Dec 30, 2006


...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like the fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...
-- Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Dec 29, 2006

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

-- Elie Wiesel
The Nobel Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1986

The important thing about protest is not so much the short-range possibility of changing the direction of policies, but the longer range aim of helping everyone gain an entirely new attitude toward war. Far from doing this, much current protest simply reinforces the old positions by driving the adversary back into the familiar and secure mythology of force. Hence the strong "patriotic" reaction against protests in the United States. How can one protest against war without implicitly and indirectly contributing to the war mentality?
-- Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Dec 4, 2006

Holy Sonnet VI
John Donne


At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shal o'erthrow,
All whome war, death, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.

Dec 3, 2006










THE UNITED STATES OF BORG
by Kevyn Jacobs







We Are the United States of Borg.
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
We will assimilate your cultural and national distinctiveness into our own.
You will be made to serve the process of globalization.
You will adopt American values as your own.
You will go to work for the global megacorporations which further Americanization of the world.
You will spend your income on American products.
You will drink Coca-Cola. You will eat McDondalds. You will smoke Marlboro cigarettes. You will drive Chevrolets. You will wear American-style clothing. You will listen to music by American artists. You will watch video entertainment produced in Hollywood. You will worship Mickey Mouse. You will use Microsoft software.
Most importantly, you will speak English.
Resistance is futile.

We will co-opt your culture, so that we may draw off parts of you and make them into our own image. We will adopt your language into the English language. We will adopt foods from your culture and adapt them into our own diets.
Your culture will be assimilated. Your culture will be Americanized. Those parts of your culture which cannot be Americanized will be discarded.

You will re-make your economies into American-style market economies. You will remake your government into Western-style democratic republics. Your people will be allowed to retain their own individualities, but only insofar as it furthers the spread of the consumerist values collective. You will be more concerned with individual freedoms than communal values, so as to futher the cause of individual consumerism. You will be detached from the natural world. You will remodel your cities into American-style cities. You will live in the suburbs.

The process is global. The process is unstoppable. You will be assimilated. You will follow the example of previously assimilated nations. The Borg nations of Europe. BorgJapan. BorgCanada. You will join them. We are the United States of Borg. You will be assimilated.

Resistance is futile.



The Americanized global monoculture is steamrolling indigenous culture. It reminded the author of the way the Borg operate in Star Trek.