Grand Finale

The Man the Magic

One measure of success is how much you are loved by others, including former US presidents.

The recent Beatification of Pope John Paul #2 confirms his sainthood and Vatican assurance that his remains will be preserved for adoration.

Word is My Sword

The Legacy of Martin Luther King will also be revered for his life's work to bring world peace through non-violence.

Act 3 Scene 2 Take 1

The shock and spectacle of death that engulf defining moments in the human psyche are in time transformed and twisted by a mythology that serves a scripted continuum.

Paper Machete

This photo, a clownish reenactment of the event in Bolivia 1968 where the corpse of Che Guevara was presented to the world press rather artistically defuses the passion of el Che, a man of war.

Seeing Believing

Here is the official image, corpse with eyes opened. It is interesting that immediately after the assassination photos show Che with eyes closed, leading one to conclude a decision was made that the eyes would be opened for some macabre humiliating or hypnotic purpose.

Sacred BodyBag

There are gushing volumes of talk about the one whose name i will not write.

There is an ocean of myth being poured into the vessel of civilization.

There is a billowing cloud of closure being crafted for consumption.

Deep Fry Turkey

Ceremonial burials at sea seem the appropriate choice to dispose of both pirates and presidents. We are after all, part fish. But like so many of my countrymen's disdain for bin Ladin, i might have signed off on the cremating blast from an oil well in his backyard burial.

Headline for Humanity

Let's honestly hope it's time to say adios to endless war's circus of carnivores.

Somehow i doubt it but who is ready for a ticker-tape parade?

photo not related.

What's next, a memorial to O'binLaden?

Update: According to Cindy Sheehan, this whole corpse story stinks... inclined to agree?

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SomePass

Road Raunch

The days of romance with the american road are long gone thanks in no small part to greed at the hands of officials quick to embrace Red Light Cameras and any scheme that goes ching-ching in their grubby little minds. The motoring public should take note of alarm and caution with developing issues. Wake up and smell the racket.

While the number of tickets is issued is plunging, the costs are soaring.

City commissioners are closely monitoring the situation because their budget depended on bringing in $3 milllion from red-light camera tickets. Now they think they may collect as little as just $500,000 in light of the higher costs and fewer-than-expected tickets.

Pembroke Pines has similar cost concerns. That city has received $76,294 from citations, but the red-light camera program has cost $83,337. Legal fees encompassed $33,189 of that, with the rest going to ATS to manage the cameras.

I will wager $158. the light runner in this vid was on the phone.

Technology is inherently neither good nor bad. Automation today is a sacred cow (cash cow that is) for municipalities and MDX strapped for cash. Taking the human out of the equation not only eliminates jobs but more so de-humanizes reasonable enforcement and civility. When technology is used by special interest to undermine our quality of life, things get ugly. In an authoritarian grab for money, officials hide behind the pretext of safety and suppress the simple truth that the motoring public is a silent tax base ripe for extortion.

Buk 50

..."Drivers headed to the Keys over the Presidents Day weekend on Florida's Turnpike will encounter the newest change in toll collecting: No cash, please.

At 12:01 a.m. Feb. 19, crews will begin to close all the old-fashioned toll booths on the 47-mile Homestead Extension, which runs from Miramar to Florida City. The transition is expected to take about 48 hours.

You'll pay either with SunPass, or you'll be billed later, based on photographs of your license plate as you drive under overhead gantries. Monthly bills will include a $2.50 service charge.

It's part of a multi-year plan to convert the entire turnpike system to a cashless toll road."...

Some Pass, Others Don't

My problem with the sunpass is not its popularity, that's understandable. My concern is the highjacking of motorists dollars for the benefit of a few. The carrot that gets you on board is personal convenience, the joy of uninterrupted driving. But the greedy underbelly is a system that holds millions of our dollars in a collective minimum balance that is invested for profit that is not shared with those who put up the capital. Between public debt and private profit is the secret mantra of the self serving.

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Minority Report

Hold on to your emotions and pass the botox, the mind police is here today.

Technology, Sedition and Armageddon are accelerating at an alarming rate.

...the TSA's Screening Passengers by Observational Techniques (SPOT) program had 3,000 "behavior detection officers" in more than 150 airports. Their job is to strike up conversations with passengers at security checkpoints, checking for what one TSA official describes as "behaviors that show you're trying to get away with something you shouldn't be doing." People who don't display "normal airport behavior" may be stopped for questioning.

