Plaanning This Season's Garden

With Earth Day upon us and Spring in the air, it’s time to plant this year’s garden. Gardening gained many new adherents last year as a COVID-appropriate activity. But gardening rookies and regulars alike are often unaware of the key nutrients gardens deliver, and therefore fail to take them into account when planning their annual planting. Here are some for your review. Happy Earth Day, and happy gardening!

VITAMIN S

Bountiful bowls of crisp, leafy salad greens deliver key nutrients, among them Vitamin C, vitamin K, and beta carotene. But they also help the body to produce its own, often-overlooked, Vitamin S, commonly referred to as Sanctimony.

Societal levels of Vitamin S have historically been stable and modest, but in the past four years a virtual explosion of Vitamin S has been observed throughout the general population. Outbreaks were first noted in the first week of November, 2016, in places such as San Francisco, Boston, Brooklyn, Portland, and other progressive urban centers, leading nutritionists to wonder whether Vitamin S could be obtained in such foods as brie, sea bass, kale, quinoa, kombucha, and soy-based meat substitutes. But in recent years, Vitamin S levels in the general public have burgeoned far beyond those initial readings.

Unfortunately, nutritionists warn that, like cholesterol, Vitamin S can come in both “good” and “bad” forms. “Good” Vitamin S comes from the satisfaction derived from activities with ethical or other normative worth -- gardening ranks high among these sources. And while these activities are often characterized as “their own reward,” some accretion of Vitamin S is inevitable when participating not just in gardening, but also such activities as feeding the hungry, providing water to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, tending to the sick, and visiting the imprisoned, an observation first made by a Roman-era practitioner named Matthew (although Eastern practitioners in the Buddhist tradition often stand-by the “own reward” diagnosis and see Vitamin S accrual as a serious problem). Moreover, a surge in “bad” Vitamin S has recently occurred alongside rising levels of social media use and the ensuing higher levels of disinformation, and preliminary evidence suggests “bad” Vitamin S levels can be found, alongside with the COVID virus, in non-mask-wearers around the country.

“Vitamin S is a little like chocolate -- both are guilty pleasures in moderation, but both become destructive as a way of life,” said Abner Lint, a USDA nutritionist. To demonstrate his point, Lint points to the Vitamin S superspreader event at the U.S. Capitol this January, where many rioters appeared to have overdosed on Vitamin S and as a result lapsed into borderline-psychotic episodes. The result has been a subsequent calamitous rise of “bad” Vitamin S in the general population. “If the ‘good’ Vitamin S obtained from activities such as gardening supplanted the ‘bad’ Vitamin S found on social media,” nutritionist Lint notes, “we’d all be a lot healthier.”

VITAMIN P

Vitamin P, widely available as Patience, is an essential nutrient that can be obtained from the home garden. Gardeners who see the fuzzy nubs of cucumbers emerging from their yellow blossoms or the green underbellies of unripe tomatoes on the vine obtain hard-to-synthesize Vitamin P in ample quantities as these vegetables ripen in the garden, although recipes such as fried green tomatoes or sauteed baby carrots, which incorporate garden produce before it is fully ripe, convey no Vitamin P benefit whatsoever to those who consume them. Conversely, there are isolated instances of Vitamin P overdose in the garden. Lettuces, spinaches, herbs, and other crops that will “go to seed” in situations in which there is too much Vitamin P, and too little Vitamin W (see below), applied. A good example is okra, which must be harvested while new, lest it grow to lengths at which its only productive use is as barbed wire for penal systems in totalitarian societies.

Vitamin P is widely unappreciated in popular health discussions, but its benefits make it an essential component of any diet. “We know that people with higher levels of Vitamin P have lower blood pressure, enjoy sexual activity more pronouncedly, have greater longevity, and clearer skin,” said one garden nutritionist. “It’s not surprising Vitamin P is universally recognized as a virtue.”

Scientists, however, note an unanticipated incongruity in the distribution of Vitamin P among the general population. Despite their shorter remaining life expectancies, the elderly as a group demonstrate higher levels of Vitamin P than do the young, who should have far longer time horizons. “Youth may be served,” says physiologist Howie Doux, “but youth appears to demand to be served right now.” Scientists now believe aging improves the body’s ability to produce and store Vitamin P. Some gardening enthusiasts, therefore, encourage sharing the pursuit with children early in life, in order to avoid Vitamin P deficiencies that often plague the teenage and young adult years.

VITAMIN W

Vitamin W, commonly known by its street name, Work, is closely associated with gardening and garden-grown produce. A row of productive, disease-free, mulched, pruned, and staked tomato plants are a clear indication large amounts of Vitamin W have been absorbed by the gardener.

