PetrBlt - Peter Eichenberger

Up holler in Virginia visiting my brother John, last night, he, his wife Amy and I journeyed to the Charlottesville Pavilion for an evening with local guitar wunderkind.

How Big Pharm has convinced us to subsist on the one while condemning the other.

“Asia’s crowed, Europe’s too old
Africa’s hot and Canada’s too cold
And South America stole our name
Let’s drop the big one
There’ll be no one left to blame us.”
                                —Randy Newman, Political Science, Sail Away

“The rule of US customs and traditions is one of the main objectives of all of what are called international military education training.” —Lt. Colonel Richard Downie, US Army, Commandant, Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, the author’s tape recording, WHINSEC, November 2001

The Petrblt “method,” such as there is, contains some not fully understood factors involving the magic of synchronicity. This was sparked by a friend appearing out of the jungle shortly following yet another letter the Duh Noose Papuh wouldn’t touch. No calls, no emails, nothing… just the same yawning silence that spurred the launch of “Peter Built” at the old Spectator.

The letter attempted to provide some context by which to counter uninformed, sensational anecdotal drivel emanating via such august voices as Dr. Phil and You Tube, backed not by a shred of what they call “knowledge,” spurring legislative action that could result in potential felony convictions for possession of yet another plant-based molecule, Salvia Divinorum. Far beyond simplistically, “legal LSD,” as variously opportunistic and hysterically mis- and uninformed voices whisper, has been subject to such a paltry body of research that nobody in a position of true authority, a scientist, thank you, can rank it as anything other than a botanical mystery.
Keep reading below the fold.

Peter Eichenberger is tired of breathing your exhaust fumes.

I haven’t ridden the thing yet, first, ‘cause I have this thing about busses, second, that unless one is incapacitated, like too drunk to walk, downtown Raleigh is as walkable as you’ll find, and finally, that free is really free via the bicycle. But forget me, the R bus line, by reducing the “necessity” of driving a car everywhere one must go, rain or shine, night or day, in a dense, urban grid, is the best, smartest idea Raleigh has had in, gee, I dunno, a generation.

But here’s the predicable Greek Chorus, “whaaah, whaaah, whaaah,” from the car set: “It’s not free! It costs me money and I don’t ride it.” Listen up, ya babies, let’s talk about “free.” How did it somehow become written in the sky and implicitly understood by every mother’s child that the motorist is exempt from some normal standards of responsibility with this century-long free ride to foul their path with zero or minimal responsibility to clean up the mess their fiendish contraptions leave? Every time I go anywhere, I have to breathe your exhaust fumes, dodge your oil spills and jagged heaps of broken car that litter nearly every intersection and never seem to get swept up – not to mention never getting a chance to relax from the mortal danger waiting at every turn via inattentive drivers futzing with their music, phones, hair, yada, yada. So tough tits.

[Continued below the fold.]

Peter Eichenberger takes a look at spending, shopping malls, and our current recession.

As the end of this decade will more or less mark the sixtieth birthday of pioneer shopping center Cameron Village as well as the very first credit card purchase ever, at Major’s Cabin Grill in the Empire State Building the same year, 1950, some scritchings on da money mess:

With typically savage ironic synchronicity, I recently found myself at Quail Ridge Books (love the place) in a Christmas return pickle. The more I dug into what I walked out with, James Carroll’s latest, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, the more I was struck by parallels between the “defense” morass and the “Economic Crisis,” “Financial Crisis,” or whatever the Meltdown (TM) will be called five years from now. As the shopping center/card synthesis gelled around the same time the Department of Defense consolidated its power, the comparison is timely—and appropriate.

In a unfortunate bit of synchronicity, the oil spill at NCSU’s central heating plant occurred the same week the following piece was written. With a negligence smacking of happy-news cover up, the N&O as well as NCSU tried to soft pedal that the oil did in fact leak into Rocky Branch via a storm drain on the north side of the creek, near Pullen Road. Tuesday morning, The News and Observer report read, “NCSU workers noticed the spill Monday evening and worked to prevent it from reaching Rocky Branch Creek, which runs through campus.” The story went on to report that workers at the city’s Neuse River Wastewater Treatment Plant noticed the bunker oil clogging intake screens at the plant and suspended discharge into the Neuse river Tuesday, “leading city officials to declare there is no threat to the public.”

I read the story Tuesday morning, then surveyed Rocky Branch amid a heavy odor of fuel and black tarry residue and reported my findings to NC State.

[Continued below the fold.]