Urgent zombie fungus fly update

Sometimes I think natural selection, to the extent it can be personified, sniffs glue or ingests some other kind of trippy substance.

Witness this New York Times story about a fungus that takes over the body of a fly, turns it into some kind of zombie, makes it act erratically, kills it but causes it to land in an opportune place and in an opportune position, continues to grow inside the dead fly's body, and then shoots out spores "as if from microscopic cannons" to infect more flies.

How cool is that? I mean, unless you were a fly...

It should be noted, however, that zombie flies, unlike human zombies in movies, don't eat living flies, although would be pretty awesome.

If that isn't enough to get your week off to a good start, scroll down the Times article to access another article about a fungus that turns ants into zombies and causes their bodies to explode.

Holy Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, Batman! And zombies.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN WV, the Gazette-Mail's Phil Kabler had a great column on the myth of the "war on coal" and Trump's revival of the industry.

STOP THE PRESSES! It doesn't happen very often, but I agree with conservative commentator Hoppy Kercheval about the need for congress to keep its promise to retired coal miners.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Thoughts on seeing bears

My daughter, sometimes referred to here as La Cabrita, is a seriously educated woman. As in doctorate. Most of her views on the world are fairly conventional, with a few exceptions.

One such exception is her oft stated conviction that a zombie apocalypse on the order of The Walking Dead could actually occur.

In her words, "that **** could really happen!"

( Another, sad to say, is her belief that living in trees would be a solution to that problem. But that's a digression...)

Her other main odd belief is that bears are intelligent, consciously malevolent evil creatures which exist only to do humanity harm.

I disagree with this assessment, thinking of them more as wild, large and somewhat dangerous dog cousins with strange sleeping habits which should be left alone but which are otherwise cool.

Although the black bear is the state animal of West Virginia, I haven't seen a whole lot of them here. My closest views were had in Washington state, Vermont, and Florida.

Now there's a triangle. Talk about going to extremes...

My closest encounter happened while walking with the Spousal Unit and dogs in the Vermont woods, when we saw one coming down from a tree.

This happened at the same time as Pope Francis' visit to the US. My mind naturally ran to two common rhetorical questions: "Is the pope Catholic?" and "Does a bear relief itself in the woods?"

I took that as a sign from above and made it a point to try to answer every question in the affirmative for the next month or so.

Most recently, I was jogging on a trail in Florida that ran by the edge of the woods. The trail ran for about .75 miles long and I was on lap two or three when I saw something in the distance. I asked myself whether that bush or tree was there on the last lap. When I got closer, I saw it standing on all fours, kind of like pictures I've seen or gorillas. Then it got up and walked away.

Florida bears have a reputation, justified in my opinion, of being pretty chill. I kept running the loop but reversed course in order to give it time to get away--and not to push my luck. 

Still, there was a feeling of awe, fascination and a bit of an instinctive spine chill at seeing such a magnificent creature.

I hope I get the chance to feel that again. From a suitable distance.

Walkers

We interrupt Goat Rope's ceaseless stream of meaningful social commentary to make a personal announcement. For the next little spell, the Spousal Unit is away from the farm. This means, of course, that I am prostrate with grief, sadness, misery and such. It's a wonder I'm still alive, really.

More to the point, it means it's time to binge watch another season of Walking Dead! Season 5 to be exact, as I'm a year behind and have to wait for Netflix.

I've only watched two so far, and it may be too soon to speculate, but it looks like this one will be pretty grim. I mean, back in the good old days, only zombies ate people.

I really do wish that this series and other zombie apocalypse movies didn't remind me of the real situation in WV.  

Two Christmas--ish items

Christmas Day is past, but we're still in the twelve day range, so I thought these two Christmas related stories might be worth sharing.

The first involves my favorite target, Ayn Rand. No doubt tens of thousands of Americans watched the classic film "It's a Wonderful Life" this holiday season. It turns out that Rand and her orcs buddies warned the FBI that the film was commie propaganda. I mean, obviously compassion and community are subversive ideas that have no place in Rand land. Sadly, they don't seem to have much of a place in today's America either.

Finally, I have been following the story of a person in an Ohio suburb who stirred up a bit of controversy with a zombie nativity scene. He was ordered to take it down, supposedly for reasons of zoning rather than content, but at last word defied the order.

There you have it.

What's next, West Virginia?

I don't know how other residents of the Mountain State feel right now, but I think after the chemical spill in Kanawha County, all we need now is a zombie outbreak to make everything perfect.

