Mr. Nobody, Jaco Van Dormael's Sublime Universe

In the year 2092 Nemo Nobody is 118 years old and the last mortal human. A journalist asks Nemo what life was like back when humans were mortal and Nemo replies:

"There were cars that polluted. We smoked cigarettes. We ate meat. We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful."

I haven't enjoyed a movie as much as Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody in years. It's like Vladimir Nabokov on screen. Brilliant, provoking, intelligent, playful, beautiful, pitiful, awful and awesome -- Sublime.

Kid, Inc: Are We Raising Our Nation's Children Like Animals?

It's that time of year -- autumn. The birds have quit twittering and the children have stopped playing. The last couple of years I have noticed a strange thing which I never used to notice. Perhaps, my hearing is more astute, but this sound of absolute silence in the air the week that the kids are herded back into their holding pens and fattened up for slaughter after a few years of corporate corn and antibiotics is nearly like a death.

One doesn't notice the sounds of the children ringing in the air up and down the streets while the robins are training up their young ones until it's gone. I swear I could hear a pin drop from down the street this week. I don't see these children or know them, but somehow, their activity and sound fills the air.

And I wonder, how is it that the very air, nature itself seems to know the children are gone?

A few months ago, when watching Robert Kenner's documentary Food, Inc (http://www.foodincmovie.com/ ) I was struck by the similarities between the way we raise much of our food and the way we raise our children. If it's not humane or healthy to raise chickens in a windowless and crowded shed, then how is it acceptable to treat humans with souls this way?

Food, Inc shows one chicken grower that is broken in spirit because she has been forced out of tobacco farming due to our nation's biases and fears which are reminiscent of those that incited tobacco and alcohol prohibitions earlier in the last century. She now spends her days in the sheds clearing out the bodies of the chickens that die every day. Her sheds had windows in them at the time of filming, but the company she was contracted with was fighting her on this, wanting her to get rid of them. Without sunlight animals die -- so do children.

Where I live we have some formerly beautiful Art Deco schools built in the 1920s and 30s. Even back then, people were concerned about energy use and thus, these schools were specifically designed to absorb as much solar heat as possible and to allow the class rooms to be well-lit because, according to the research of the architects and school system, children learned better with more sunlight.

Not only did the architect want the children to absorb light while in their classrooms, but aesthetic beauty and grandness. The classrooms were designed with very high and beautiful ceilings and fine materials. Back in the old days we knew that Creativity Class is everywhere and in everything, and that inspiration is embedded even in the floors we walk upon and the windows we look out of.

But we have lowered the ceilings, placing false panels in. We have blocked up the grand and beautiful windows, leaving only a few small sections open. Our idea of energy use is one of not using any, rather than of absorbing and using more in wise ways. And as we have hidden the high ceilings that invite children's minds to soar, as we have blocked out the light coming in and the ability to see out, so we have also done to our children -- blocking the light of inspiration from getting in or the ability to see out.

Our children are like those chickens, no longer allowed to run loose in the sun. Those chickens die in the dark, are over crowded and diseased. Those chickens can't stand up on their own legs. They peck at each other and kill each other because they have nothing else to do. And those that raise them have no pride or dignity in what they do because they are told they must do this or loose their contract. How many teachers are in similar situations?

And then, there is a farmer interviewed in Food, Inc, that raises his animals in a more traditional and humane way. He has joy in his eyes even though he works hard and is not rich. His cows and pigs love him when he comes around and he loves them even though he will one day kill them. But think of it, wouldn't you rather the farmer loves his animal and the animal loves him, for when the day of slaughter comes, that farmer is going to make sure this animal is slaughtered as humanely and cleanly as possible, for he respects it and the life it provides for him.

Are we feeding our children the right "food" in school, or only a false and indigestible diet? Are we making them fat and weak, unable to stand with dignity and joy, by penning them in dark sheds and muddy pens? Are we injecting our children with pharmaceutical drugs and treatments because we've overcrowded them, rather than letting them loose on the range?

We don't want our food genetically engineered by giant foreign corporations, nor do we want our livestock and poultry treated inhumanely. So, why is it acceptable to treat our children this way? It's not.

[Note: It is stated in Food, Inc, several times that if Big Tobacco can be beat so can Big GMO companies. Obviously, there is an anti-tobacco bias and some ignorance in the documentary. Those same giant companies that have pushed genetically modified corn and soybeans upon us are the exact same companies that have fought to ban tobacco production and use. Were it not for our ignorance of how exactly important tobacco farmers and tobacco production are to the United States of America's dignity, health, and economic prosperity we would not be spiting the very hand that feeds us in favor of foreign nicotine replacement "therapy" and grains with terminator technology. Every single ban on tobacco adds money and dictatorial control of our country to a giant foreign interest or U.S. corporation with strong links to foreign interests. These foreign corporations have eaten up U.S. corporations and states, and think of U.S. citizens as swine, not as humans.