Nutritionists note that Vitamin W is prevalent throughout the population – like Vitamin D conveyed by sunshine, most people must all but consciously avoid it in order to fail to get an adequate dose. But the age distribution of Vitamin W levels is often skewed. Young people often avoid Vitamin W-creating opportunities, preferring indoor activities, such as gaming or collecting NFTs, which lead to chronic Vitamin W deficiency, and muscular atrophy and ossification of key neurons needed in later life. Scientists point to previous cohorts of young people who obtained both Vitamin D and Vitamin W through Little league Baseball, lawn mowing, dog walking, such employments as warehouse-sweeping, snow shoveling, stockroom and shelf cleaning, and delivering kosher meat on bicycles, or, less frequently, running away from home. These activities are less prevalent in today’s population of young people, and many of their preferred pastimes such as Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto CCLXIV, and Super Mario Brothers are often thought to convey “false” Vitamin W that delivers none of its long-term benefits, so-called “empty ergs.”

Conversely, the elderly appear to have a declining tolerance for Vitamin W. Large doses of it among seniors sometimes produce symptoms such as backache, dizziness, corns and callouses, and whining. Others among the elderly appear to be Vitamin W-dependent, unable to stop building their Vitamin W levels even after a lifetime of accumulation. On the other hand, most of the elderly have built up adequate reserves of Vitamin W through their lifetimes and are perfectly pleased to stop their exposure to it.

Finally, economists note that some people are never exposed to Vitamin W in any form. These people are sometimes referred to as “coupon clippers,” “passive investors,” “rentiers,” and “the idle rich.” Nutritionists point to the absence of Vitamin W among these groups as the source of their skewed social outlook and their fundamental dissociation from reality, including such beliefs that the poor are lazy, regulation is kneecapping society, and All Lives Matter. Such well-known personalities as Betsy DuVos and Wilbur Ross are thought to have be stricken with these maladies – it is believed to have killed Sheldon Adelson. “If you know someone like that,” says physician Carol Salt, “the best thing you can do for them is to give them a hoe and a shovel and point them to some dirt. They might complain, but you’d be saving a life.”

VITAMIN M

Many would-be gardeners confuse the relationship between gardening vegetables and the provision of Vitamin M, money. Besotted would-be gardeners walk the produce aisles at their supermarkets in February and see waxy, gas-ripened tomatoes and scrawny summer squashes selling for three or four dollars a pound, and dream of growing bell peppers come July bigger than their fists and eggplants the size of rabbits. They proceed to plant in anticipation of large doses of Vitamin M, but when it is time to harvest, they see fruits and vegetables at their local farmers markets that put their own to shame at prices that do not justify their efforts.

That is not to say gardening provides no Vitamin M to the gardener. Under the right conditions – for example, wartime “victory” gardens or the plots managed by private citizens in Soviet-style command-and-control economies – gardens can produce Vitamin M in copious amounts. But for the average gardener, significant amounts of Vitamin M must be expended before any return is realized. In this regard, Vitamin M and Vitamin W have a complex interaction. Moreover, many aspects of the annual gardening cycle require significant expenditures of Vitamin M, from tools and implements to seed and fertilizer to liniment and braces for backs, knees, wrists, and hands. The average person is more likely to realize higher Vitamin M levels on the job than in the garden.

VITAMIN H

The most fundamental, but also most controversial and often elusive, nutrient obtained from the garden is Vitamin H, Happiness. Its fundamental character is widely understood, but long-standing problems plague identifying how the body obtains and processes it. One view is gardeners find satisfaction and fulfillment when tending a successful garden, over and above their accretion of Vitamins S, P, and W. (The relationship between Vitamins H and M, on the other hand, is even more contentious, although most agree that Vitamin M cannot secure Vitamin H, but at the same time, it doesn’t hurt.)

A contrasting view is that the body’s levels of Vitamin H are entirely endogenous, that with the proper training and perspective, the body can produce its own, perhaps unlimited, endowments of Vitamin H, a condition known to practitioners as “mellow.” In fact, one school of thought maintains that people with a predisposition to higher levels of Vitamin H are more prone to choose to garden, and the correlation between the two reflects selection bias in the data. Perhaps the best test is for the individual to note their Vitamin H before and after a few hours of planting, weeding, composting, and other activities that lead to the foremost clinical symptom of Vitamin H obtained from the garden - dirty hands.

Name That Beast!

Genesis, Chapter 2, v. 19-20, The Old Testament

And God said, “Let us make Man in our own image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds in the heavens, and the cattle and every crawling thing that crawls upon the earth…And the Lord God formed out of the Earth every beast of the field and every fowl of the heavens, and he brought each to the Man to see what he would call it, and whatever the Man called a living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the fowl of the heavens and to all the beasts of the field.”

From the Book of Horus and Andromedea, Testament of the Divine Dolphin

And the Divine Dolphin said, “Let us make Dolphins in my own image, and let them have dominion over the mackerel, squid, and jellyfish so they may eat them, and let them frolic and dance adorably on the surface of the waters and utter clicks, whistles, shrieks, and rattles. And God formed out of the Earth every fish and every crustacean and every invertebrate and every ocean-dwelling mammal, and He brought each one to Horus and Andromeda, the First Dolphins, and whatever clicks or whistles or shrieks or rattles they called them became their name. And so the First Dolphins gave names to all the fish and all the crustaceans and all the invertebrates and all the aquatic mammals, but the names were just a bunch of clicks and whistles and shrieks and rattles and no one else could understand them and did not care. And as for the land-dwelling creatures, they all left the First Dolphins alone, except for the hairless bipeds who made strange vocalizations but could not click, whistles, shriek, or rattle, so they called him “the thing with cameras.”

