The recent record flood from a “500 year storm” in Houston, as well as storm-produced rivers raging in the streets of Istanbul and Mumbai, has, according to some unaccountably powerful American idiots, absolutely nothing to do with catastrophic androgenic climate change.  That Houston has experienced three “500 hundred year storms” in the last three years proves nothing, to these rich men who make no money from having inconvenient things proved to them.   That three major cities, on three continents, are now largely under water from catastrophic storms?  Shit happens, eh?

In the case of Houston, it’s a major refinery of fossil fuels.  One of their professional football teams used to be called the Houston Oilers.   Jeeves tells us that team now plays in Tennessee, with an oil rig as their logo.  Much of that toxic sludge, the tar sand that billionaires are intent on piping to refineries to be reduced to poisonous air, poisonous gasoline and poisonous waste, is targeted for refinery-rich places like Houston.   There is an ecological disaster, on top of the historic natural disaster, as tons of toxic chemicals were released into the air over Houston when the refineries “burned off” certain chemicals as they were shutting down in preparation for the flood.

It is an irony too grotesque and obvious to point out, that the mega-storms produced by the unabated use of carbon-producing non-renewable fossil fuels rain down biblical retribution on the city that is its capital.  I’m not sure what Mumbai and Istanbul did to deserve their present fates, but that’s part of the nature of the beast.   When I shit in the stream for years, those downstream will eventually drink water I wouldn’t drink.  Of course, I live upstream and I have no pity for those too stupid to drink my God-given toilet water.

2

When the U.S. ended the failed prohibition of alcoholic beverages after a decade-long, disastrous experiment that resulted only in the enrichment of a violent criminal class and an explosion in lawlessness, a racist zealot named Harry Anslinger, realizing his job in Prohibition was over unless he found a new target, made it his mission to spread the terrifying truth about the murderous drug favored by Mexicans and Black Jazz musicians.  White girls who smoked this drug had wild sex with Negroes.  White boys who smoked it became merciless ax murderers, often gleefully killing their own families.  He spent his life rooting out cannabis (which he branded by its Mexican name, marijuana, or sometimes with an even more threatening, alien hiss: marihuana), heroin and cocaine.  Alcohol, meanwhile, continues to kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine, and pharmaceutically produced opioids combined  (and, sporadic interracial sex aside, documented marijuana deaths per year remain at zero) but what does that have to do with anything?

One of Anslinger’s proteges, we learn to our great surprise, was the 25 year-old Joe Arpaio, the former racist sheriff, now 85, that our current president unceremoniously pulled out of hot water for his long-running, violent, self-described “concentration camp” for suspected undocumented aliens and drug addicts, and for his repeated contempt of court.  

A trillion dollars spent trying to enforce unenforceable drug prohibition laws identical to the ones we saw fail in the 1920s, and millions of lives ruined or lost as violent criminal cartels rake in billions in several countries to supply the lucrative U.S. drug market.   Our diminutive racist attorney general calls for stepped up enforcement to ensure the capture and imprisonment of marijuana users.  OK.

So we all have these massive institutional stresses on us, things we can do nothing about, and a president who makes it clear he will shit anywhere he fucking pleases, any time he pleases, in your mouth if possible, if you’re a nasty fucker.  

3

Then you get a letter from your landlord, that, after some research at the bank, might have more accurately read:  We waited three weeks to cash your check this time, instead of our customary next day deposit.  When we cashed July, it cleared, but August bounced.  We are assessing a $25 fine for the returned check and we have redeposited that check, which bounced again, another $25.  The bank assessed a $35 fee the first time the check bounced, and another one when they redeposited the check.  All this took place over a matter of almost a month and the first I heard about any of it I was $120 in the hole for fees and fines.   A bit of added stress, as it is now August 30 and August’s rent is unpaid, I learned yesterday.  First bounced check in over forty years of banking, but the fees are the fees.  Unfair, perhaps, but not illegal, don’t close your mouth, we are still not done emptying our bowels.  My problem, of course, I’ll figure out how to avoid being dragged to Housing Court for nonpayment.

4

I overpaid my health insurance by $220 a month for six or seven months while the New York State of Health Marketplace was fixing its simple mathematical error.  By the time their mistake was fixed I had overpaid by about $1,400.  When I called in July, credit from my overpayment was applied and I was told I had credit going forward to pay the next few months of premiums.  

In August I got a bill, showing a $1,310 past due payment made on my behalf (they cut you off if you miss one month of premium payments, that number represents several months of nonpayment) and claiming I owe $28 for September.  Reminding me I will lose my health insurance if that is not paid nice and timely.  When I called the insurance company I was told I actually owe $38 for September.

If I have a complaint about this seeming chicanery by the insurance company, I must take it up with them, as I have.  I am still waiting for their written accounting.  No government agency oversees this kind of thing.  Why would they?   

Which reminds me, I have to deposit another month’s rent in the bank and arrange to get them a check for August and September, to avoid whatever the corporate slum-lord has planned for me.    

I have to keep reminding myself, whatever stress I may be feeling is nothing compared to the stress of people who are angry almost all of the time.  My relative comfort living an extremely modest life-style, leaving aside the many additional ways someone who lives this way is typically sodomized, is nothing to sneeze at, I suppose.   It often must be my consolation, after all, and it would not do to sneeze at it.