MORE NOTES ON THE MADHOUSE
OCTOBER 27, 2011
NOTE 1: What’s the point of teaching a 17-year-old kid about bestiality in school? Was he thinking about having sex with a possum? Maybe he is now, I don’t know. It’s amusing to imagine what my father would have done if I’d been clued in on sex-with- sheep-and-goats in school and told him about it. The principal would have ended up in the hospital, for starters. And there wouldn’t have been a trial. Not in those days. I guess, in the 1950s, there was still a form of frontier justice, even in the suburbs.
NOTE 2: For the past 30 years, I’ve been documenting the crimes of corporations. So I’m not a worshiper of mega-companies. But I do recognize that, in many cases, the consumer can choose not to buy what these people are selling. That’s still possible. When kids with all sorts of i-devices (which they adore), built in China by two-year-olds, use the gizmos to rail against corporate corruption, do they have any idea what the hell they’re doing? Apparently not. That doesn’t instill confidence in me. Why are middle-class kids on a crusade impressive? Remind me again. I’ve lost the thread. In the NYC Occupy crowd, they now have a FINANCE COMMITTEE and a GENERAL ASSEMBLY. The assembly votes on purchases that will be rubber-stamped by the finance committee. Learning the lessons of their parents, I guess. The other night, the Interminable Drum Circle incurred a setback when someone punched holes in their drums while they were asleep, so the drummers went to the finance committee for $$ to buy new ones. They were told to fill out paperwork and wait for a decision. I’m really looking forward to these people running the country after the revolution.
NOTE 3: If you create a job for an education bureaucrat in a state system, and that job pays an annual 200 grand, and upon retirement the office holder will make 10 million dollars over the course of his golden years…
And then on top of that, you’re creating a lot more bureaucratic jobs in state and federal systems that the taxpayer doesn’t even know exist, and those jobs are paying hefty salaries as well.
What do these bureaucrats do? Play pinochle with each other? That’s the point. They have nothing to do, so they have to figure out ways to fuck with you.
Looking at a chart of education administrators in the state of Illinois, I see that the top hundred people who have held their jobs for at least 30 years will rake in 887 million dollars, once you figure in their retirement pensions. Yeah, just the top hundred bureaucrats.
I’ll bet you a nickel I could ax every one of those jobs and no one would feel a thing.
I’d start with the 20 or so committees who meet to review the work turned in, by technical writers, for school manuals on condom lubrication, mutual masturbation, anal sex, and the effects of swimming-pool chlorine on various birth-control devices.
NOTE 4: For the years 2006-2007, all elementary and secondary schools in the US spent 599 billion dollars. Colleges and grad schools spent 373 billion dollars. (Source: The National Center for Educational Statistics) Taken together, $972 billion, 7.4% of the national GDP.
Most of the the money came from local, state, and federal government. Which came from taxes, plus invented computer-entry money.
Student performance over that time period didn’t make much headway.
From K to12, a student in the US costs about $110,000. One estimate has it that a home-schooled child, from K-12, costs $7200.
In your next meditation, Snowflake, your job is to contemplate how much $ waste is undoubtedly involved, for what sort of result, in US schools Remember, this sketch doesn’t begin to assess the actual quality of education delivered. When I use the word “performance,” I merely indicate general factors like graduation rates, reading scores, the ability to squash an aluminum can and put it in the purple garbage can, etc.
NOTE 5: Bloomberg News reports that, Fong Lai, a prison doctor in the California penal system, cashed out with $590,000 in unused vacation time when he retired. Wow. Pretty good haul. Let’s see. He didn’t take the vacation time, so he was paid (or not paid?) for working instead, but if he had taken the vacations they would have been paid vacations, but when he retired he got 590 K (anyway?)? I’m lost.
With cutbacks in the California state budget, public employees have been laid off, so current employees have had to work overtime (extra pay for that) to cover holes in the pinochle game. And how much overtime pay have they accumulated? Enough to nullify the cutbacks?
When I work past 4 PM writing, I keep track of the hours and pay myself triple-time. That’s how I’ve been able to buy three islands in the South Pacific and import snow for cross-country skiing and staff gun emplacements to pick off impulsive monitor lizards. I hadn’t thought about the unused vacation-pay trick, but it sounds like a good hustle.
NOTE 6: Today, in the wake of the decision to recommend the Merck HPV vaccine for young boys, Vice President Joe Biden stated that the federal government should pay off vaccine manufacturers.
Speaking at a fundraiser for Eskimo victims of Elephantiasis, Biden said: “These vaccine companies are trying to market their products to the whole nation. Men, women, boys, girls, babies. Three-hundred-thirty-million people.
