NIAFS

Four blogs was just one too many for a curmudgeon to manage, so this older blog of Floyd M. Orr is being phased out for a newer model. Please click this NIAFS link to go to the newer Nonfiction in a Fictional Style blog. The Floyd M. Orr blog will remain online and many links from the newer blog will bring you back to posts here, but no further posts will be added to this blog. Thank you.

Save the Wolf Pups

Sarah Palin is the cruelest enemy of Alaskan wildlife that the United States has ever known. I read Jack London's White Fang for the first time a couple of years ago, and the story was a bit hard to handle, even for a sixty-year-old like me. Believe me when I say the Disney movie version was cleaned up quite a bit from the cruelties recanted in the original book. The half-wolf of the book was orphaned with just enough age and experience to survive after finding adoptive humans, even careless, cruel ones. The innocent little baby pups sleeping in their dens that Sarah Palin and her redneck cronies want to mercilessly murder in the name of predator control will not have it so good. These babies will never venture out into the new spring sunshine to chase butterflies or tussle with their litter mates. Ruthless infanticide will follow the killing of their parents. Governor Palin has relentlessly stuffed the Alaskan Department of Game with big game hunters and profiteers while shoving aside those proffering a scientific view of proper conservation of Alaska's rarer species.

I have been one of America's biggest fans of werewolves for the past fifty years. I revel in the intelligent works of screenwriter John Sayles. His version of The Howling presents werewolves in a more complete, human style of psychodrama than anyone in movie or literary history. But even as a kid watching the previews of the little-known, 1956 movie The Werewolf, I knew it was all just a fantasy, a game of how to pump up the adrenaline. Sarah Palin is the real monster. She has no compassion whatsoever for the baby wolves or bear cubs she is so hell-bent on destroying for profit. Her plans for Alaskan wildlife are nothing less than monstrous, and she must be stopped. The only way to do that is to discredit her, to expose the beast she really is to the voting public at large in both Alaska and the U. S. in general.

There are many things we can do to stop this slaughter of babies by this monster in a skirt and expensive eyeglasses. We can support the Wolf Song of Alaska with our hearts and our donations of time and money. The Alaska Dispatch has covered this travesty in far more complete and accurate detail than I can from my warm environment down here in Texas. The Sarah Palin Truth Squad has done their part to publicize this wildlife conservation nightmare. Alaskan wilderness author Bill Sherwonit has done his part, too. His Living with Wilderness will take you places you may not have realized existed. Palin has placed a bloody $150 bounty on the forepaws of wolves and the hunting of wolves from aircraft has been consistently supported by this bloodthirsty governor.

The Mudflats posted an excellent article on the subject last week. The story was even sent to The Huffington Post, who so graciously placed it in an obscure position away from the site's home page. This fit of wolf pup and bear cub compassion was effected after 3 p.m. last Friday, at which time a tremendous horde of animal lovers read this important story. Ashley Judd needs to know about the great white hunter's chickenshit gassing of wolf dens and the cruel snaring of bear paws. Remember the baby seal hunts that the American public once thought was so delightful? Well, these cub and pup killings must be just as much fun to watch because the Alaskan supporters of this lovely sport are encouraging the participation of all their young offspring. They want ten-year-olds to get in on the fun, too! It worked out well for the Heaths and Palins; why not for the latest generation of Alaskan youth? Teach your kids well: unnecessary killing and slaughter is fun for the whole family!

The Wicked Witch of Wasilla and her bloodthirsty family must be stopped. Don't hold your breath for Arianna Huffington to do it. She wants this abomination of a politician on her news pages. The witch is nothing but a cash cow to The Huffington Post and the rest of the mainstream media. Haven't you noticed how little they present stories that will actually stop the bitch in her bloody, political tracks? Sure, they will milk any benign piece of caribou crap that the witch slings their way, as long as it never actually causes the voting public to wake up to the travesty. Sarah Palin is nothing more than Anna Nicole Smith without the big boobs or Lindsay Lohan without the talent. I pick on Arianna only because she is supposedly on the side of logic and compassion. We already know what CNN and the Fox Holier Than Thou Hens are up to, but it's high time we faced the power and greed of Arianna, too. Americans hate animal cruelty more than anything this side of child molesters and missing attractive white kids, especially that involving cute, cuddly mammals (whether they are, in actuality, cuddly or not). We must all work diligently to somehow keep this story in the news. Nothing else has the obvious potential to stop the raging witch more effectively and permanently. Is Jon Stewart the last real American patriot left on the boob tube? It sure looks that way.