I tweeted that sentiment yesterday and a friend replied, "It is a challenge, living in a state that is actively trying to kill you."

Come to think of it, West Virginia's leaders have a history of letting corporations get away with murder, metaphorically and literally. Kill some miners with poor safety practices? Why not. Spread some black lung around? Sure. Waste a few hundred putting in that Hawk's Nest tunnel? Go ahead. And don't even bother asking if it's just a matter of trashing rivers, streams and mountains.

That seems to apply to perpetrators with money anyway, although poor people don't seem to get away with nearly that much.

One thing that might be a little different this time is that it just isn't some poor hillbillies up hollers who are being inconvenienced by the latest chemical spill, but some of the big dogs as well. (Of course, most of WV's real rulers don't live anywhere near WV).

The latest word is that it could be days before things get back to anything resembling normal in affected areas. Oh yeah, and this: the state ignored a proposal to tighten up chemical safety practices a few years back.

Meanwhile, I love this rhetorical question another friend expressed in an email: "Hey? Have we cut government and regulations enough???"

One last thought. Living out in the sticks can have its disadvantages at times, but this isn't one of them. I'll take Goat Rope Farm's well to city water any day of the week.

Plague days

I've been re-reading Albert Camus' novel The Plague for the umpteenth time, about an outbreak of the pestilence in the Algerian town of Oran in the 1940s. I think Camus saw it as a metaphor for the grip of fascism on Europe.

At times, I  feel like I've lived through wave after wave of outbreaks of the plague, not, thank God, in the form of 20th century fascism but of a mean-spirited, all-American robber baron mentality of bloodless greed, often backed up by bigotry, fanaticism and xenophobia.

The first wave hit with the Reagan ascendancy in the 1980s, followed by the Gingrich "revolution" in 1994, the era Bush II, and lately the Tea Party. it's hard for me to tell most days whether to count that as separate waves of plague or one long outbreak the wanes and waxes.

I think that's also why the image of zombies shows up so much in this blog, as the dead (or in this case ideas that should have long been dead) come back to devour the living. In the image of Camus' novel, the dead rats keep appearing in intervals, signifying another outbreak.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's American food policy on plague.

AND HERE'S ANOTHER CRITIQUE of the ideology of the plague.

Cute and not cute

If you just want to see something amusing today, click here. You'll never think about toy dinosaurs the same way again.

AND IF THAT DIDN'T WORK, check out this harmonica playing elephant.

OK, ENOUGH CUTE. Here's a look at the connection between zombies, international politics and 21st century anxieties.

AND YOU CAN HEAR THEM ALL THE TIME IN WV. From Bloomberg by way of Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo, here are some bad arguments from the coal industry.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A look at what Americans love and what they don't.

From all the buzz about the series finale of Breaking Bad, you'd think Americans have a soft spot for meth cookers. Whatever the case may be with that, it looks like they love zombies even more.

As for congressional Republicans, not so much. A recent poll shows that 74 percent of Americans disapprove of the ransom/blackmail school of government.

Meanwhile, here's one interesting take on where the "American center" is politically these days. There's some good news and bad news.

The wonders of the market

El Cabrero has from time to time been a critic of so-called free market ideologies. Now, thanks to a recent email from a reader, I take it all back. Well, some of it anyway.

The reason for my conversion is that, through the market's invisible hand, you, Gentle Reader, as well as I, can be the proud owner of a Zombie Outbreak Response Team license tag holder for your vehicle.

There are no guarantees, but it just might get you behind the security lines at a zombie apocalypse outbreak.

Maybe I'll go read some more Ayn Rand now.

YOU WOULDN'T KNOW THIS FROM LISTENING TO SOME PEOPLE, but the federal deficit is actually shrinking.

IMAGES OF WAR by way of NPR here.

HOLY PILL MILL, BATMAN! Read about the latest fun and games from the WV attorney general here. No wonder consumer protection is on the back burner these days.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Down in Jungleland

Image by way of wikipedia.

I feel like I've been living in Bruce Springsteen-land for the last few weeks. And not in a good way.

Point of clarification: I love his music and I even torture several of his songs on guitar (including Thunder Road, The Ghost of Tom Goad, and Youngstown).

What I'm trying to say is that I've been reliving the kinds of stories he has often sung about. About working people who once had a shot at a decent life in this country before being sold down the river by the Judas economy and our Judas ruling class.