“Most of us don’t realize the logistics involved. Stop and think about the man-hours, the infrastructure, the PR. Instead of going through all this, let’s just sit down with these vaccine CEOs and figure out how much money they need and give it to them.
“Stop vaccinating people. Just pay the companies.”
Biden’s solution was criticized by CDC spokesperson Ann Fibbergoo as shortsighted. “Mr. Biden doesn’t realize how important these vaccines are to the nation’s health,” she said.
But Ralph York, chairman of the Pharmaceutical Association of Greater New York, was enthusiastic about Biden’s proposal.
“Look,” York said, “let’s face it. This is about money. So let’s cut to the chase. Give us the money and we’ll stop bullshitting the public about the benefits of vaccines. Everyone will be relieved.”
In other medical news, researchers at Southeast Florida University claim they have found the gene that regulates boredom.
“This could break through into a previously unknown area of human emotion,” said Dr. Francis Plethora, lead author in the study, to be published next month in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
“Of course, if boredom is eventually wiped out, we could see the complete collapse of the American economy,” Plethora added. “People would stop buying crap. But not my crap.”
In a related story, The New England Journal of Medicine has just issued a new report on the state of medical research in America. The report concludes, “What we witnessing, across the spectrum, is a battle among researchers to impose their fabrications. It’s a question of which lies will gain the upper hand.”
In a Delaware meeting of the state chiropractic association, a panel concluded that, within 30 years, all chiropractors licensed under the national health insurance program will be relegated to sweeping floors in hospitals and nursing homes. “But,” said Dr. Mark Torque, panel leader, “look at the upside. Even though we’re sure to be downgraded, as pharmaceutical companies, working hand in glove with the federal government, monopolize the entire medical landscape, floor sweepers and janitors and medical-waste haulers will be unionized. We can expect steady pay, vacation time, and health benefits. It’s better than running a dying practice.”
Dr. Henry Kissinger, speaking from his home in Georgetown with Brian Williams of NBC News, told Williams, “The future of the US, in terms of economic development, rests entirely on the concept of imminent threat.”
Kissinger declined to elaborate, but he did indicate that phony viral epidemics provide a good model for sales campaigns.
Wait, that was all just a dream I had last night, after I saw Jay Leno interview Obama.
Jay knows how to toss softball questions.
Reminds me of the night he interviewed Arnold, after global attention was focused on whether the actor was going to announce his candidacy for governor of California. Remember?
They actually set up a separate press room in the NBC studio just for the event.
With applause signs blinking and the audience screaming, Arnold said: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
Which was a reference to the 1976 movie, Network, in which the news department of a national TV network is turned over to the entertainment division…exactly the thing NBC was doing at the moment Arnold launched his campaign, at the moment Jay won the election for him.
NOTE 7: California is the sixth largest economy in the world. I’m not talking about city economies. National. And it’s still far too large to be a single nation. It should be at least 10 separate Republics. Call me crazy. But I know a little something about California. In 1994, I ran for a Congressional seat from the 29th District (LA) against Henry Waxman. He did zero campaigning in the District. If that’s political reality, that’s a problem. When your opponent refuses to make a single comment about your accusations and he’s sitting 3000 miles away, the system needs a plunger.
NOTE 8: In and among the Occupy movement, there are some things happening that should be noted—like the guy who closed his bookstore in Brooklyn and moved his inventory, lock, stock, and barrel to a tent near Wall Street, to create a makeshift library. Maybe this guy had reached the end of the line back in Brooklyn. He’d been reading too many books himself. The kind of books that diagnose the human condition accurately.
Perhaps something like this, from Black Spring: “Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines—these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous becomes the norm.”
Or this, from Wisdom of the Heart: “No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.”
Sooner or later—and later might be a million lifetimes—every one of us is going to take the leap. We’re going to do something so absurd it is sublime. We’re going to embrace an idea beyond the Beyond and jump on its back and ride it out into the clouds.
That everyone around us will be horrified goes without saying. But they won’t deter us, because we’ve reached the end of the line. Every human is moving inexorably toward that breaking point.
Every theme, every system devised to squeeze things together more and more rigidly will give way. It is at that moment we need to remember what is coming to life, no matter how much we want to deny it.
Imagination. Wings and flight. Making invisible things visible.
This is where we will live, and we will be willing to pay the price, because what we have learned and practiced, over and over, has become an intolerable burden.
I have been asked why I am optimistic about the future. That is why.
I know what is coming.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes. It doesn’t matter how devastating the intermediate period is. The build-up to the launch is simply our refusal to admit what we are.
Fret all you want to, wring your hands, drop into an inconsolable depression, the day is on the horizon. The day when you know you have the power.
Jon Rappoport