propaganda and aluminum cups

PROPAGANDA AND ALUMINUM CUPS
Forgive me if yesterdays article was a little off. I wasn't really satisfied with it myself. Perhaps one day with a little more time I'll do a part two. Today, I'm taking two stray thoughts of no importance and combining them and calling it an article. As I keep telling you, once an idea takes root and sinks its parasitic tendrils into my shrinking compromised grey matter the only way to get rid of it is to vomit it onto this page. Oddly enough, for someone that despises the publicly funded "news" and entertainment sector, the ideas came from Pravda Broadcasting Stations. The propaganda on today's Afghan elections and clay.
*
I haven't figured out how they are screwing us over by having switched from analog to digital signals ( other than forcing me to buy another TV- and blah blah I know all about the converter boxes already having bought one of the turds ) although I'm sure there is a entitlement to corporation angle in there somewhere. But every night it is another stations turn to lose the signal. One night it is on, clear and crisp. The next night, same weather, no signal. Anyway, last night was the station out of Salt Lake which shows an hour of "Scrubs" each night. I shouldn't even have been watching the idiot box but both my library books bogged down and I just felt like vegetating anyway. So I turned to the only other thing on broadcast TV ( for the love of Pete, "Octomom"? This is infotainment at its worst ) which was PBS airing a special on some archaeologist at the original site of Jamestown ( the tourist version is several miles away ), pulling up cool items that survived in the muck for hundreds of years. One item was tobacco pipes. According to the records, a pipe maker was one of the early arrivals ( not the first, but during the first few years ). This being a for profit venture, the investors wouldn't have wasted money sending him over ( the colonists were well provisioned with supplies ) unless he was going to make them money. The most likely answer was that he was scouting out supplies of suitable clay for pipes, there being an acute shortage of the stuff in England. The new habit of smoking was that profitable ( and tobacco allowed Jamestown to eventually prosper ).
*
So, with that nugget in my still sleepy mind as I was peddling to work this morning, I began to once again notice all the aluminum cans littering the roadside. You know the economy isn't that bad yet if aluminum cans sit uncollected for weeks on end. Why would a pottery industry ever reestablish itself after the collapse? Taking into account the inevitable population decline, coupled with the need for soon to be scarce fuel for the kiln, and the vast amount of trash heaped everywhere, why would there be any incentive to form and bake clay for containers? Aluminum cans can be the new cups, if they are even ever needed with all the plastic ones around. Two liter bottles and other long life containers can store and haul water. Tupperware abounds for food storage. Somehow I see the knowledge for working with clay being lost and centuries down the road having to be rediscovered. I don't know if that simple observation interests you or not. If not, how about the following?
*
PBS was rambling on about both health care ( which I was frantically trying to ignore but was thwarted at every turn- heck, I might as well write up some drivel on it later ) and the coming Afghanistan elections. What interested me was the blatant propaganda involved. Oh, the humanity! The evil Taliban, those convenient scapegoats that get blamed for everything from Gore warming to the price of oil, are terrorizing the population and thus a fair vote can't be assured. Okay, forgetting for a second that demonizing a small group of Ragheads benefits our military-industrial complex, can you see any other problem with this statement? As in, we are occupying the country and pretty much pick and choose who gets to run in an election. What is "fair" about that? As a good ol boy from down south used to never tire of telling his children, fair is where you go to sell your pig. Okay, there is no such thing as fair. Fair is the plea of the victim and the excuse of the totalitarian welfare state. I'm merely answering in the context of the Pravda propaganda. The first thing that came to my mind, right after cursing the tax payer funded evil organization to the lower bowels of hell for all eternity, was that the Soviets were actually less skilled about the propaganda than we are. A socialist peoples republic was threatened by renegade Muslim forces, so we must intervene ( this was 1979 by the way, for those even less interested in history than reading my drivel ). And we are there, why? I mean, besides the real reason of gas pipelines and stalemating Chinese and Russian interests in the region ( with a bit of Iranian control thrown in ). We pretend to be protecting them against a renegade Muslim force. You see, the Soviets were interfering with free elections. We are only occupying the country to ensure free elections. Umm, okay.
*
Enough for today, my ridiculous meter is maxed out.
END