Specifically, I'be been working on what I hope will eventually be a report on The State of Working West Virginia. I've worked on a similar report for the last 6 years, but this one is a little different. It looks back on a period of time in West Virginia when at least those lucky enough to have a job had a pretty decent chance.

Around 35 years ago, believe it or not, WV had a higher median wage than the USA. Its workers also had a greater chance of being union members and were more likely than most workers in this country  to have health insurance and pension benefits.

That didn't last long. Employment in coal mining collapsed in the 1980s, when the REAL war on coal miners happened--and the coal miners lost. That was also the decade of the Reagan (counter) revolution, when manufacturing tanked and we entered the period of globalization. It was also the period of rising conservatism, when the social contract was shredded and the priorities of the US government focused exclusively on making the rich richer.

This was the period in which WV's largest employer switched from Weirton Steel to Wal-Mart. Need I say more?

It's been painful for me to look down that road because I lived through it and hated and fought against every minute of it.I keep hoping it will end but it never does. Even when we win victories for poor and working people, which we have, they all seem threatened by a never ending onslaught.

Maybe that's why when I watch things like the series The Walking Dead, about a zombie apocalypse, it just reminds me of today's political world. It's not a horror film--it's just a statement of the facts: the dead (capital) devours the living (labor).

JUST ONE LINK. Here's a good one from the New Yorker about the need to raise the minimum wage--and change this Judas economy.

Samurai snoozer

Image by way of wikipedia.

One might think that a film like Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai film Yojimbo would be right up my alley. And it kind of is.

But I have to admit that it put me to sleep three nights in a row--and I'm not proud of that fact. After major efforts, I finally finished it tonight.

I can't figure out why it put me out like a light. After all, as a martial artist, I must fess up to the fact that I have derived a great deal of  my politics and ethics from my idiosyncratic interpretation of the samurai code.

And I've been interested in Japanese culture for many years.

And the time period in which the film was set--the 1860s--was a fascinating time in Japanese history. The Tokugawa Shogunate was coming to an end. Rule by samurai types was pretty much over. Rule by capitalists was on the way. Money was taking the place of honor. Imperialism was soon to follow. This was the period in time the ruined the lives of many teachers in my lineage of Okinawan karate.

The film is about the breakdown of traditional restraints on behavior, something that has happened over and over again in place after place as the shoddy rule of mammon takes hold. One of the bad guys (whose hair looks Western) carries a gun. Say what you want about samurai, they had a distaste for firearms, considering them to be vulgar and dishonorable for a true bushi or warrior, a sentiment I kind of inherited as a karate-ka.

And I've always been fascinated by the somewhat romantic Japanese fascination with ronin, i.e. masterless samurai who wandered the land and were the subject of many exciting stories.

All of which is to say that I should have been glued to the screen but obviously wasn't. Which leads me to two possible conclusions: either I'm not getting enough sleep or I need to watch some zombie flicks. The jury is still out.

SPEAKING OF THE SHODDY RULE OF MAMMON, here's more climate change stuff for WV's ruling class to deny.

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS. Dolphins do.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD NEWS. Childhood obesity is starting to go down in several states.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Just a quick (zombie) note...

...to inform or remind you that May is Zombie Awareness Month. Why May? Apparently, this is the month in which George Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead was set. Somehow, I missed that detail when I watched the movie. Supporters are encouraged to wear a gray ribbon "to signify the undead shadows that lurk behind our modern light of day.

The Zombie Research Society (ZRS), which promotes this public service, has a great slogan:

"What you don't know can eat you."

RANDOM THOUGHT.  Whilst posting this vital public safety information, the thought occurred to me of a great movie mashup: Saturday Night of the Living Dead Fever. "Staying Alive" would still be the theme song, although it might be a bit of a challenge.

Pure zombie awesomeness

As the Goat Rope staff scanned the headlines this morning looking for raw blogging material, we were delighted to find this story in the Charleston Daily Mail about a forthcoming zombie apocalypse training in Boone County WV.

Here's the opening:

A slew of slack-shouldered, lumbering zombies will infest an area high school on Saturday.

As part of the Boone County Health Department's zombie apocalypse training, Scott High School will welcome hundreds dressed in zombie garb to test the county's emergency preparedness planning.

Apparently, all health departments have to do some kind of emergency prep training. The zombie thing is a way of jazzing it up. And getting more people involved.

The article quotes Linda Holstein from the health department as saying that when they do normal drills, only 20 or so people show up. She's hoping the zombie drill will involve more than 100.

There will even be prizes for the best zombie in several divisions, including male and female winners for best zombie walk, best groan, and best overall.