Road Rant

Horse Crossings

Automobiles are wonderful contraptions, they have altered our way of life in countless positive ways. Since the early days of our romance with mobility, cars and trucks have served so well that with the passing years we have altered the landscape so that cars seem more populous than people. And like guns and cell phones, cars don't harm people, people do.

Flash of the Crash

But cars are not just heaping careening hunks of metal and petrol. They have become extensions of our identities. The have come to define our culture in the sunshine.
And what some see is ugly. We see a spiderweb of concrete and asphalt that sever the land in a tangle of pavement, glaring sign pollution and the occasional costly citations for moving violations.
One can even get a hefty fine for standing still doing nothing.

Fender Bender Splendor

The auto industry has been a gold mine, black gold that is, from petrolium pumpers and car makers worldwide to the mechanic down the street. Auto-centricity ain't no cottage industry. In less than 100 years of our recorded human history, we have mechanized, industrialized and radicalized our footprint on this fragile planet. In an effort to go to and fro with ease, we have inadvertentely trampled nature into a globally warmer submission.

Speed Zone Ahead

Today, for much of the motoring public, we are navigating the mine-field that are the American roads. This lifestyle choice comes with necessary risks and engineered requirements that have us in a stranglehold of modernity for our personal convenience at the expense of the environment.

Every Day P.S.A.
(public service announcement)

The message here is simple. We get it.
We get that venturing out strapped to a tank is a well rehearsed routine with improvised road humps. Most of the time traffic moves allong in a orderly crawl of 30 mph. But the roads are also the stage for an un-orchestrated dance of a thousand misfits. The streets are teeming with volatile uncertainty and chance. One thing is certain, be prepared to be photographed.

Cluster-Flubb

What began as an honest experiment in modern independence has morphed into a greasy display of the pitfalls of blind-folded science. Not only do cars contribute to the demise of our legacy, they also are a the third largest expenditure for most households in cities like Miami where there is little or no practical alternative to transportation.

Red-Fright Scamera

Conventional etiquette says that staring is not polite. Who wants cameras all up in their business? Not anyone i know. But the snaky governor and his grubby lawmakers in our great state capital cleared the way for this invasive technology in a money grab that will yield buckets of billions from now on. We are now in the clutches of a surveillance society where obnoxious gawking paparazi apparatus , though un-welcomed, are to be planted at every intersection.

Smile, Its the Red-Light Bandit

There is nothing cute or quaint about getting tickets in the mail. Often hundreds of dollars each, these unwelcome correspondences are being sent in bulk to citizens struggling to make ends meet with already strained budgets. If we could get the figures on just how many of these legal extortion shake-downs are issued, the numbers would be alarming to some, but not me. I've gotten three.

Houston, We Have Another Revenue Stream

Some folks have no problem being part of the problem. These are the same folk who, when in uniform, have not qualms issuing a citation to their on mothers. After all its the law... and followers will calmly pull that proverbial lever of collection. Take the human out of the equation and we have a self induced sci-fi authoritarian nightmare come true.

Have a Shifty Day, Sir

I actually almost yearn for the old days when an real starchy "human" being would deliver the bad news of an infraction. With courteous community service their cringing guiding motto, our traffic cops were the only ones deputized enough to make judgment on your ass right there on the side of the road. If one were really good at arguing, the encounter would be a non-event.

Professor Prophet

Today we have deputized technology. We have handed over the unsavory task of shaking down the citizenry to lifeless contraptions that breed on our very complacency. How will the world as we know it end? One camera at a time.

Slamming On the Brakes

This guy is on my VIP list.
(Valor In Public)

How Low Can You Go

Pumped up oil executives have announced that OPEC is considering changing the currency of oil from dollars to euros. Elsewhere China has announced that it no longer wants to buy our ailing currency. How much more of a beat-down can the almighty US dollar take? We have not seen the bottom of this fabricated economic caldron but its not gonna be pretty until we unveil our secret weapon.




Unauthorized Cars Will Be Tarred and Fined

Hey wait, that's my... Great Car-Art.
With this sublime symbol of suburbia no words are necessary to remind us of the ubiquitous automobile and its skids across our cultural landscape.
Did you leave anything in the car?

The Motoring Publix

The business of art is a slippery affair. Artist have a responsibility to be socially relevant, to draw for others a picture that clearly illustrates our human condition in an increasingly complex environment of information and distraction. The artist must also make light.



the Walk-Don't-Walk tree

The fruit$ of a depressed populace does not fall far from the tree of greed.




Science is a Sacred Cow

Each advancement in technology can be viewed with stereo vision. One eye on the golden calf, the other on the ground chuck. Science without Civility is a certain psychic train-wreck barreling around the corner.



