Genuinely Artificial

so there we we're, back east in rural areas that see some farming and some lovely black, rich soil .... we're not talking agribidness, the ten corporations that control eighty percent of what you see in your supermarket now, but real farms with real people doing real people things growing real people crops and then .... and then i'm not sure what happens .... i'd go to produce stands only to find produce from california, from chile, with very little of it coming from the adjacent fields; what did show up wasn't cheap ....

on the other hand, gasoline was far cheaper than it is in california, which only stands to reason .... san francisco, which is right across the bay from the tosco refineries that regularly spill into the bay or blow noxious fumes into the adjoining black community, has some of the most expensive gas in the country, whereas there aren't any refineries in upstate new york, so the gas is considerably cheaper .....

i know, i know .... by now you're wondering, golly gee whinnikins, doctor pete ..... what the fuck is the point?

other than a zen lesson in economics?

well, i could make the point that food isn't cheap anywhere, not anymore ..... i still shop about every day, looking for fresh produce and good meat, not to mention the gallons of milk and pounds of dairy products that the boys go through, and each and every time i drop fifty bucks or so .... honest to god, how do people live in this country? it makes you wonder; my local safeway is right across the street from a retirement community; pets aren't allowed in the community, but honest to god, they sell a shitload of dog food ......

coincidence?

i wonder .......

anyway, we had a houseguest back east who went shopping and brought back something called "country creamer ...." oh yeh, country creamer, all right ..... sure, you betcha ..... whatever, guys ..... the list of ingredients was in a microscopic print, like they'd be ashamed for you to read it, and it went on for a couple of inches ..... there wasn't anything that remotely came from a cow; most of it came from new jersey's chemical alley, just an endless chain of unpronounceable and unrecognizable ingredients .... it might as well have come from chernobyl: the shit probably glowed in the dark and had a half-life of 97,000 years, but i wouldn't know; i poured it down the drain ....

i just hope it didn't empty into the sea .....

but they were all "natural" ingredients, i'm sure .... i don't know what an unnatural ingredient might be: george bush? karl rove? dick cheney? anything naturally occuring in a factory is a natural ingredient, up to and including yellow number nine ....

which is that old coasters' song: "yellow food dye number nye-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi- yi-yi-yine ......

meanwhile, my little rocket car has one of those computers that tells you, among other things, what your average speed is .... this is a four-cylinder car that is alarmingly fast, yet still gets over thirty miles to the gallon and'll carry five guitars along with the goods from my weekly costco run: a case of pellegrino water; a big box of diapers; a box of this, a box of that, a box of the other ..... i stop at costco as i drive to and from healdsburg, where i rehearse with michael; that's a one-hundred-and-twenty mile round trip and i drive pretty fast but .... that's the only fast driving i do; the rest of it is little errands around town and .... my average speed ends up something like twenty-six miles per hour .....

i'd dare say that yours is something similar .....

meanwhile, the greatest selling point for cars now is horsepower: the new four hundred horsepower sphincter! unleash the three-hundred-and-seventy horses in your new xjp-z-1 chancre! here's your plymouth prepuce, with 450 horsepower! new! improved! duodenum, with five hundred horsies! yada yada yada yada yada fuckin' yada ..... i don't know about you, but gas out here is around $3.30 a gallon, and i don't think a car with twelve cylinders and five hundred horsepower is ..... mmmmmm ..... economical, if you know what i'm saying and i think you do .....

and where the fuck can you drive it? sure, it'll go a hundred and eighty, but most of the highways out here are gridlocked, and i have to drive an hour before i can open my motorcycle up .....

here's the point, because i can sense that you're getting restless ......

the point is, god, we're fucking stupid ..... the point is, horseshit (which is a petroleum-based product) sells fabulously .... the point is that anyone who buys country creamer'll believe that george bush is "resolute" and "firm in his resolve" and "compassionate" and "intelligent" and "fun to drink beer with" and "not an asshole" and "doesn't suck satan's cock" and ......

you know, i just bought an excellent bottle of tequila and .......

that's got real ingredients in it ......

genuine artificial ingredients .....

