* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 5224 ** WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 5288 *

Here are some pictures from the VERY short trip to Peoria in August of 2009. My Aunt’s Janet and Minne were visiting my Mom so I managed to find a reasonable airfare out of Vegas and got home from Friday to Sunday. We went to the Peoria Zoo (as you can see). I also got to see my friends Ginger, Ami, and Todd (all separately). Aunt Janet made a superb lemon meringue pie; Aunt Minnie a pumpkin pie and my favorite dish, macaroni salad, to which I added the requisite baked beans.

It was short, but packed with good memories. The full photo album is here.

-Eric Small, nostalgic for more pie

* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 5270 ** WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 5285 *

Just finished the Orwell classic, 1984, for the second time. Love it even still, and especially interesting to read whilst so much is being made about Obama and his “socialist agenda”. Of course, 1984 isn’t really about socialism vs. capitalism at all. If anything it’s about oligarchy versus democracy. But even that is hardly of interest in today’s political climate.

What is interesting is how easily a democracy can be fooled. The great masses in today’s United States democracy are vaguely aware of how little power they wield. In actuality, it seems, the United States is actually an oligarchy. The corporations and others with wealth or power herd the masses in the direction of their choosing. Today this is evident under the leadership of the right and left wing nuts that are derailing any reasonable discussion around health care reform. The right have created terms such a “death panels” while the left insist any program without a single-payer system is corrupt. In the middle, the herds dutifully shift left or right and ultimately no one is left for common discourse.

Newspeak is alive and well but not quite in the form the adherents of Ingsoc imagined.

-Eric Small, literary deconstrutionist