The Cold Within

Six humans trapped in happenstance in dark and bitter cold,

Each one possessed a stick of wood, or so the story's told.

Their dying fire in need of logs, one woman held her's back,

For on the faces around the fire, she noticed one was black.

The next one looking across the way saw one not of his church,

And couldn't bring himself to give the fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes and gave his coat a hitch, why should my log be used to aid the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought of the wealth he had in store, and how to keep what he had earned from the lazy shiftless poor.

The black man's face bespoke revenge as the fire passed from his sight, for all he saw in his stick of wood was a chance to spite the whote.

The last man in this forlorn group did not expect for gain,

Giving only to those who gave was how he played the game.

Six logs held tight in death stilled hands, was proof of human sin -

They didn't die from the cold without,

They died from the cold within.

Author Unknown

There was a feature on AOL today about the rank fraudulence of "reality TV". I just went back to find it but couldn't. Maybe it's expired or was pulled for some reason.

Anyway, the piece goes into some detail to expose the shenanigans that go on with shows like "Dancing with the Stars," "The Apprentice," "Home Improvement: Extreme Makeover" and so on.

The contracts that performers, participants, or subjects sign leave them no recourse for accidents incurred while working or anything else that could be called employee, or freelancer protection. Sounds like if you get hurt spelunking for CBS, you're on your own, except, maybe, for a free ride to the local ER. And there are many other things described that underscore how phony reality programming is.

Fake reality, right in your living room.

But the bottom line seems to show that the networks today can't do without reality programs.

A reality show with good ratings (and quite a few have good ratings for reasons I can't fathom) costs one dollar for every three spent on dramatic programming, and what dramatic programming you get on the networks, compared, say, to "The Wire" on HBO, isn't worth a bucket of warm spit.

At the same time reading is fundamental.

[These times are] manifestation[s] of our nation's Greedy Soul.

The poet Robert Bly talked about "The Greedy Soul" a few [months] ago on Bill Moyers' Journal (PBS). The Greedy Soul is that dark insistent thing inside each of us that makes us dissatisfied with what we already have, that makes us envious of others, that whispers in our ear "you're not good enough," that makes us fly too close to the sun, that makes us play God. The Greedy Soul can drive us to destroy ourselves and others while we blindly pursue ephemeral treasures like "security" or "sustained economic growth."

The Greedy Soul is the self's attempt to salve personal insecurity with the accumulation of more power, more wealth, more distance from the inevitable pain of being mortal, fallible, and vulnerable.

Paul D: YOU ARE 100% correct! TURN OFF THAT DAMNED TV! Take control of your own life. Learn to entertain yourself. Create something. Read a book. Learn to play guitar/piano/bridge/crotchet, SOMETHING.....

I will base MY VOTE Obama vs Clinton on which one has the guts to stop this criminal administration.

Here's MY LITMUS TEST.

This issue.

Pedinska may say:

Use clean towels instead of gold straw to rubdown the calf.

She states with a feminine authority that straw is a irritant and just too ruff for a baby's sensitive skin (I tease).

She ask, "If you were a naked bovine, how would you like scratchy straw rubbed all over you?" Huh?

She said, "Some bystanders in the blogosphere pooh-poohed her offer to give free towel massages and that hurts peoples tender hides (hers)."

She questions me/you/anybody who sits in a bathtub and hangs the left leg calf outside the tub water. Moo. Pedinska can embarrass you and if you, RMP, wish to take a rock, a dirt clod, or a sniffing dog to lick the wounds we get in this brief life...go ahead.

Well, moo moo, how now brown calf-cow, and how do you feel?

I should have told her the moo-cow's tongue is rough. But the moo-cow-tongue is a great tongue-massage. It keeps sagging but, I say it creates a healing action upon a lame humans left leg calf. Gads.

If I go milk some colostrum out of a goat, some dear Lady will

say that's just plain stupid. Why? O, manure.

RMP~I got the dumbest calf in the whale's world?

After some good self-nursing, unassisted, I'll be back at the chicken-flock barn.

I'll ask you, "You reckon the female gender can make a males calf get more darn crazy?"

No worry. I got a sure cure for my ailments.

I'll just hope they work, and thumping the leg helps. RPM. Try it and you will feel better and the leg-blob will feel better when you blog.

She's not a jabber.

Pedinska is friendly.

Ask her to call you up.

Glenn,

As always, your article is right on.

When the Democrats were elected to Congress last year I assumed that they would take full responsibility to set the US government in the right direction. I was lied to.

Rep. John Conyers who produced a book, "What Went Wrong In Ohio", now says impeachment is off the table. Can you say treasonous bastard?

And don't even let me start talking about Nancy Pelosi (Arnold). The traitor.

It doesn't surprise me that Rockefeller sided with corporations. He's a yes man.

My question is what can we do as opposition to the US Government to win the next election?

Troubled

The first step is turning off the damn TeeVee.

You'd be amazed at how much that helps.