Most tobacco farmers are very conscious of the land and possess hundreds of years of farming knowledge, which has been erased by the hatred of their main money crop. As illustrated in Food, Inc, most tobacco farmers have been reduced to extreme debt and poverty and now raise animals in a way that turns their stomachs and is anti-American and immoral. Because we have fallen for the fear of propaganda we have gotten rid of one of America's most important crops and allowed foreign corporations to dictate to us and our politicians what we can and can't eat.

Not everyone has to smoke, but everyone has to eat, and banning tobacco is actually affecting the health of our children who are forced to eat the unhealthy crops and unhealthy animals that now replace tobacco. Bring back tobacco farming and we will weaken these giant foreign corporations and their power over our nation's leaders and food supply. Banning tobacco will actually increase cancers and autoimmune disorders in the coming years because the replacement crops are usually genetically engineered (with your tax dollars at the local university for a foreign pharmaceutical or agricultural corporation) with proteins foreign to the human body that cause inflammation of soft tissue (such as lung tissue) over time.]

Nicotine Replacement Therapy Targets Youth and Females in Your Local Store

It's time to start complaining to our local merchants, retailers, and newspapers about the shelf placement and advertising of Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" (NRT) products. Like tobacco products, they should be out of reach of underage users and require an I.D., and advertising should not appeal to youth.

The other night, in the local Wal-Mart I noticed that the NRT aisle was provocatively placed on an edge which everyone has to pass as they go to the toothpaste, deodorant, condoms, vitamins, and tampons. The shelf was under five feet tall -- very low, beneath the eye contact of the average adult, but perfect for a younger person. The location of the patches, gums, and candies was ideal for those making a quick run into the store for those items.

And doesn't nearly everyone brush their teeth, and hair, and buy shampoo and other body cleansing and grooming products? Young women, especially, have to pass by the NRT aisle, because it is they that spend the most money and time grooming and beautifying themselves. Evidently, the shelf placement of NRT is directly aimed at those of the underage female persuasion. The aisle was also conspicuously close to the condoms. Again, this indicates marketing and placement aimed at the youthful and sexually active. Imagine getting it on and pouching a piece of "gum" at the same time! The beauty of it!

This moral and health issue must be remedied. The anti-tobacco groups have lately launched a complaint campaign, asking their niacin deficient pellagrins to complain about in store tobacco advertising and placement. The same must be done with NRT products to protect the children from the health and economic burdens inflicted upon society by addictive and dangerous Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" products.

We cannot allow this social ill to continue. Children are daily exposed to Nicotine Replacement Therapy advertising via school programs, T.V. advertising that directs them to look up sites such as Shardsofglass.com, and are being led to beleive these products are safe and responsible. Even the President of the United States is pushing NRT, offering it to others, saying it's good, with children viewing this unhealthy behavior.

And soon, we will hear more and more of the deaths caused to children that used NRT because it was so easy to buy and because they ignorantly believed it was safe. They will put the trans dermal patch on and die of heart failure, mix the patch with other drugs; or mix the gums and candies with other drugs causing a dangerous reaction. Children are natural little chemists and experimenters. And Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" doesn't work the same way as tobacco on the brain. Much of it is actually a type of ionization process, replacing one thing with another. We must protect our children and our young females and demand that NRT be placed behind the counter and that I.D. be required in order to make a purchase.

Also, taxes need to be raised to make this too expensive for youth to afford and to pay for the health costs caused to society. Most NRT products are imported and don't have to pay tariffs. We need to remedy this issue, and make these Big Ionized Nicotine companies pay up, rather than reaping the money, and addicting an entire generation of youth for life to this habit.

Older than the hills

"The child is the father of the man," a line from Wordsworth that has become a staple amongst Western literary quotations, and for good reason. It is so well said, so succinct, and so cyclical.

It is the spring board from which I will jump into some musing, observation, and opinion.

Wordsworth and his fellow poets of the Lake School were a band of Romantics, or as we would term them in more modern terms, "hippees." They wanted to get back to nature and enjoy free love away from industrial air. But the difference between them and our now aged hippees is that they really were creative, talented, and wise at times. They were quite industrious and have given generation to following generations, unlike the aged hippees who have often trampled upon the generations that followed them, or as Wordsworth put it:

Unprofitably travelling toward the grave,
Like a false steward who hath much recieved
And renders nothing back (The Prelude)

How is it that the child is the father of the man? Obviously, because he came first, and without the child there would be no man. But perhaps, there is more to it, perhaps, we are looking at things with limited sight, through that dark glass.