Things You Can Do to Help the Wolf Pups & Other Alaskan Wildlife
Stop Alaska's Aerial Wolf Killing Program

These Go to Eleven

I have been mulling over the current Republican dilemma for days. At first I thought the Republican Party may be like the Martian machines in War of the Worlds. Earth's natural germs would defeat them because they were being eaten from the inside out. Then I realized the degree to which the media is helping them commit political suicide. American news organizations have become so corporate in nature that their pundits will say absolutely anything to keep raking in their millions. How much is too much? The right wing answer in America has become, "But these go to 11". The right wing of American politics has completely lost its dictionary that defined wretched excess. When you have reached ten, where else are you going to go?

Where they are going is down with the ship of fools that call themselves real American Christians. They have painted themselves into a corner. They have turned all the Marshall amps up to 10, and they feel they have no choice but to go to 11. Spinal Tap made a desperate attempt at a national reunion tour, but they couldn't even display the real cover of Smell the Glove. What they want is for Sarah Palin to stand up and yell kill all the liberals and have Michael Steele kiss her butt and present the Nazi salute as he exits stage right.

The mainstream media are handing out anchors, not life jackets. There is no 11, you morons. Like most power amps, the American voters only go up to 10. If you try to push them any harder than that, all you will get is distortion and a lot of feedback you may not like. The harder the pundits try to push the agenda of the right wing crazies on us, the closer we get to loading up the lifeboats with all the moderates and Independents we can carry.

America gets crazier every day. At least that's the way it seems if you watch much cable news or keep up with the real news on the net. Whereas the record label had enough sense to put the kabosh on the sexist nonsense Spinal Tap actually wanted on the cover of Smell the Glove, the MSM is doing much of nothing to squelch the right wing's screams toward 11. Tap wanted to show a naked girl wearing a dog leash attached to a macho heavy metal musician, and I'm sure the original German release of Scorpions' Virgin Killer inspired that idea. The wingers want to stomp their feet and shout out for a zero percent tax rate on billionaires, hoping we don't get the joke in the name of religious fervor. The only thing that keeps me from laughing my head off about the whole affair is that I know there is always a possibility these clowns will regain power and bring their whole Nazi regime down on the rest of us. Of course if I was truly concerned that these hatemongerers would succeed, I wouldn't be comparing them to a rock and roll band that is really a band of clowns. Didn't Stephen King write a book in which a clown was the monster?

Cat of the Day

Betta Splendens

That sounds like a name for a cat orgasm to me. Siamese Fighting Fish, eh? You don't look so tough to me. Come out here and put up your dukes! I'll show you who's the king of the castle!


(Photo courtesy Dianne K. Salerni)

Why Rush Limbaugh is the Head of the GOP

The Top Ten Reasons Why Rush Limbaugh is the Head of the GOP:

10. Michael Steele is not fat enough to represent a party of elephants.

9. Rush flunked out of college his freshman year, proving that he is qualified to lead a party of morons.

8. He's the right wing poster boy for prescription drug addiction, and anyone who supports the Party of No has to be on drugs.

7. Al Franken named a book after him.

6. He makes an enormous amount of money sitting on his butt.

5. Bobby Jindal speaks like Mister Rogers.

4. Ditto is such an easy word for imbeciles to spell.

3. He has the biggest cigar, the biggest microphone, and he thinks the biggest something else.

2. Sarah who?

1. Because he says so.

Depression 2.0

I cannot claim to have used this nomenclature first, but I think it best captures the America of today. The photo at right is the one that most strikes a chord in me that this guy is what a politician and national leader should be. Those speeches he made during the campaign in literal downpours really touched me. My favorite President of my lifetime has always been Carter, and at worst, this guy in the rain is already at number three behind Jimmy and JFK. Will he displace either or both of those guys from their lofty positions before the next four or eight years are up? The answer will most likely be found in how he handles Depression 2.0.

I have always been as aware as anyone that the predicament we now find ourselves in has been brewing for decades. I have said since 1970 that that was the year it all began, and nothing has effectively changed my mind from that position since that time. It began because all products and all trends have a somewhat definable marketing lifespan that includes a birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, maturity, and a death that hurts and saddens at least someone. This concept applies to cars, computers, music, drugs, art, religion, sports, slogans, psychology, and all sorts of megatrends. It applies to every product and every category of products. It applies to everything we think about and defines exactly how we think about those things. Up through 1969, America could afford to constantly expand and procreate in every conceivable way, but a few things began to reach their limits in 1970.

We passed through a decade of evolutionary change in The Seventies. Jimmy Carter's derogatory unpopularity stems from the simple fact that he asked Americans to question their imperialistic expansionism and to control their behavior patterns. The right wingers adore Reagan still today because he told America we could continue, and even increase, our deification of wretched excess through various methods of cheating our way toward short term goals and profits. Now it has all come crashing down. It was unsustainable in the first place. It was all a big Well, duh! Cheating at anything can take you only so far and then you hit a wall. This time the wall is popularly called Depression 2.0.

The differences between The Great Depression and 2.0 are too numerous to expound upon here. Ten of the big ones are: (a) population, (b) demographics, (c) agribusiness, (d) global warming, (e) peak oil, (f) a looming water crisis, (g) global turmoil, (h) globalization, (i) income inequality, and (j) credit and debt levels. There is no word astounding enough to describe our current situation.

I hope President Obama is thoroughly aware of all these pressing issues. I hope he doesn't attempt in any way to restore our economy to the way it was. That would be a disastrous decision simply because it is nothing more than a pipe dream for all the right wing nutcases. All you have to do is to read those ten issues over again. We cannot go back. We might be able to think we have found our way back temporarily, before one or more of the ten bites us on our exposed butts. Drop your pants and hang your moon out there if you think we are ever going to successfully return to the innocent bliss of 1969, or the Yuppified deceit of 1980, or the technological song and dance sung by Fleetwood Mac in 1992.

If we are to develop any sort of positive future for America, it must be a time of contraction. We must throw the wretched excess out the window of the SUV. We must create a new paradigm for America. We must become the nation that President Carter so unsuccessfully asked us to become. We must ask the question of ourselves that John F. Kennedy so famously asked. Contraction must become our new megatrend if we are to survive. The Second Civil War must end and we must work together to attain our survival. The audacity of hope must drive us to contract most of the trends that we have so blatantly developed to excess. Success will not lie within one big contraction of one big issue, but the gradual contraction of many issues. The right wing will have to contract its development of the prison culture. The left wing will have to contract its immigration culture. Wall Street will have to contract its money culture and the Christians will have to contract their evangelical culture. Television and Hollywood will have to contract its greedy entertainment culture and our politicians will have to cease the use of hot button issues to substantively effect a race to the bottom.

We must become a more compassionate country. We must become a less greedy culture. We must begin to place more value on education, intelligence, learning, and the humanities. We must re-learn how to thrive as human beings instead of consumers. We must create a new era of production and progressive thought. We must learn to once again be what we all thought Americans were in the first place. We must follow this intelligent, compassionate, dedicated leader not only to the light, but also through the rain.

The Top Ten Reasons The American Dream Is Dead

10. Greed is good.

9. Corporations are people, too.

8. We have the freedom to be stupid.

7. Celebrity worship is as nutritious as cotton candy.

6. Too many people have read The Bible selectively.

5. We only thought The Civil War ended in 1865.

4. We have both kinds of news media: conservative and Republican (sung to the tune of The Blues Brothers).

3. Wretched excess and global warming go together like oil and water.

2. The Race to the Bottom is actually The Race to Oblivion.

1. Although God gave us the equipment to make babies, he also gave us the brains to learn how not to do it, but only half the population got that memo.