Okay, whew, all better.

For now.

It’s funny: I have an emergency Bleat banner for dire things, and I was thinking I’d finally have to use it. You’ll know when you see it. I have a Bad News For Society in General But Very Much in Specific Now banner as well.

Hope you never see that one.

Okay, let's go straight to the fun stuff: tents and nuts.

I was watching a video of a campus protests encampment. Like many, you're not sure if it's a skit, or the real thing. It showed a guy delivering free Coke to the rows of tents. He was called out by a fellow who wanted to inform him that Coke was complicit in genocide, so this wasn't really appropriate.

He called him comrade.

I have a simultaneous reaction of amusement and contempt when I hear Americans use that word. It brings to mind the bad guys in the old radio show I Was A Communist for the FBI, where snarling, malevolent men leaned heavily on the word to imply the necessity of obedience, or to casually underscore their own authority in a supposedly egalitarian society. I suppose it’s handy when people self-reveal; you can proceed accordingly, knowing what you’re dealing with. An idiot! But also a communist.

Which is edgy and cool because of this capitalist hellscape etc etc, right, right.

Anyway. I’m sure they have a ready list in their heads of all the companies that have to be scorned because they are COMPLICIT IN GENOCIDE, and there are no doubt sustainable, ethically-pure drinks that have no Jewish contamination whatsoever.

May I suggest Fanta? It has the proper origins.

Fanta is an American-owned brand of fruit-flavored carbonated soft drink created by Coca-Cola Deutschland under the leadership of German businessman Max Keith. Fanta originated in Germany as a Coca-Cola alternative in 1941 due to the American trade embargo of Nazi Germany, which affected the availability of Coca-Cola ingredients. Fanta soon dominated the German market with three million cases sold in 1943.

Alas for our comrades, Fanta is now owned by Coke.

This apparently AI-generated page addresses the issue of whether RC Cola has the Zionist taint. Pepsi had a factory in Gaza, so there’s that. Here’s a lengthy list of companies supporting Israel, compiled by islamicinformation.com, and I really, really wonder if there’s a camping tent manufacturer on the list.

Because a lot of them look the same, no?

Some have said that everyone got them on Amazon for $20. That would be the tent made by Wakeman, which is a division of Trademark Global, who counts among its clients - oops! - the Army, the Marines, Coke, and others.

Anyway. I was thinking about the Comrades and the difficulty of ensuring that your consumption is judenfrei, and saw this in the pantry when I was getting some nuts.

The structures and systems that make this possible are quite amazing.

What a quandry!

Just take Peru.

Both countries established diplomatic relations in 1957. Israel has an embassy in Lima. Peru has an embassy in Tel Aviv. What’s more,“According to Contreras, Ziv's company focused on training elite forces for special counterterror operations, strengthening Peruvian intelligence networks, and assisting security forces in working together to kill or capture Sendero Luminoso members.”

That would be the Shining Path. You know, Maoists. Big foes of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, who were Leninists. SPLITTERS

So there’s Peruvian involvement in this container of nuts. One can never be certain that the nut you are eating wasn’t ethically connected to the repression of the Communists and the support of Israel. So you’d best not have any. At least while anyone's watching.

An international assemblage of snack nuts is not the natural order of the world. This is one of those things we take for granted, because why not? There are always nuts. There have always been nuts.

Why would there not be nuts?

I'm sure some will say there will not be nuts because of Climate Crisis. (You know where I am on that.) It's possible that there should not be a nut-distribution infrastructure, because of the carbon impact. Do you really need those cashews? Have you considered the exploitative conditions that might attend their collection? This inevitably leads to an NGO dedicated to establishing and upholding Ethical Standards in Macademia Gathering, which collects a lot of UN and Foundation money, and works with producers, who are very serious about the mission and attend many meetings and sign agreements, and pocket 65% of the grants.

I think there will be nuts for the foreseeable future, unless the comrades are put in charge.

First the comrades liberate the warehouse where the nuts are kept, to feed the people. (The nuts are gone in a day.) Then they expropriate the export-import company, to ensure fairness in nut sourcing and distribution, and they will put in charge someone with no knowledge whatsoever of the business, but did write his masters thesis on the Racist Nomenclature of Brazil Nuts.

Nuts are still imported, but fewer and fewer, and the quality worsens, as the good nuts go to markets that can pay better in stronger currency or have something useful to trade. A domestic nut-growing initiative is launched, fails, and also manages to drain a huge lake and leave poisoned sediment. The inner party still has copious nut access, of course, and one day a happy fat commissar stops by the bowl in the office, takes a handful of cashews, and smiles as he remembers the day he and his student friends kicked off the overthrow of the old regime when they took over the nut warehouse.

The revolution really did turn out well, he thinks. Before he had to buy his nuts. And now, here, they somehow just appear, for him, endlessly refilled. And they said real Communism has never been tried.

It’s 1922.

It’s like the name of a town in a Frank-Capra-knockoff movie.

So, what’s going on this big wide world?

		Ah. It’s one of those papers.

Roy today:

Didn't boost enough, I guess.

This seems as if it should be a bigger story.

I know it's just a smudge of ink, but I like the term Burglan.

Inasmuch as both have a weak grasp on the idea of responsibility:

Kidding. Although you do wonder what business Dad is shirking.

Here’s the local humor column. Announces itself as being full of Throbs, but gives only thumps. I have no idea what they’re talking about.

More:

Again with the Young America. What was it? There was a mid 19th century political movement with that name. There was a town in Minnesota. Nothing in the Idaho area.

But of course the readers to the paper knew. They got all of this.

Well, yes, that is Roy news.

Government Squirrel man?

Again, there’s nothing there now. No sign there was anything there, ever. Where did it all go?

Thus it was always so, it seems.

luxuries - things taht (sic) we seldom may find

Covered with "license" to fatten the grind

Words for the ages, my friends

I get the impression we are being told it’s a local product

Finally, a full page taken out by the Fall Creek Mercantile Co.

There’s nothing standing in Fall Creek, either.

That'll do! See you hither / yon. Yes, it's even more cellophane ads. We have been cellophane ads all year. The result - and you were there as it was revealed - might be the most authoritative collection of cellophane ads on the internet.