Occupy Everywhere

Dear Friends,

I’m feeling grumpy these days. I’m grumpy about, among other things, the gross lack of social and economic justice and equality in my nation. This has led me to get involved with the Occupy movement in my hometown. That is the other thing that is making me grumpy.

While pretty much everybody in the group are nice and good hearted folks, as a unit they are remarkably ineffectual. They mainly are going about having meetings about having meetings and instructing newcomers in arcane hand signals that seem like some weird fraternity handshakes perhaps created by mute extraterrestrials. These are used to supposedly facilitate a democratic to-and-fro that winds up a discussion on how to come to consensus about what constitutes a consensus and hence arrives at no consensus except to have another meeting… maybe.

There is often no consensus as to whether or not it was decided to have a meeting, nor where and when it should happen if it was to happen to somehow have a meeting somewhere in space and time. The disassembled, well-meaning folks wiggle their fingers and gesticulate patiently in a manner that would befuddle a native speaker of ASL. There is silence in the room until the formation of a working committee is proposed. Another meeting is called for somewhere, sometime under the Great Arc of Heaven to decide on actually forming such a group. More gesticulations flurry the air, everybody gives up on the issue and agrees to tell each other how nice they are and exchange hugs.

Thus, I am now submitting an action plan to actually get something, one thing, done. If these good people can’t get out of their own way to work toward the stated and simple goal of promoting economic and social justice across the world and here in the U.S.A. I’ll do it on my own initiative with just a little assistance. Only a few folks happy to take a bit of time and small risks are required. A sense of humor and willingness to spend a night in the local lock-up are also essential. The staff at the police station are very accommodating and breakfast from McDonald’s is customarily served at 7AM, prior to the 8AM date in court. Don’t ask me how I know this.

Action Plan # 1: A Fugue in Ten Easy Pieces

• Recruit at least one sympathetic lawyer and one doctor to lend their efforts to the action described below.

• Recruit at least four folks willing to disrupt the local evening newscast that uses our city’s streets as a set to talk about how good business is, how swell the weather is, and how nice our fair city is, while ignoring the folks living on the street just out of the view of the news camera.

• This can be done very simply. We only need to have four or more folks with large, readable signs standing in view of the camera behind the lovely newscaster. As the camera and lights are weighted down by sand bags, they cannot be moved once the location’s telecast has begun. All the camera will be able to see is our protest, our signs and our presence in front of Bank of America (twenty feet away). We needn’t say anything, chant, play bongos, or make any fuss but by simply standing on our own street.

• A lawyer and a doctor should stand aside but able to clearly see, take notes, and record on video the unfolding, silent protest.

• Protesters should be prepared to be asked to move by the news crew. We should remain in place. One designated individual may report to the camera that we are standing on our street, where we pay taxes, and we are only exercising the same rights as the local TV station.

• If the cops are called, we must be prepared to be arrested, as mentioned above. Be polite with the officers. Repeat our statement made to the news crew. If told by an officer that we are being a public nuisance, ask how we can remedy the situation while not sacrificing our 1^st and 4^th Amendment rights to peaceful assembly, free speech, and the freedom from unlawful search and seizure.

• If told by the officers that we may not remain on the sidewalk, state that there is no local ordinance against standing on the sidewalk (factually true). Again, be prepared to be arrested.

• If arrested, be compliant. Thank the officers for their contribution to the cause (as this is being recoded, if not by the news crew by our doctor or attorney). The attorney will follow us to the local station and sort things out, if possible, or stay tuned to the upcoming morning’s court docket where he will represent us. He will also call the local print, television and Internet news outlets, offer the recording, his notes and comments.

• If the evening local news crew has not delivered any news of the event, or even the lovely weather, the producer back at the station will be fuming mad with that crew. If they do tape the protest, that will be all the station has to use to fill the four minute hole in their evening program. Either way, we just took over the biggest broadcast outlet in the region.

• If we do wind up in the clink and have to go to court in the morning, we will have a recording of the entire event, a doctor to report on the physical treatment of the detainees, a well dressed lawyer to argue for our rights… and one irritated judge wondering why his time is being taken up with a few citizens who did nothing but hold up some oak-tag on the street that they actually own. He may be irritated with us. He may be fed up with the cops that should be busy rounding up the kid that sold his own son some pot. Either way, again, we win. We just made the news.

So, who’s with me?

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Romney's Golden Nose

Dear Friends,

More news on the tragic hair gel poisoning of Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. This follows his recovery from the emergency nosectomy and full body depilation. The following report was filed by Normand Pudvacker of the AP just this afternoon.

