Overheard Starbuck

"As government services for individuals shrank while its largesse towards corporations grew we were there. When people come-off drugs, alcohol and gambling, we are there. When they're thrown into jail, when they come out of jail, we're there. When families are torn apart by lifestyles and economics we're there. In most communities we are the first people--besides the police--you and yours will see if you have serious problems. For more then thirty years we've provided the answers- we are the answer-for almost every personal and social problem Americans had. We put Jesus into community service and keep him there."

---"America is truly blessed?"

"That the Republicans and their corporate constituents have figured out how to exploit our leaders and our less charitable members is a small price to pay for all the good we do. Try to look on everything hateful that's done by them in His name as a kind of tax. "

---"War without end? Torture? Racism? Bigotry?"

"You're aware that without Bush's deficit spending on Homeland Security and his War on Terror the stock market would be in serious trouble: America's economy would slow, taxes would rise, real-estate prices would fall, the housing bubble would burst and there'ld be even more unemployed?"

---"Wouldn't that bring more souls to Jesus? .. Oh I get it! 30 pieces of silver are 30 pieces of silver."

"Heretic. Sooner than later, you'll see the light."

---"The quote-smaller the government-unquote, the bigger the churches?"

"You're speaking in tongues already."

"...ripped from her arms. ... She was thirty-four."

"We're so busy our dead are quickly consigned to the occasional "quaint memory category," in which there is little to distinguish one who actually lived from a character we grew to know for awhile in a sitcom, novel or movie."

---"Except for the dead who are watching us; the relatives mediums say are always with us, trying to tell us things."

"Imagine if eternity was a soap opera starring your relatives."

---"That would be hell."

"What if some of the dead were permitted as a reward to watch anyone living they chose?"

---"An eternity of television viewing... with 7 billion channels?"

"He's got this knife obsession. I'll come in from the office or yoga class and he'll be at the work-table in the garage or sitting in the den in the light of our muted television and I'll hear the snick-snick-snick of a knife-blade on stone."
---"What does he say he's doing?."
"He told me it's his way of meditating, like a Japanese tea ceremony. He's fascinated with the razor-thin glint of silver his hands hone- his words- from the metal, the sound of steel on stone."
---"Glint? ... So he's not collecting knives, putting them in display cases?"
"No, he's sharpening anything that can be sharpened. A rusted hoe, snow shovels, screw drivers, rakes. He's wrecked our serrated knives and I have to be careful buttering toast."
---"Otherwise, things are fine?"
"Great."

" He was able to protect her from himself with his enormous ambition."

"Like zen wrapped in karma dipped in chocolate."

---"Karma chocolate?"

"How does a country legalize torture? How did it happen?"

---"Let's pray that Muslims open their hearts to Jesus and renounce their terrorist ways before too many must suffer."

"America the cult?"

"'Poverty is the worst form of violence.'"

---"And it's ugly too."

"I wrote a haiku."

---"For the poetry slam? ... Go ahead."

"Resting on the evergreen
Monarch butterfly
No a fallen leaf"

---"You're brave."

"They say speed, motion, the rhythm of machines have no affect on us."

---"Have you seen the iron horse? I heard tell it runs on rails; smokes like the devil and never stops as long as a team of men keep feeding it.

"Old MacDonald's Farm doesn't exist anymore. Only the very rich and the very poor can live and work in places where the pace of life is regulated by living breathing things."

---"What are you saying, no one waltzes anymore? This's been done to death. Stress kills, not the tools and machines needed for existence. You have goals? You want to be productive? Maybe you want to get away from this crazy life? ... If you can't sleep, take a pill. If you can't get out the door, take a different pill. If you can't eat, there's pills and groups. If you can't find work that'll pay for the doctors and pills, welcome to America. Where nothing is as free as it appears to be. It's that simple."

"Stop it! You're putting pictures in my head!"

---"Yes....yes."

"A friend of your's? What's he on about?"

