PALLIATION

A man with a good refrigerator don’t need no justification.
Hazel Motes, Wise Blood per P. Wilson

After our new refrigerator was delivered I had to put something in it so I went to the supermarket.

There are a few things I pay full price for but mostly I’m an eater of opportunity. I found my favorite ice cream on sale plus, I noticed a display of $1.79/can spray nozzle real whipped cream.

This is exactly what a bear would do—go for the fat.

The point is palliation, not cure for my S.A.D.—just to make it through one more winter.

Once one a beautiful ocean beach morning, coming on to windowpane we saw occasional equestrians along the waterline. One, a haughty looking, straight-backed formal; equitationist inspired this comment from my friend Jim: “Look at the animal riding the animal.”

And so I say, “Look at the butterfat riding the butterfat.”

If I just eat enough butterfat I can get back to my hibernation.

So I’m slopping down the hi-cal reading about the rising price and diminishing stockpiles of food worldwide, at least according to this IHT article with the ominous headline: World food stocks dwindling rapidly, UN warns

In an "unforeseen and unprecedented" shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the top food and agriculture official of the United Nations warned Monday.

The story notes some supply and demand factors:

On the supply side, these include the early effects of global warming, which has decreased crop yields in some crucial places, and a shift away from farming for human consumption toward crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing with the world population...

Part of the current problem is an outgrowth of prosperity. More people in the world now eat meat, diverting grain from humans to livestock. A more complicated issue is the use of crops to make biofuels, which are often heavily subsidized. A major factor in rising corn prices globally is that many farmers in the United States are now selling their corn to make subsidized ethanol.

So I’m thinking, what’s the point of exiting my cave if this is what we’ve come to. America must decide what to do with it’s food—feed people or feed their SUVs. Do we need to take a poll?

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The quote at the top of this post comes from the funniest movie I’ve ever seen, Wise Blood, directed by John Huston from a novel by Flannery O’Connor. In it the main character, an itinerant, ignorant southern preacher, declares in reference to his own automobile (actually a jalopy), “A man with a good car don’t need no justification.” IMDB page here.

When you get frustrated with American Huck’nShuck Christopolitics, a Wise Blood rental could provide some palliation.

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