no ... ha ha .... it's the real thing ..... but i wonder about the new design of cars, the ones with the footprint of a diplodocus, the ones that are designed to appear threatening, as though a medieval castle somehow got on wheels and started rolling down the highways, the highways that are rutted and potholed because .... ha ha ..... we don't pay taxes anymore and don't maintain our infrastructure .... because .... ha ha .... we're told that "responsible fiscal conservatism" is synonymous for creating new government bureaucracies to spy on you, that being "fiscally responsible" means not collecting money from people who have it to pay for the blank checks that are given to the pentagon and war contractors, while not funding schools and health care and lunches for school children i mean why would you when you can have coca cola and mcdonald's and other fine corporations who enjoy a level playing field and who will gladly provide healthy quality products to our bovine bloated obtunded obese moribund children and the reason johnny kant reed is beekoz his eyebollz are imbedded in the rolls of fat in his fucking face just like rayzins in sue-it .....ha ha ......

oh, there goes my attenshun deffyshit disordure because i was talking about those huge fucking automoobeels ... these fucking things: you can't even see out of 'em, the windows are so small and poorly angled; now they have to have .... ha ha .... cameras in 'em so you can pop it into reverse, so you can have more non-functional idiotic technology that'll cost you a pretty penny when it fails, about three days after the warranty runs out .....

we rented a car back east that had, honest to goodness, a device called "never lost" in it .... it fucked us badly, each and every time we turned it on; if i'd've followed it i'd probably've ended up somewhere on the left bank of the matto grosso, down in brazil, with piranhas chewing on my ring finger and the candiru .... well, you should know about the candiru and, if you don't, research it via william burroughs; that's where steely dan got its name .... anyway, i still carry maps, i did that while touring for years and i always got to where i needed to be .....

as for navigating the trackless wastes, let's talk about toxic waste .... i mean, the media .... some more .... brad 'n' jen 'n' angie 'n' paris 'n' lindsay 'n' the amerikan government are still at it .... and why not? this is a country that has magazines devoted to soap operas, weekly publications that pose breathless burning questions about fictional characters in imaginary situations: will clint marry boopsy? will wombatina divorce melvin? and what will happen when the u.s. leaves iraq? (current time magazine) .....

not a fucking thing, folks, because the u.s. is never going to leave iraq ..... time magazine is right next to soap opera weekly next to peepul magazine next to the crumpled plastic bags i hemmhoraged in ...... there's not much to differentiate time or newsweek from soap opera digest ....

and .... ha ha ........ leave iraq my ass ......

ha ha ......

it's the same mindset that has puppies and kitties and keane-eyed babies decorating toilet paper ..... for shit's sake, why would you wipe your ass with a puppy? okay, republicans'd do that, but i don't want to .... "a bear and a bunny were sitting, side by side, in the woods, having a bowel movement .... the bear turned to the bunny and said, "does the shit stick to your fur?" "oh, no, no it doesn't," replied the bunny .... so the bear reached down, scooped the bunny up in his paw, and used the bunny to wipe his ass ....." ha ha .... ha ha .....

hey, did you know that poe-nog-ruphuh earns more money than hollywood, major league baseball, the nba and the nfl combined; it doesn't hold a limp candle to the unhinging amount of money armaments manufacturers make, witness the just-announced sales of $42 billion worth of arms to .... ha ha .... saudi arabia ..... fuckin' 'n' killin', fuckin' 'n' killin', it's all just like that good book, the bah-bul, say .... 'coz they be a lot o' smitin' goin' on an' then, when they done wiv the smitin? that's when they gits down to some serious knowin' o' one 'tother .... that's pretty much what the bahbul is, you know: a shopping list of who was killed, who knew whom, and what they done begat ......

sex and death, sex and death ..... i guess freud had something right .....

well .... i've rambled on long enough ...... i'm going to enjoy my country creamer along with the freedom to choose whether my orange juice with "natural flavorings" (catshit is a natural flavor, and so is slug butter) has "no pulp," "some pulp;" "a little more pulp than that but not as much as the next one which has" "almost a lot of pulp," and "lots and lots and lots and lots of plup ....

plup plup .... plup plup ....... plup plup ..... plup plup ......

you can figure out for yourself what that's the sound of ........

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dr. pete enjoys his freedom