Kludge Ergo Foo,

S

From Columbia, South Carolina

Former Governor Mitt Romney was last evening near death, bald over his entire body and without a nose was immersed in a bathtub full of ice and Nair® . As doctors struggled to save him, a Jewish Rabbi was summoned to Columbia’s Our Lady of Blind Hope Hospital from Ox Pit South Carolina, some one-hundred and twelve miles away, to deliver last rights. Rabbi Edelmensch was the closest thing that the hospital administration could find for a Mormon minister. The kindly nuns administering to Mr. Romney’s care provided the Rabbi with some hastily scribbled words for the departed. As the candidate was heavily sedated, he never knew the difference.

Amazingly, at four-thirty this morning, Romney rallied and regained consciousness with surprising vigor. Dr. Professor Yogi Vinnie Bum Raisin, the candidate’s political and personal care assistant was instantly summoned from the campaign’s rented penthouse headquarters and promptly put down his hookah to make his way to the hospital. (See sidebar story: Mysterious Fire at Romney Headquarters Probed.)

By cell phone while in transit to Blind Hope, the Dr. Professor was informed of his client’s noseless and hairless condition. Given the hour he knew there was no opportunity to acquire a toupee for former Governor Romney, but the campaign’s tour stretch limo provided a fine swatch of lush, black shag carpeting. Deftly removing a one foot portion with the switchblade that Rum Raisin reliably kept in his left boot, a fairly suitable rug was fashioned for Romney’s now smooth and shiny pate. The Piggly Wiggly up the street from the hospital was open, and luckily had penny nails on sale, as well as a serviceable, if not ideal, rubber mallet from the automotive section.

Now, with only hours to spare before a previously scheduled press conference, the media ablaze with rumors of Romney’s condition and potential need to drop out of the race, a new nose was required. Rum Raisin made a few calls to medical colleagues, both on the eastern seaboard of the USA, and as far away as Pyongyang, North Korea. No suitable transplant donor could be found. His final call was to Mr. Sikh's Custom Jewelry Shoppe on Magnolia Terrace. The proprietor was a longtime associate of Rum Raisin and could be entrusted to provide a splendid nose of gold on an emergency basis, and he would keep his yap shut about who came up with the cash for it. Thus it was swiftly back to the Piggly Wiggly to fetch a bungee cord to affix the new nose to the presidential hopeful’s puss.

Everything seemed to be coming together very smoothly for the campaign by 4PM today. The candidate was reinvigorated in overcoming the tragedy of addiction to hair gel. As Rum Raisin offered to slather a handful of Redken® Certified Hypoallergenic and Non Addictive Smoothing Mousse upon the shag about to be hammered on to Romney’s skull, he declined and stated that his aides should simply hammer away.  Bellowed Romney, “My hair gel days are over! Today I have a new life and a fine, fine new nose!!!” With that, the head nailing done, the golden nose was bungeed to Mitt’s head and, after a few adjustments to get the thing on straight and right side up, the exuberant presidential contender expressed his thanks to all the good folks at Blind Hope Hospital and to his own staff. He will appear to the public via television, radio and Facebook® at 8PM EDT, this evening.

Reported by Normand Pudvacker of the AP; 1/19/12

Plan C: Paisley Jello

Dear Friends,

My lawyer has advised me that he will not represent me in what he judges to be the certain repercussions, the stout fist of The Law falling upon my head and his fragile reputation as an officer of the court, upon my following through on either Plan A or Plan B for the local Occupy movement. The Commonwealth will not abide by dead pigs, dead horses, baloney cannons nor a spew of stinky mortadella juice showing up in the lobby of a prestigious bank; one globally owned tho currently leasing a small patch of property for a tiny office next to the Mayor’s office and up the street from the police station.

Thus, I have come up with Plan C. It’s a good plan, I think.

Ya’see, I have an associate. His name, his code-name, is Wladimir. He is late of Minsk. He has an advanced degree in, um, engineering, from a Soviet-era university where the education was as broad as it was deep and included a minor in “social engineering”. He knows some people who know some people. He also owes me a favor. One of the peoples that Wladimir knows who know some peoples is a fellow that I cannot presently name.

That fellah has access to a Redi-Mix cement truck. It’s a Teamster Union-thing. Anyhow, that fellah that Wladimir knows knows the guy with the cement truck who knows a guy who found about a ton of Jello® brand jello that just sort’a happened to fall off the back of a semi down by the river. The Staties have yet to find the driver, but the accident had been ruled an accident, so it’s all okay. Okay. Well, the missing driver’s wife will have to wait until the corpse is recovered until she gets her insurance check, but it’s all okay. Okay?

