During my years at college, I learned many techniques for making the perfect pitcher of Kool-aid. I like to focused on making sure all the sugar grains were properly dissolved by adding a small amount of water to the kool-aid mix and stirring, making a think syrup, once that was done, I’d add water to taste.
My roomate George made his Kool-aid with hot water and stuck it in the freezer.
My other roommate made the Kool-aid with a practiced eye, and almost zen like quality from years of study and practice.
Over those years I became an addict not only to the Kool-aid but a slave to the process that it took to create the product.
The one thing I learned, and a lesson that I have never forgotten, was because of a discussion with my brother over our shared addition with Kool-aid.
He claimed he knew how to make the perfect pitcher of Kool-aid. I didn’t believe him, every one was of the opinion that “they” made the perfect pitcher of Kool-aid.
“Okay, what’s the perfect way”, I challenged.
He pointed to the back of the package. “The instructions”, he said simply. His thought process went like this: Kool-aid probably spend millions on R&D to figure out the right amount sugar, water and mix, why on earth should he spend time re-inventing the wheel.
I was speechless.
Since that revelation, even though my addictions is years behind me, I rarely rarely don’t take the time to read and follow directions.
”Food is cheaper. Clothes are cheaper. Steel is cheaper. Cars are cheaper. Phone service is cheaper. You feel me building a rhythm here? That’s because I’m a speech writer, I know how to make a point. It lowers prices and raises income. Do you see what I did with ‘lowers’ and ‘raises’ there? It’s called the science of listener attention. We did repetition, we did floating opposites, and here comes the one that’s not like the others. Ready? Free trade stops wars … and we figure out how to fix the rest.”
Fantastic book from one of my favorite authors. Here is a short anecdote from the book. It is a conversation between Nobody Owens (Bod) and Nehemiah Trot a poet and ghost. in this passage Bod ask Trot about revenge.
“..Oh I had my revenge, Master Owens, and it was a terrible one. I wrote, and had published a letter…I would henceforth write not for them, but only for myself and posterity, and that I should, as long as I lived publish no more poems — for them! Thus I left instructions that upon my death my poems were to be buried with me, unpublished, and that only when posterity realized my genius…only then was my coffin to be disinterred, only then could my poems be removed from my cold dead hand, to finally be published to the approbation and delight of all. It is a terrible thing to be ahead of your time.”
“And after you died, they dug you up, and printed your poems?” [asked Bod]
“Not yet, no. But there is plenty of time. Posterity is vast”
Even the people who wrote the Bible were smart enough to know, ‘tell them a story.’ The issue was evil in the world, the story was Noah…Now the Bible knew that and for some reason or another I latched on to that.
History can never be made by one man we must smash this one quickly
History is made only by the masses of the people this is clear
Even a cursory glance at the falasfallacious presentation
of history by the American capitalist system will demonstrate just this
Take George Washington as bad as he is
Put him in the middle of Valley Forge by himself surrounded
by the British he can do nothing
Take Martin Luther King as righteous as he is
Put him in the middle of Birmingham by himself, speaking out against racism
He would be lynched
But you take this same King, you take this same Washington
Put them in Valley Forge, put them in Alabama
Surround them with thousands of people who have the same ideas they do
Willing to make those ideas reality and the situation changes drastically
The Charge of the Light Brigade
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
I heard Val Kilmer interviewed once. He was talking about meeting Marlon Brando on the set of “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” He told a story about knocking on the door of Brando’s trailer, being told to come in, and opening the door to find Brando at his makeup table, wearing a caftan, an upside down fruit bowl on his head, applying white pancake base to his cheeks. Seeing the look on Kilmer’s face, Brando said, “Yes, we’re going aaall the way on this one.”
During my years at college, I learned many techniques for making the perfect pitcher of Kool-aid. I like to focused on making sure all the sugar grains were properly dissolved by adding a small amount of water to the kool-aid mix and stirring, making a think syrup, once that was done, I’d add water to taste.
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