'Cause I'm the taxman, yeahhh.
Today my economics teacher was talking about elasticity of demand and used a hypothetical example of a price on air. No matter what the price is set at, people still need air, therefore it would be inelastic. That got me thinking. What an interesting concept: a charge for air. So I decided to devise a plan for just that. Here's the question: "What if governments agreed to start charging people for air consumption?"
People would have to pay a certain amount per cubic centimeter (that's right; the metric system owns) pulled into the lungs. Maybe it would be set amounts per breath. We could have some sort of implanted counter inside our bodies to count breaths. And then we would also have global positioning implants so that we could be billed by any country that we breathed in. Maybe the U.S. would allow price charges to be divided into state governments. And people would have to have bi-yearly check-ups at the doctor to measure lung/breath capacity and activity level in order to determine how much each individual would be charged per breath.
What's with the saying "eat your heart out?" I've always found it to be very strange. I looked it up on Origin of Phrases (the credibility of which I am unsure), and it claims that it is "intended to make one feel bitterness or pain as they long for something out of reach." Also, the site claims that it was adapted from the 16th century "eat one's own heart", meaning to suffer from silent grief or vexation. It also has roots in the Biblical phrase, "to eat one’s own flesh", used to describe an indolent and slothful person. I used eSword (essentially, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance in software version), and found that the KJV Ecclesiastes 4:5 says, "The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh." And then Ecclesiastes 4:6 follows, saying, "Better is a handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit." Crazy, huh? If you want the context, go read it yourself.
There's a freaking Led Zeppelin reunion concert in London on the twenty-sixth of November. I am so jealous. John Bonham is dead, though, so, apparently, his son will be playing in his place.
Look at this cracked earth
like the lines in my father's skin.
Sitting in the sky,
the sun feels bitter,
blazing and flaming so close,
grieving and grasping, she drinks
at my lips, pulling the cool drink
of water from my mouth, from the earth,
and trying to close
the clouds away, peeling their skins
off, pushing them from the sky,
sending them away from the bitter
brown of bare trees, banished into bitter
tears, acidic and unsatisfying to drink,
falling from the empty skies.
Once I took colors from the earth
and tattooed my skin,
but now they have faded and are close
to being gone, reminders of how close
I once was to life and fertility, not these bitter
and dying skins
of trees, longing for clean water to drink,
feeling with the earth
and looking to the sky.
The jealous sun is up in the sky,
doing all she can to crack and close
my throat, filling it with earth
and with the bitter
herbs that make me vomit without drink.
She burns my skin
and eats my flesh, peeling the skins
off my eyes and my fingernails. Her hot sky
has taken all of the drink
and has closed
the throats of the animals, turning them bitter
towards the earth.
The sky tastes bitter
and has fallen close to the earth,
and the sun still drinks from my skin.
23 September 2007
(Part one of a two-part series.)
I really want to start doing something like those funny editorial blogs where I highlight and discuss things that catch my attention and bash on things I think are stupid and direct my readers (how many are you, anyway?) to things I think they should read, and other silly things like that. Though, I don't want to get all political like a lot of those do. Who would actually bother reading that?
People would have to pay a certain amount per cubic centimeter (that's right; the metric system owns) pulled into the lungs. Maybe it would be set amounts per breath. We could have some sort of implanted counter inside our bodies to count breaths. And then we would also have global positioning implants so that we could be billed by any country that we breathed in. Maybe the U.S. would allow price charges to be divided into state governments. And people would have to have bi-yearly check-ups at the doctor to measure lung/breath capacity and activity level in order to determine how much each individual would be charged per breath.
What's with the saying "eat your heart out?" I've always found it to be very strange. I looked it up on Origin of Phrases (the credibility of which I am unsure), and it claims that it is "intended to make one feel bitterness or pain as they long for something out of reach." Also, the site claims that it was adapted from the 16th century "eat one's own heart", meaning to suffer from silent grief or vexation. It also has roots in the Biblical phrase, "to eat one’s own flesh", used to describe an indolent and slothful person. I used eSword (essentially, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance in software version), and found that the KJV Ecclesiastes 4:5 says, "The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh." And then Ecclesiastes 4:6 follows, saying, "Better is a handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit." Crazy, huh? If you want the context, go read it yourself.
There's a freaking Led Zeppelin reunion concert in London on the twenty-sixth of November. I am so jealous. John Bonham is dead, though, so, apparently, his son will be playing in his place.
Look at this cracked earth
like the lines in my father's skin.
Sitting in the sky,
the sun feels bitter,
blazing and flaming so close,
grieving and grasping, she drinks
at my lips, pulling the cool drink
of water from my mouth, from the earth,
and trying to close
the clouds away, peeling their skins
off, pushing them from the sky,
sending them away from the bitter
brown of bare trees, banished into bitter
tears, acidic and unsatisfying to drink,
falling from the empty skies.
Once I took colors from the earth
and tattooed my skin,
but now they have faded and are close
to being gone, reminders of how close
I once was to life and fertility, not these bitter
and dying skins
of trees, longing for clean water to drink,
feeling with the earth
and looking to the sky.
The jealous sun is up in the sky,
doing all she can to crack and close
my throat, filling it with earth
and with the bitter
herbs that make me vomit without drink.
She burns my skin
and eats my flesh, peeling the skins
off my eyes and my fingernails. Her hot sky
has taken all of the drink
and has closed
the throats of the animals, turning them bitter
towards the earth.
The sky tastes bitter
and has fallen close to the earth,
and the sun still drinks from my skin.
23 September 2007
(Part one of a two-part series.)
I really want to start doing something like those funny editorial blogs where I highlight and discuss things that catch my attention and bash on things I think are stupid and direct my readers (how many are you, anyway?) to things I think they should read, and other silly things like that. Though, I don't want to get all political like a lot of those do. Who would actually bother reading that?