It all started when the Centers for Disease Control launched a tongue in cheek zombie prep plan two years ago to engage more people in gearing up for emergencies. It worked.

According to Ali Khan, with the US Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, "If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse, you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack."

The only thing I'd worry about, this being heavily armed West Virginia and all, is the need to inform the public that they are not allowed to shoot, machete, or otherwise compromise or puncture the physical integrity of the skulls of the people dressed as zombies.

SOME THINGS HAVEN'T CHANGED...including the fuzzy ideas many Americans have about the Affordable Care Act.

CHILDHOOD ADVERSITY has long aftereffects.

COLLEGE CLASSES. I'll bet you didn't have too many like these. (One is about a you-know-what kind of apocalypse).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Duly noted

Whilst driving to the glorious capitol city of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, I came upon a bumpersticker with a ribbon of indeterminate color and a picture of a set of brains. The caption read: "Support zombies."

FRIENDS OF WHOM? There is a good op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette by UMWA official and state Delegate Mike Caputo.  It asks a very basic question: where are the so-called Friends of Coal when it comes to supporting real coal miners who are at risk of losing promised benefits from Patriot Coal.

To state the extremely obvious, it's one thing to kiss up to coal companies and quite another to stand with coal miners and communities.

DEFICIT HYSTERIA gets whacked here.

URGENT FISH EATING FLYING DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

By their fruits

A few weeks back, I scored a major find at a local library. It was, and, yes, this does show what a geek I am, a 24 part lecture series on Transcendentalism and I was totally jazzed. I was all over it and regretted when it came to an end.

I'm not sure still what to make of Transcendentalism, that name for a diverse and fractious movement of writers, poets, dreamers, cranks and crazies that came spinning out of New England in the mid 1800s. And what a mixed lot they were, ranging from brilliant to batty.

But still, for all the amorphous verbosity, this was a movement or a trend in American thought that spread far beyond this continent and it had a largely beneficial influence, as its ripples were felt in the anti-slavery movement, support for the Union cause and abolition in the Civil War, the early women's movement, environmentalism, the utopian community movement,spiritual egalitarianism and other social reforms.

You could make a good case that one of these guys (Thoreau) accidentally laid the foundations for the theory of nonviolent action, which did great things during the Civil Rights movement and in many other circumstances..

People like Emerson and Thoreau were also among the earliest cultural bridges, promoting respect for other religions. No history of Buddhism's migration to the West or of the dawning appreciation in this country of such Indian classics as the Bhagavad Gita would be complete without a nod to this movement.

Jesus said "by their fruits shall you know them" and I try to make it a point to avoid sharp disagreements with him. By that standard, as loopy as some of the Transcendentalists were, they did pretty good.

Much more on Ralphie to come.

LATEST RANT. Here's my call for WV Governor Tomblin to expand Medicaid coverage to working West Virginians.

HUMAN EVOLUTION. Game on.

IT HAS BEEN WAY TOO LONG since I ran something about zombies.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Vitamin B

Image by way of wikipedia.

I just finished watching the new Bob Marley documentary and it made me realize how much his music has meant to me over the years. The first time I heard Redemption Song it pretty much stopped me in my tracks.

Once I "discovered" Bob, years after most people had, I devoured all his music I could find. West Virginia and Jamaica are obviously different places, but both have been colonized in their own way by Babylon.

Marley's music has a powerful combination of radicalism and spirituality that has given many people the world over the courage to get up/stand up. It's been too long since I gave Bob a serious listen but that's about to change. I highly recommend it as there's nothing better to lively up yourself.

HOW DID I MISS THIS New York Times column about zombies, apocalypses and such?

NOT AN APOCALYPSE, NECESSARILY, BUT BAD ENOUGH. I'm referring to climate change. That's the bad news. The good news is it looks like more people are starting to take it seriously.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Really?

I woke up this morning (sounds like the beginning of a song) and, after completing a few rituals, began scanning the web for news. I was a bit disappointed to find this story which said that the Obama administration is considering going after the states that recently took steps towards legalizing marijuana.

I say again, really?

Full disclosure: I am not and never have been a marijuana person. When I was in junior high, I would gladly have done any drug I could find. Alas, the only drug I could find at the time was gasoline to sniff, which may explain a few billion missing brain cells. In the end, I'm OK with missing the drug train. I figure if alcohol was good enough for my old man and my Scotch-Irish ancestors, it's good enough for me.

