, ask any engineer, he'll tell you a dozen things in his field that work and he doesn't know why. Say, sequences of assembly that must be done one way only or the machine won't run.

"Proof? What are the mathematical probabilities of all the systems and subsystems on a Cadillac Coupe deVille taking you a hundred thousand miles, ...no ....TEN thousand miles?"

"Entropy, engineering ..."

"Bullshit! It's magic! Most everybody has a goddamn NAME for their car! Why? Just so when you pat ol' Bessie on the dashboard, and say ;'c'mon' baby', nine times out of eleven she'll start, just one more time. 'N' Ever notice how a car runs better after you wash it?"

"So what?"

" 'S where the magic went, my man, exactly where it went. Your hoogy moogy friends'll never find it out there at Stonehenge, waiting for the goddam sun to pop up."

I tired of it about then and we sat sipping coffee and staring out of the narrow steel and glass window, looking across the campus.

"How is Anne, anyway?" he said after awhile. I remember that.


Terry's rant is from Blue Corvette Betrayal

REVISION #9 OF AN OPEN WINDOW

So when Van Helsing found your castanets tangled in my sheets the other night I told him about you.

"You know," I said, "I think that Gypsy Dancer down at the Dreamland is a vampire."

"How do you know?" he asked me.

"Well when I said I almost died, she just got that hungry look."

"Hmmm, if I were you I'd quit falling asleep by that open window," the Prof. said.

"But I love the fresh air," was all I could think of to say.

"It's all that dying," I told you later, the next time you came in the window. "It makes me depressed, but wise."

"Oh how sad," you'd said and "I will pray for you," then without missing a breath you told me the story of your latest meal or maybe it was your last heartbreak; I am too weak to remember.

"I asked you once if you could love," I cried, "and even though you said 'Yes' I still think you haven't learned to speak my language."

You just smiled and took another bite. I love the way your thighs do that thing they do.

"Now I don't want to complain," I sighed, "but the next time you take a jug of my blood down to your jaded friends, the ones who don't even know me, couldn't you at least tell them who it came from?"

You smiled that reddish smile and promised to but you never remember what you said to me or lied to me or didn't say to me the way you impale yourself on my wooden stake, I expect you to die!

But "So why shouldn't I close that window?" was all I could think of to hurt you with.

"It's sad," I said later. "and I am tired of people saying 'you've been dying long enough, why don't you get it over with? borrrring!'"

And you whispered in my ear 'That's nice dear' while your music dulled the rhythm of my slowing heart. I always know you're in the mood by how your wings spread.

Van Helsing called again last night and asked me how the salve is doing on those little holes in my neck.

"I think it's working a little," I told him, "That and the fresh air."

An Open Window first appeared in Dream International Quarterly.

COLD BLOW ZE WINDSAMARS

Ze tommydawgs lay passed out behind Ed's bar, having half-drained ze barrel o' rum in zere quest to drown sorrow. Over ze tappity-tap o' Cap'ns Booty and Proto's resculpturing of ze figgerhead, zere was ze sharp hisssss of unsquelched whitenoise coming outta ze speakers in ze radio shack.

At first, Long Tom had merely repeated ze call sign over and over and over and over, "Tommy can ye hear me?" first in binary, zen spitting into ze open mike, and finally tapping it wid ze empty Dutch gin bottle against ze bare wires o' ze\code key. Zen he fiddled wid da receiver controls and ze hyper-spacdirectional antennae arrays, lissenin' for ze Pyrate Radio signal just off ze coast of French eternity.

"I heard it," muttered Long Tom to hisself (although Foo was cooped up on ze couch and OD-sleepy from ze drogs). "I swear to gawd I head it.

"T'was a signal. The Tommykins*is already spinning celestial vinyl and interviewing Keith Moon and Jimmy Hendrix on Ze Pyrate Radio, 50 billion watts. He's gonna have Lou Rawls on after the break," he said, to no one. "I heard it."

Ze empty bottle now jus' rolled acrost ze deck as ze Pearl swayed
back and forth in ze sandswells.

Ed tippy-hoofed carefully over ze tommydawgs, pounding ze last few
hammer-blows into ze rum cask lid which set it on wid just ze right amount of wedged crookedness.

"I can't taste `im." This Be said, catching a few drippy-drops from ze bung-spout drippin' on ze tommydawgs' snouts.

"Ye couldn't taste Admiral Nelson neither, they say, fer the first month," Ed said.

This Be shrugged and turned back to painting ze poem over ze barback,
sippin' ze Tommyrum from one o' ze silver booty cups she had fetched from ze treasure hold.

Ed stood back and squinted while he read ze poem to hisself.

Easy, after all

-I-
There's no surety in this flight,
Tumbling as we do
Without wings,
But to spread arms against
The brutal wind which,
Perhaps, will carry us.

-II-
When the sun swings low
And leaves beat against
Electric air with
The furious joy of those
Soon mulch, then
Mysteries are revealed

Here's a secret, let it lie;
The form is clear enough,
Betrayed by somber hollows
Light cannot reach.
Place your hand here; your foot
Finds purchase there.

A pass may be found
Through every divide.
No stratagem succeeds against
Resolute tenderness,
The endgame played by those who
Know there is no end.

Copyright 2003 Lisa Wilcox

Long Tom staggered in from ze radio shack and tried to focus on the gold lettering, "Who's Wilcox?"

"Who the fuck cares?" said This Be, sippin' some more. She tossed a brush at Foo, who woke, stretched, and wandered over to ze bar.

"Can ye taste `im?" asked Foo.

"Not yet," said Ed. "Too soon."

"What ye gonna do when the rum runs out?" asked Long Tom.

"Fill `im up again!" said Ed.

He fetched the crystal jar down from ze back bar shelf where This be had almost dripped paint on it. He turned it aroun' until ze eye was focused on ze barrel. He gently nudged the tommydawgs over onto a blanket near ze rail so ze eye could see `em too.

Then Ed slid silver cups down the bar toward Long Tom and RedFoo.

Cap'ns Booty and Proto came in from ze bow and quickly found silver cups in front o' them, too.

"Have some," Ed rasped.

T'was not a request.

------------------- ^ --------------------

*We lost Tommy at Valentine's. He was our soul, and a pyrate. The funniest man, the deepest. Cold blow the winds of Mars.

TRUTH ABOUT THE LIFEBOAT

A parable about the ubiquitous "Life Boat" scenario every philosopher scribbles in his first manuscript:

The normal inhabitants of the lifeboat are a diversity of humans, ... and a dog.

As the water runs out, and the food is gone, the castaways begin to make survival decisions based upon the philosopher's vision of correct behavior. Some heavy occupants must go overboard, inadequate supplies must be rationed. How these problems are solved illustrates the utility of the ethics recommended by each philosopher's system.

Obviously the dog is eaten first, every philosopher agrees upon that. Then either the old person is eaten or tossed overboard, or the mentally deficient human, then the less 'valuable' person, etc. etc. until a few souls are left to arrive safely ashore.

But we now have a broader understanding of the universe in which these choices occur; and that while nearly all philosophers posit that there are no rules from the natural world that place restrictions on the *ethical* behavior of the inhabitants of the lifeboat, this is indeed not the case in reality.

As the thirsty survivors wash ashore in the nearly empty lifeboat, the beautiful goddess Mother Nature is there to greet them with open arms, celebrating their successful triumph over the ordeal at sea.

She has but one question, "Where's the dog?"

Unable to give a satisfactory answer, the lifeboat's remaining occupants are tossed back into the sea to drown in Mother Nature's cruel surf ....