---"He said, 'they' force him to choose. They use pesticide poppers on him, his friends and family, to speed up 'the choosing'. And while he's never chosen correctly...the people with the poppers have never stopped...he's sure there are many others, who unlike him have never made a wrong choice, who always choose right."

"The people with the poppers?"

---"Ya think?"

"You don't have to go to the mountains of Colorado to die of exposure. Have you seen the corn-stalk stubbled winter fields? It's like the arctic tundra."

---"In the summertime then".

"You can walk to them from here."

---"It would take a couple days."

"What's a few days compared to an eternity?"

"Do you have a totem... animal?"
---"I'm a Christian. ... I'm not a pagan."
"Then it's Jesus or one of the saints?"
---"What's your totem animal?"
"The rat... I work in a research lab."

"I like the way fashion takes skinny girls and boys from every nation on earth and turns them into ambassadors and beautiful advertisements for a perfect country that doesn't acually exist."

---"North Korea, Iran, Libya, Cuba?

"...A country that's everywhere and nowhere. Whose images and ideas saturate every form of media. ... With exports for the wealthy purchased by appointment only from the finest boutiques in the most cosmopolitan of cities and for everyone else anyday of the week at Sears or Walmart."

---"Both their finest and most mundane products are manufactured in the same factories?"

"Fashion's ambassadors and products are found wherever the most important red carpets are unfurled on the arms and bodies of today's movie and rock stars, bathed in camera lights for the latest images to peak the world's wistful or envious desires."

---"You make it sound like a wonderful... place."

"I know, I know." (big smile).

"Then right before I woke up I heard what's her name singing , 'You're sooo vain, I bet you think this song is about you-- don't you, don't you.'"
---"From your radio alarm?"
"No from the dream radio. It was the middle of the night."
---"You've been listening to a lot of oldies music lately?"
"No."
---"I didn't know dreams could be ironic."
"And self referential."
---"I heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' in a dream once."

"La dolce vita."
---"Death by sugar."

"They're dangerous because they're weak."

"Is it harmful or beneficial to identify with people in photographs,in magazines, on tv or in the movies?" ---"How sontagish? ...sontagian? ...sontag-esk!" "There's no down side? Loving those shadow puppets is something all humans do?" ---"Isn't it like touching yourself? It's okay as long as you don't obsess over it or do it at inappropriate times?"

"Who carries more grief: the people who want children but can't have them, or the people who have children but don't want them?"

---"I've heard people who don't have kids say they don't want kids."

"...And I've heard people say they want to have kids or they're trying to have a kid."

---"But I've never heard anyone say they don't want the kids they have."

"Yeah, 'I don't like this kid, can I trade him in for another?'"

---"So unspoken grief beats out socially acceptable grief?"

"People can jones to have a kid their whole lives."

---"'Better to have loved and lost' then?"

"But if were talking about the grief that weighs upon most of the adults on this planet like a fog that never clears, that moves in and takes the form of the child or children it has replaced ...then parenthood."

---"No contest."

"Do you have an out, an escape plan?"

---"I always have an out."

"Are rapists using viagra?"

---"More than other men their age? More than your grandfather? Who would know?"

"Maybe police departments have updated their rapist profiles to include men walking around with hard-ons?"

---"Men running with hard-ons. ... I've never read any crime reports mentioning viagra."

"Rapes are not news and drug companies wouldn't appreciate anyone suggesting their pills have become the drug of choice for rapists."

---"News editors heads' would roll."


"I wonder if the divorce rate for seniors is more than it was before viagra?"

---"No but hookers no longer give senior citizen discounts?"

"The young and often spring you gave."

"Do you think certain drugs might work on humans like phermones do on animals and insects?"

"I prefer the 'parallel universes' metaphor."

"Is that like time zones?"

---"Yes. ...altered metronomic states."

"Metronomic economics!"(giggles)

"To attain a certain degree of professionalism, it's essential one learns to ignore everything that doesn't maximize profit potential. ... A discipline that can make the difference between winning and losing. Between being found dead in the gutter without shoes or dying on the back-nine clutching a gold putter."