Now, Wladimir is a bit of a tinkerer, a serious hobbyist. He’s got this microwave dish in his garage. He made it himself. It’s a lot like the little flying-saucer things that you see on cable or cell phone company towers, but has enough power to roast an elephant with radio waves in about ten-seconds. That is not our purpose in its first “real world” deployment of his device.

No. We will soon fill the Redi-Mix truck with 200 or so gallons of water, dump in a ton of yellow jello powder. Then we will add the secret ingredient! That is the paisley in the pudding. Yes! I’ve got it all figured out.

Down the hall from my tenement apartment is Mad Ray, The Insane Poet. He is brilliant but does not write well. His dyskinetic scrawls are indecipherable, but this apparent affliction makes him the perfect man for the task at hand. You see, his jittery squiggling of a pair of scissors, while a potential risk to his trembling digits, is ideally suited to cutting the colorful swirls and giggling ameboid lines from the lovely drapes we will rip from his beautifully adorned windows.The wobbly serrations will perfectly complement the generous folly of the pattern, as well as the iridescent goop in which the fabric will be embedded. Even better, Mad Ray will do this garment work at no cost, in the name of ART! All he requires are some real scissors (not his little plastic ones) and plenty of beer and cigarettes.

Once the millinery effort is complete, we are off in the cement truck to the side of the river, just out of site of the highway and the marina. There is a fire hydrant right up the hill. I’ll take my trusty Moon Wrench and attach the fire hose borrowed from the apartment building. As the giant, rotating cylinder gyres and fills with water, we’ll dump the heady compost of paisley and approximately one hundred pounds of jello mix into the beast. Once mixed, it is time to fire up the portable generator that somehow disappeared from the hardware store up the road and light up that microwave to boil the water.

Now, this might be the only dangerous part of the enterprise. Microwaves do not like metal. Great bolts of lethal electrical energy and howling tongues of plasma may erupt about the vehicle. There is diesel fuel in its tanks. Thus, as a precaution, I will be at a safe remove as Wladimir hits the switch. If things should go horribly awry at least his boiling, exploding flesh will be contained in the rubber suit obtained from the local exterminator’s shop.

I am, however, an optimist by nature. I believe that Plan C is a good plan. Wladimir will pilot the commandeered cement beast laden with a then well congealed load of paisley jello from the river’s edge and into town. In front of the bank, an “accident” will occur. About a ton of yellow gunk laced with the ephemeral proceeds of a crazy person’s two days and nights with a dangerous tool and the supremely coordinated efforts of several criminals and a right-thinking citizen will be disgorged during a slight parking mishap on Main Street. A terrified driver, mysteriously clad in a rubber suit and lugging a fire extinguisher will be seen fleeing the scene as pedestrians recoil in horror and confusion. I will be nowhere nearby.

The bank will closed for quite a spell as police and haz-mat men in bunny suits from the Department of Homeland Security argue with the good folks from the EPA and the local DPW as to what this mess actually is and what might be done about the radiant excrescence that is slowly melting into confetti as its liquid corpulence flows into the city’s sewage system.

Yes. I think that Plan C is a good plan. It's much better than Plans A and B. Nobody gets killed… well, probably. Are you with me, my fellow patriots?


Kludge Ergo Foo,

S

This Is Not What Democracy Looks Like…

Dear Friends,

Is this what democracy looks like? This man with the gun standing on Main Street has been hired by Bank of America to intimidate possible protesters seeking to occupy their own nation and speak their minds with good heart and in a peaceful manner. He wears a pistol, dresses in black and tucks his pant's legs into his jack boots in the fashion of a Nazi trooper. Around his waist is a holster and a belt designed to hold hand grenades. You can't see his eyes behind the shades he wears even after the sun has set. He is a thug who sells his services to a bank that seems to feel that it needs protection from its own customers.

Photo by S. Solomon, 10/22/2011

So, here on the streets of my peaceable little city is an armed brute who apparently can't get a job with even the most corrupt police department in our supposedly free nation. He lurks in the shadow by the bank's door and acknowledges a polite greeting by turning his back to his fellow citizens while fondling his pistol. As far as I can discern, he is a sick, angry creep who does not belong in any situation that involves possible armed force.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

A Shot in the Dark…

Dear Friends,

This shot pretty much tells the story from the Occupy America activity on the Main Street of my hometown. Is it madness, righteous anger or joy that we are seeing?

Shot w/iPhone 4 by S. Solomon

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Occupy America…

Dear Friends,

The big "Occupy Wall Street" hoo-hah has now over-run my own little city, Northampton, MA. This, I believe, is a good thing. I actually do not know what they exactly stand for. I suspect they don't either. But, they are righteously pissed-off and solidly in favor of Democracy, and so am I. So I stand with them.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S