But still...the whole war on drugs thing has proven to be about as good an idea as Prohibition. It kind of is the same idea. It has had all kinds of unintended consequences, nearly all of which are bad. It's been pointed out over and over that marijuana is not responsible for anything remotely resembling the body count racked up by alcohol and tobacco.

Let's face it: all law enforcement is selective. Shouldn't the administration have bigger fish to fry? And aren't there better uses for federal resources these days?

JUST ONE LINK, BUT ONE TOO GOOD TO IGNORE. Zombie-ism...it isn't just for humans anymore. Here's a look at zombie spiders.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Just what we needed

The Gentle Reader has no doubt noticed the family decals on some automobiles that show the proper combination of parents, children and beloved pets. A friend recently sent me an email about the latest development, i.e. zombie family decals, which are definitely worth a look.

According to the website,

In the zombie apocalypse, family means everything. It's not limited to blood relations, either. If you're trusting someone to watch your back and keep the walkers from eating you, they're family. If someone trusts you to double-tap them after they've been bitten, they're family.

Show your pride in your family with these Zombie Family Car Decals. They're black and white and red all over and include the whole gang: Mom, Dad, Daughter, Son, Baby, Dog, Cat, and Fish. We're not sure who is lugging their goldfish tank around during the zombie apocalypse, but who are we to judge? Maybe it's a talking goldfish like Klaus from American Dad.

This is yet another example of the unfettered market's ability to spontaneously meet human needs and desires. Or something.

THE PHANTOM MENACE. Here's Paul Krugman taking on the "deficit scolds."

CHURCH POLITICS. According to E.J. Dionne, some Catholic bishops are questioning the church hierarchy's rightward drift in recent years.
LUNAR LUNACY. Apparently, blaming the full moon doesn't hold up.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Paying and being paid

Goat Rope these days is all about why everyone needs to read Moby-Dick for the first or umpteenth time. And I'm still on Chapter 1.

Whilst I was pondering this whale of a book this morning, it occurred to me that if one removed all the digressions and stuck to the action, our tome would shed a good several hundred pages. But a good digression is worth a discourse and a half most days and any number of plots. Besides, nobody can digress like our beloved narrator Ishmael.

I particularly appreciate the astuteness of his observation on the vast difference between receiving and doling out money:

...there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But BEING PAID,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

True that.

REDS AND BLUES. Here's Steven Pinker on America's political geography and why it is the way it is. (Note: I think he left out one factor, to wit, that states formerly based on slavery are more likely to sanction violence generally, where person or through things like the death penalty).

CONSERVATIVE GYNECOLOGY. I'm a little confused by recent comments from right wing male politicians regarding uteri. Specifically, how does the  recent comment about God's will fit in with the earlier one about "legitimate rape"?

APPALACHIAN COAL. Politicians around here like to blame the EPA and a certain president, but here's a look at the real engine behind coal's decline.

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ZOMBIE MAKEUP here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Stoned and unequal

Yesterday I happened to attend a meeting of WV county officials and had a great conversation with a prosecutor from the southern coalfields who spoke of the awful epidemic of prescription drug abuse in that part of the state. Low income people and low income communities are the hardest hit.

Those familiar with WV will recall that these southern counties are both the ones from which huge amounts of coal have been taken and are also those with high rates of poverty and unemployment, big inequalities in terms of power, and not a whole lot in the way of empowerment for most people.

By chance, this morning I read the following passage about an experiment with monkeys in the book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett:

In a clever experiment, researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina took twenty macaque monkeys and housed them for a while in individual cages They next housed the animals in groups of four and observed the social hierarchies which developed in each group, noting which animals were dominant and which were subordinate. They scanned the monkey's brains before and after they were put into groups. Next, they taught the monkeys that they could administer cocaine to themselves by pressing a lever-they could take as much or as little as they liked.

The results of this experiment were remarkable. Monkeys that had become dominant had more dopamine activity in their brains than they had exhibited before becoming dominant, while monkeys that became subordinate when housed in groups showed no changes in their brain chemistry. The dominant monkeys took much less cocaine than the subordinate monkeys. In effect, the subordinate monkeys were medicating themselves against the impact of their low social status. 

Golly, it's a good that that never happens with people, huh?

ECONOMIC JUSTICE 101. Here's a take on the subject by yours truly.

ZOMBIE BEES? A friend of mine from upstate New York just sent me this link. Thanks, CR! The good news is that at least zombie bees don't eat other bees and turn the ones they bite into other zombies.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED