Children Are Tools

Leo said, The rich make money.

The poor make babies, said Rita.

Children are tools in Utopia, said Leo.

In Vietnam with a population of 95 million, 50% are under 30. That’s a lot of babies.

You see babies everywhere: they are busy writing books, painting, driving taxis, motorbikes, buses, boats, trucks, flying planes, cooking along the road, selling fruits and vegetables in markets, building new fake glass brass cities in suburbs, hauling cement and bricks, fixing broken machines  ... waiting  ... sleeping in empty shops, hustling dreams, screwing, selling anything and everything possible with an infant on their hip, chopping down forests, harvesting kindling for fires and hunting animals until they become extinct.

Do babies become extinct, asked Tran.

Yes, if they don’t run fast enough, said Zeynep.

Humans slave for money. Trade their time for a handful of dimes.

Monkeys don’t talk because they are afraid of being put to work.

Humans scheme and deceive and lie and cheat. This is a huge advantage in systems with social organization, organic relationships and political structures.

They laugh at their mortality and contemplate death feeling happy or sad accepting destiny.

What if I die here, said Tran. Who’ll be my role model?

One has to die before they can live, said Rita.

You die twice, said Devina. When you’re born and when you die.

Many humans spend their lives dying, said Omar.

WE were born dead and slowly came to life.

It aint about pleasure making a baby. It’s a business deal with long term opportunity cost.

Marketing and branding saves the day, said Leo.

I know families with ten kids, said Rita. You can have as many babies as you want, like grains of rice.

You hear parents and grandparents whisper to their children’s children, Accelerate Production, comrades.

The bitter fruit is their legacy of love. Love is a legacy and economic practicality. It’s a pure and simple matter of numbers, money and pragmatic reality.

Long-term Asian child investment resources establish a genetic social security plan.

Billboards exclaim:

Invest sperm and fertilize eggs for the future

Create your legacy

Live forever 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Teamwork

Let's have a meeting! Yes. English teachers unite!

Get dressed and take our Moleskine notebook filled with poetry, drawings, dreams, stories and visions. Collect one piston-driven fountain pen filled with green racing ink.

Remember water. You've gotta have H2O where you go. It's gonna be a hot one. Seven inches from the mid-day sun.

Pedal to a class tomb on old campus surrounded by luscious green trees straining to light. They are a canopy of welcome relief. Rose petals wither on the ground.

Smile and greet your compatriots, your stalwart educational guides. Take a seat. Look around. Engage your senses.

Gaze out the window toward the lake. It is shimmering. You hear scraping. What is it? Local workers are building a wall. A new great wall. Exciting. History in the making. How do they do it?

It's simple. Materials and raw labor.

Ten village men and women - who do most of the heavy lifting - bags of cement, trowels, shovels, a few plastic buckets, water, piles of gray bricks, empty drums for support, some boards and a couple of wheelbarrows.

Step 1. Build rickety scaffolding using drums and boards. Remove the old steel fence. Discard to side.

Step 2. One team mixes cement and water. Shovel into buckets. Another team puts bricks into a wheelbarrow and pushes it to a dumping area.

Step 3. Men wait for women to hand them bricks and buckets of cement. They slather on the goop and align bricks. Brick by brick the wall goes up. It blocks the green sward, blue lake and wild flowers.

Only the sky is safe.

Step 4. Another team coats the exterior with a bland gray mixture.

It's never going to be finished. Art is like that. It's so beautiful you feel like crying.

Someone steps to the podium and starts speaking - using exquisite language - about the value of education. Cost benefit analysis. Profit and loss statements. How we have a huge responsibility to our shareholders.

During a brief moment of silence you hear a shovel, a trowel and laughter.

Another day dawns in paradise.

Chinese Appliance Factory #8

Good afternoon students. My name is Mr. ON.

It rhymes with song gong, long gone.

         It is 17:10 p.m. If it was 18:01 p.m., I would say good evening, however it is still afternoon. It is late in life. Class meets twice a week for two hours. Show up on time, do your assignments and stay awake. Nothing more. Nothing less. Simple English is good.

         We are gathered here today in the glorious Chinese Communist Party Peoples’ Appliance Factory #8 to begin our simple English lessons. Your supervisor informs me you are here by choice and chance. You have the choice. This is your chance. Am I clear? Do you understand me? Choice and chance. 

         Now. I know. Most of you have been working in the factory since dawn. It is the end of another long mind numbing grueling tedious day down on the killing floor. English has brought us together. You face unique and amazing challenges to acquire a foreign language. To use said target language with meaning. To maybe baby become fluent. It will require your undivided attention, focus and electrical energy.

         You will practice speaking, reading, listening and writing. These are the four basic skills.

Output: Writing and speaking are active.

Input: Reading and listening are passive.

Learning is a never-ending process. Many of you will die before it’s complete.

        Learning occurs in the context of task-based activities. In other words you learn by doing. You do and you understand, as we say, said, did, done.

         We will cover, in exhaustive detail, four important appliances and their English A/C-D/C lets see connections. They are: washing machines, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens.

         These machines are now essential in everyone’s life. You know this because it is your job to put them together. It’s like English. Putting words together makes a phrase. A short, simple sentence. Some have meaning and some are gibberish. Many words are composites of useless idiomatic semantic syntax that is not the same as income tax however both are expensive.

         Write this down.

         English in. English out.

         Open your head, heart and mouth. Eat English.

         Please open your creative notebook. Using a simple writing tool like a pen or #2, get the lead out fast pencil I want you to consider the following questions. Answer them using basic English.

         How did I get here? ______ 

         Why am I here? _____

         Am I a machine? _______

         Am I a tool of the factory? _______

         What is my motivation to learn English? (Secret answer - MONEY)

         No money, no honey.

Here’s the equation. No English = no job. No job = no money. No money = no food = starvation.

         Your supervisor has instructed me to motivate you. She expects me to motivate you to arrive on time, complete the assigned tasks, and pass the exams. Her management style ordered me to use fear as a form of discipline with you.

We are all well aware how the power and threat of fear motivates humans in our society. If I fail to motivate and pass you I will be executed. Survival is my fear-based motivation. You WILL pass because my little short life depends on it.

         Fear is a funny word.

Fear of starvation. Fear of poverty. Fear of losing face. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation or shame. Fear of not meeting family expectations. Fear of speaking in public.

         Fear of  ______  (free choice).

         Thank you for your short attention span. Next lesson we will discuss parts and functions of a washing machine cycle with elocution about a Turkish woman using sharp word shears down on her killing floor.

three kinds of people

there are three kinds of people in the world, said a boy holding his heart in his hands

sitting on a cambodian tourist town corner disguised

as the Street of Impossible Dreams...

his mother, cut off at the knees cradled an infant.

sex was her DUTY.

she performed well.

she produced more off-spring.

she was well seasoned. 

more tools. economic tools.

daddy was long gone.

it was a 125cc motorcycle culture

putt-putt, zoom, roar, rumble, dance cylinders. grind my hormonal gears, baby.

genius boy said:

people who make things happen.

people who watch people make things happen.

people who don't know what the fuck is going on.

yeah, yeah, yeah is my complete unabridged vocabulary. 

Grunt Loud

Namaste,

A cool reality being a hominid is grunting. Still happening. Huh? Huh?

A kid in Asia - uuuugggghhhhhhhhggggg. (i'm bored)

Pay attention, said Hominid Habilis.

I am the early form. Before.

Erectus. 

Later in the saga of human development were gutteral vocalizations. Me BIG. You Small. Me connected to earth, water, air and hammering.

Hammering? What's that, said Habilis.

It's like this, said Hominid picking up a stone. Watch this! Erectus bashed two stones together.

Wow, said Homonid, I'm impressed.

Yeah, get this, said Erectus 2 milion years ago. I plan. I design. I have a small brain. Like now. Grunt.

I created Acheulian tools. You might say, using paleomagnetic dating, my tear-shaped axe was the Swiss Army knife. Then.

So what? 

I used it to chop wood. I used it to butcher animals.

You were very advanced. Considering. Then?

I dropped it.

Metta.