PASTA

So, I am starting a new group in response to an annoying circumstance I seem to encounter about 3-4 times per week. The group will be called PASTA; People Against STaring at Accidents. In a recent drive to class I was forced to add an additional 10-15 minutes to my commute due to an accident. I can understand if there were actual victims suffering and samaritans trying to lend a hand. From three miles back I imagined a real community effort to pull children from burning wreckage, clouds of billowing smoke, smoldering tires melting into asphalt and a make shift field hospital...This particular traffic jam resulted, however from people pausing to stare at a parked bus on the other side of the highway...There was no real obstruction to traffic flow on my side of the interstate asside from the artificial one created by drivers slowing down to gaze at people milling about a large bus pulled to the side of the road. I guess it had run out of gas or overheated or something. My question to society is "When are we going to evolve beyond this type of voyeurism?!?" Is gauking at hapless victims somehow gratifying? If you are fed-up with unesessary traffic jams, join PASTA today! Members of PASTA will recieve a T-Shirt with the PASTA logo and a quarterly newsletter. ($25 annual membership fee; tax deductible)

Time or Money

Time is more valuable than money.
As we age our time becomes more scarce and
therefore more valuable. This is especially true when one places great value
in vitality. In this sense, a waste one's time is a waste of one's vitality.

Money is always diminishing in value due to the constantly
changing cost of production. The history of all types of production
shows a sporadic trajectory in the total cost of production,
yet the overall trend is always directed upward. There are many factors
including human population fluctuation, technological transition, human genious
and failure, natural disasters, and the constantly increasing scarcity of
raw material, which contribute to the rising cost of total production.

The state at which currency dimishes at the greatest rate
is when it is "kept under our bed in a box".
The state where it dimishes least is when applied to investments with the greatest rate of return.
In this sense there is a broad spectrum of currency efficiency.

Even as our currency gains tenuous footing when hedged
by interest rates through investment at varying degrees of risk,
inflation is a constant that drains and deflates
our efforts as it taxes our every waking moment.

Inflation is a natural response to the subtle or volitile multilevel
interactions between supply and demand throughout
the heirarchy of production and consumption.
Since the total cost of production is always trending
upward...there will always be a general trend to inflate the
the diminishing value of our money against the increasing cost of production.
Remember when a loaf of bread was $0.25? you probably don't,
but your grandparents would if they bought bread in the 1960s.

the HULK on an eighth of a gallon of gas:

How to feel like the HULK on an eighth of a gallon of gas:
Get in your vehicle.
Roll up the windows.
Get on the 695.
Pop in "I don't give a fuck"
Album: Kings of Crunk
Artist: Lil John and the Eastside Boyz

they say that rap is dirty, that the stories told by the artists degrade women, that they glorify violence, that it induces intellectual stupor.....then why is there such a demand for it? is the reason that we slow down to passively observe anguished accident victims on the side of the road an explanation for our rabid consumption of rap?

I mean really, do you think these rappers actually enjoy having to kill 3-10 people in their own neighborhood before being allowed a meeting with a major main stream producer like *^$$ #@##& ?
Personally, I think not.

America....Change your taste
or shut the __ up.

OWED TO RAP

rap music is the deep resonating bass drum
vibrating with the frequency of change
sent to galvinize the masses.
recognize the endurance of this rebellious
artform. thirty plus years and counting;
as infinitely diverse and ubiquitous as it is controversial. from the last poets to
lil wayne, from mellie mel to master p..accross foreign lands, and infiltrating
the pulse of the global intellectual discourse. Rap music
is the most potent art-form beside kung fu. Irrefutably the voice of
the oppressed majority, a readily accessable tool of pure self expression.
a completely organic mode of mass communication...a soliloquy,
an uninteruppted train of thought sometimes guided by the structure of the written form,
sometimes spiritually inspired and improvised...recited to the pulsating, and
often hypnotic thump of the modern drum. recognize that the
poetry of rap reaches a complexity that only those who are
forged in the most sincere jihad can hope to master. nuff respect due
to the one six ooh.

rap is about maintanance of one's integrity despite the
overwhelming institutionally
reinforced
odds against your
survival.


KEEP BOUNCING

Zizwe Allette