The child really is the father of the man.

Why do we say, "when I was younger," when we refer to our self as we were many years before?

That "younger" self no longer exists except as a memory in the fabric of time, an image captured in our mind. That younger self is actually older than the present self.

Why is it that we as individual people were younger, but history as a whole is considered ancient and older? Was it not also younger, newer, more energetic and beautiful too?

Why when we look at pictures of us in our early days, do we say with surprise, "Look at how young and good-looking I was. Look, no gray, no wrinkles, no sagging, no added thickness! I had SO much energy back then. I had no worries. I had no money and barely ate (because I had no money)and everything I owned fit into a box. I was so happy!"?

But when we look at history (which resembles a younger person) we say, "They were unhappy, poor, uneducated barbarians. They didn't know any better. They had no manners, no baths, no hygiene, no electricity. They were slave owners, they were slaves. They thought the world was flat and that a god or gods had created them (imagine, not knowing it is monkeys that fathered us!), they sacrificed their babies to these gods thinking it would make life better. We are so much more advanced through science and now only kill babies to make their life better, because we're so caring...."

We sound like old people when we speak of the previous younger generations this way. Turn that music down!

Isn't this how people often speak of younger adults? When speaking of the younger people it is often said that they possess the same uncouth attributes as the earth's inhabitants when they were hundreds and thousands of years younger.

I have often thought in recent months that we have become very old and that it is no longer the next generation setting the standard by which we live. It is the aging generations, those in their 40's, and especially those in their 50's and 60's that dictate the rules, that grasp onto their belief that their way is the right way.

One of the hints showing our old age is color.

In times past it has been the unwrinkled ones that chose color palettes and decor tastes. Color, like music, can be considered too loud for aging individuals, causing them to feel nervous, tense, or offended.

Newer generations have always loved color and combining it in new ways that define their generation and outlook on the world. Color is a way of expressing one's self.

Now color is being repressed by the aged among us, as many other forms of expression and freedom are also being repressed.

I discovered this killing of color when looking into the world of the past. I was looking at vinyl composition tile (VCT) and could not find anyone using it outside of offices, hospitals, and grocery stores. VCT tile is now considered taboo for home flooring, not rich enough.

But when youthful people set the rules VCT tile was in nearly every home and in nearly every color. Younger people and families don't generally have a lot of money, but this did not prevent them from setting the standard of middle class living through the first half or so of the 20th century.

I looked at picture after picture of VCT tile advertising from the 1920's through the first part of the 1960's and found my heart racing with the discovery of wonderful color. It was as if an entire world was opened up to me. And then I felt a bit cheated out of this knowledge that has been suppressed in the limited time I live in.

I felt old, as if my entire world was ruled by the rules of the old.

Color is life, joy, freedom, creativity, and youth. Not sedate, aged, and offensive.

The advertising of the young in comparison with the real estate of the current time is stark. The current colors to emulate are dead browns, grays, whites, mute greens, and more browns. These are the colors of winter when no snow has fallen and the blue sky does not shine through the haze. Why is November's winter and fall overriding crisp, biting winter, spring, and summer?

Previous generations would have chosen rich browns over dull brown, and spiked it with brilliant royal red, bright greens, pink, or teal. Gray would have been paired with yellow, red, purple, and jewelled emerald. Pink paired with turquoise was not tacky.

Are we in the winter of our life?

Our global worries are the worries of the elderly. We worry that we are dying, and believe experts when they tell us we must take certain remedies in order to squeeze more life out of our crotchety old bones and planet. We are easily conned (which also means "steered"). Where are the "young" people to shake their heads at us, ignore us, and make fun of us?

When we were younger we never thought we would get old.

Now, we have gotten old and too blind to even see how old and gnarled we are. The dementia has set in and we convince ourselves that if we follow the doctor's advice we can keep forever healthy, fit, advanced, and alert.

No, we are not younger. The world is older and sits in a rocking chair, too old, too blind, too feeble to get up and help itself.

If only grandma hadn't gotten rid of her youth, then she'd have someone to help her around.

History is young. We are old.

In our youthful and romantic past there is a father to teach us, if we're not too old to remember, too stiff-necked to turn around.

The earth is all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again! (The Prelude, William Wordsworth)