Blooming Bluebeam Batman

Someone at the local newspaper called Norman Brahman the Car Guy. maybe so, but he is so much more than an auto dealer. he is the guy who would like to change the culture of corruption in Dade County.
This car goes to Stormin'Norman.



Cyclists across the Julia Tuttle Causeway

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bloggers-block

DENILE |de-nīl|

NOT the river in eastern Africa, the longest river in the world, that rises in east central Africa near Lake Victoria and flows 4,160 miles (6,695 km) north through Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt to empty through a large delta into the Mediterranean Sea

"There's a blog born every minute, but there are only X amount newspapers."





ANGER |ˈa ng gər|

NOT the guy who gained fame and notoriety from the publication of the French version of Hollywood Babylon in Paris in 1959, a tell-all book of the scandals of Hollywood's rich and famous. A pirated (and incomplete) version was first published in the U.S. in 1965. The official U.S. version was not published until 1974.



"So many thoughts (in my little mind), so little time to blog."




ACCEPTANCE |akˈseptəns| noun

Yes the willingness to tolerate a difficult or unpleasant situation : a mood of resigned acceptance.

" World I love You, All is Groovy" George Horner Poster




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Influence and Concern

Daddy Don't Screech.

You don't get to be the father of a nation without tremendous influence and a deep concern for the future of a people in a place that is heaven sent. Our founding fathers could not have imagined that in little more than 200 years this great experiment would be so trashed by a lack of concern for human life and the natural splendor that is the North American Continent.



Old Scruel: Tar, Feathers and a bit of Water-boarding.

Human nature indeed has a sinister side. There certainly have aways been some morally bankrupt people worthy of contempt, but there is another kind of person out there. The person who, in order to feel good, must inflict pain on others. With blood on their hands (bush/cheney) they abuse their influence with no concern for Karma.



My Way and the Highway.

Rush (the Limp) Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Oreilly and their ilk appear to wield tremendous influence on ditto-heads and Fundi-fruitcakes but are not the least bit concerned about our collective safety. They preaches hatred and encourages violence and intolerance. God bless their sorry drug-addled gas-bags.



Material Girl in a Spiritual World.

We are all in the midst of an epic conflict between the spiritual and the material. Call it what you like, Creationism vs Evolution, Intelligent Design vs Technology, the fact of the matter is that it's much ado about nothing. We need to reconcile the cosmic energy with sustainable means of providing comfort without trashing the material world. I used to hang out with Madona when she had little influence and a big concern for fame and fortune. Today she has tremendous influence yet little concern... unless you are an African orphan.




We Eat Cows.

A big juicy T-bone and a bottle of whiskey sure would be nice right about now. I come from a proud and hearty line of Cuban ranchers. But as We are What we Eat, most of today's meat is practically toxic. Our influence on the life-cycle of bovine has brought a grave concern for the very thing we crave, meat. It takes a barrel of crude to fertilize an acre of corn to force-feed the cattle that are pumped with hormones and steroids so their multiple stomachs don't explode.



Q: Why does man kill trees? A: Because trees can't run away!

Hat-racking is a popular request in the swamp as many "landlords" battle the elements using stuff like Round-up and businesses that specialize in lowering the quality of life. Clean is nice but we need all the green we can grow. They paved paradise to put up a parking garage.



I'm Looking Over,
Afoul-leaf Clover-leaf,
That I Over-looked Before....
The world went Car-racy.

So where does all this auto-business get us? It gets us in a pickle with progress.
Where is our influence, where is our concern? It is in the hands of others. We willfully shake our head and carry on in either dis-belief of just plain stupidity for the sake of personal convenience and sing in harmony " that's just the way it is now".



King of Kings, Bang of Bongs.

There is no Godzilla, there is no magic bullet, there is no fairy-god-father, there is no bail-out.
Just me and you and a dog named Sue. So what's there to do? Take a deep breath and find one simple thing to make a difference, be part of the solution. Turn off your a/c when it's not hot. Turn off your TV, read a book. Don't buy individually wrapped cheese slices or single size water bottles. Write to your congress-person. Get Godzilla on the phone.



A Stench in the Trench.

Seriously folk, there is stuff going on out there out off sight that would make your head boil.
Like rock pit mining in the Everglades or economic hit-men in the developing world or black-ops syphonning our treasury. Where is our influence, what is our concern?




Miami and the Beaches are rife with plundering projects. Sure they're good for some few, but is the South Point Park really for the public anymore or is the grandiose MIA Art in Public Places really for us to enjoy? no.

Who cares about what you care about.... swampstyle does.

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