---"Have a winning day!"

"Death also is trying to be life."

---"Tricky death."

"Pretend to be an individual, behave as if you are human, act as if you are a person. You can do it. Because you're none of the above. Don't reveal that you are God. Because they won't understand that being God is nothing, being Nothing."

---"I am nobody? I am nothing? I don't know where you come from but around here there are no secrets. They hunt and burn heretics for fun and profit."

"Hey, what about the terror of nature? Would you call physics or winter 'terrorism'? The irony is that everything about humans was the strive to overcome this enemy. When we have succeeded, we became the imposing nature. Who and how will overcome this new tyranny?"

"Is she looking over here?"

---"From what I understand about interspecies communication, like when humans 'talk' to chimpanzees and dolphins, captivity and the manipulation of food and water is absolutely essential."

"Does she look like she'ld be into that?"

"When defense contractors with mobster money were creating their mecca in Nevada and showing the middle class how to have fun..."

---"Slot-machines, crap-tables and show-girls oh-my."

"...Police red-squads in Peoria, Decatur and similar metropolitan areas were given federal money to crack down on hippies, civil-rights organizers and peaceniks."

---"Dirty hippies."

"Can't you see how mainstream the rat-pack has become?"

---"Swinging crime-fighters...Cool. Daddy. Pow!"

"They rule."

"Did you know that both Muslims and Mormons believe that polygamy is 'God's will'?"

---"Yeah I heard the FBIs' Salt Lake City office recently doubled in size."

"Imagine if millions of people around the world suddenly stopped believing the word of god was written in holy books to be interpreted for them by holy men?"

---"Billions. Given what passes today for the word of god after millenia of study and debate, riots and wars, the effect upon today's society would be catastrophic, the chaos unbelievable."

"Imagine what mischief the gullible and credulous might be propelled into if everyone needed to find faith for themselves; were compelled to create then honor their own systems of behavior and belief? Instead of being smugly ensconced in authoritarian churches?"

----"'Ensconced'? Does that've anything to do with scones?"

"Today I'm thankful for all organized religions that provide the people of the world with historically proven reservoirs of sacred superstition, proscribed clap-trap and pure nonsense."

---"Flood control for the fabulists and their faithful fans?"

"Amen."

"Without the continuous conditioning sessions and the hypnotic reassurance of the sub-sonic voices, they would long ago have become will-less automatons."

---"And sexy?"

"A class of humans modified to provide sex for the state-ordained productive members of society? ...Where do you see yourself on that train?"

---"They can't all be sexy. Some can be made observant, watchful, vigilant?"

"Thrustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly?


---(laughs) "Thrustworthy, you said thrust..worthy."

"This might seem retro, but men living among men and doing manly things,
there is a peculiar savor to that."

"When the Founders phase-shifted the first children they set-upon were their own. ... Now go to them for justice; expect them to preserve the rule-of-law; ask them for mercy. Go ahead, go ahead."

---"Jesus!"

"Forget him...they shifted too."

" I was talking to a cousin of mine once. We were driving through some expensive suburb. He said , 'those houses are worth 425,000 dollars'. Then he corrected himself; ' people pay that much for them'."

"I live so minimally..."
---"You're an American with a car and a computer."
"...me and thou and the intermittent horizon-line."
----"Don't you mean interrupted horizon-line?"
"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, thou and the horizon-line. Anything more: clubs, bars, parties; the care and feeding of ipods, cell phones, cd-players etc. and it turns all 'Grand Guigno'l' in an instant. The ringing in my ears is the perfect soundtrack for my life."
----"Perfect aria for your life."

"I think people are allergic to me."
---"You're not handsome or rich; there's no reason for people to want to know you... don't you mean you're 'allergic' to people?"
"No."

"Whenever I see old photos of myself, I get this same sad feeling."
---"Well aren't you special?""No it's awful... it's like the death of a pet."---"Beloved parakeet, or faithful dog?""Soft fuzzy purring cat."

"Life meant convincing another you knew what it meant to be alive."