From the Bow Dow Dao, Book of Dog

And the Old Dog said, “Let us make Dogs in our own image, and let them have dominion over the backyards and the dog parks. And the Old Dog gave every beast of the field a scent and brought each to Rex, the First Dog, who smelled their assholes and however each living creature smelled, that was its scent. And so the cats were called “Vicious Temperament Poop in Boxes,” and the mice were called “Little Stinkies Who Hide in Walls,” and the hairless bipeds who filled their Dog bowls were called “Good Smelly Parts in the Middle.” But no matter how the beasts of the field smelled, they did not smell as good as the dogs’ own feces and urine, and so they called the feces “Recycling” and they called their urine “The Message Board.” And Rex, the First Dog, barked loudly at all the fowl of the heavens and the beasts of the field until he finally peed and the Old Dog told him “Good boy!” and chucked him behind the ear and let him inside.

From movie, Godzilla: The Secret Origins

And the Lord God looked upon the Earth and said, let there be a hundred-foot lizard-like monster, and let him be called Godzilla, for I am God and "zilla" sounds kind of cool. And the Lord breathed the Breath of Life into Godzilla but he overdid it and endowed Godzilla with blue-ish nuclear breath, which proved to be a problem when he showed every beast of the field and bird of the air and fish of the sea to Godzilla, for instead of naming them, he incinerated them with his nuclear breath. And the Lord created furless bipeds and the furless bipeds built cities and Godzilla walked among the cities and destroyed them along with tens of thousands with his breath and his tail, and so Godzilla came to represent the horrors of nuclear war, and urban renewal. And the Lord said, “I might have screwed up on this one, even worse than stinkbugs,”

From the Testimony of the Divine Cockroach

And the Divine Cockroach said, “Let me make a cockroach in my own image, and let him be named Lester, and the Divine Cockroach brought unto Lester the dinosaurs who lived in the swamps and the inland lakes and the primordial bogs, and asked Lester to name them, which he probably did, but how would we know? For then a great meteor crashed into someplace in Mexico, and annihilated the dinosaurs who dwelled in the swamps, lakes, and bogs, but Lester and the cockroaches survived. And when new birds of the air and fish of the sea and cattle and things that crawl upon the earth arrived, the Divine Cockroach showed Lester all the new animals to see what he would call them, but Lester could not care less and told the Divine Cockroach, “Call them what they wilst, for I shall plague them forevermore regardless.” So, the Divine Cockroach put Lester and the cockroaches in the walls of apartment buildings and in drains and pipes in your basement and in cartons you never unpacked in the attic and gave him dominion over them. And the Divine Cockroach made unto Lester and his offspring a Sacred Covenant, promising that much as the dinosaurs were killed millions of years ago but the cockroaches survived, when the birds and fish and cattle and beast and furless bipeds that walk upon the Earth die out as the dinosaurs did, which shouldn’t take long at this rate, he will find for the cockroaches new beasts to torment and new places to dwell. And the cockroaches said, “That’s cool, but the dinosaurs did get to become birds.”

From Arbor Benedictus, the Holy Book of Trees

And the Lord said, “Let us make Trees in our own image, tall and green and leafy after My likeness, and let them have dominion over all the land. And the Lord created the birds of the air to dwell within the trees and the bees of the hive to help the trees bear fruit and the cattle and every crawling thing upon the Earth so they would consume the fruit and seed of the trees and carry those to the four corners of the earth in their bowels. And the Lord God took every bird and beast and showed them to the First Tree to see what the First Tree would call them, but the First Tree had no idea what the Lord was talking about and did not give the birds and beasts a name, although it did give itself a name, which was “Groot.” The First Tree instead spoke to the other trees in a language of root fungi and low-voltage electric signals and pheromone releases neither the birds nor the beasts nor the Lord, actually, understood, until he saw the movie Avatar. And so the Trees flourished and became numerous until the beast the Lord called Man invented newspapers and furniture and soy beans and fossil fuels, and that was about it for the trees, period, full stop.

From Propogenesis, Holy Scripture of Viruses

And the First Virus said, “Let us take strands of protein, made in our own image, and let them attach themselves to the fish of the sea and the birds in the heavens and the furless bipeds and everything else that crawls upon the earth, and let them commandeer their DNA and dwell therein so that the Viruses shall live. And the First Virus was formed out of the beasts, birds, and fish, and the pig was next to the duck who was next to the bat, and the virus jumped from one to the other and attached itself to all the beasts and all the fowl and became contagious, and delivered songs of praise to the First Virus while the animals it infected died. And when the Virus infected an animal it asked “What is this thing?,” but since the Virus could not see or smell or speak, it gave names to the creatures it infected according to their circumstances, including “Immunologically Deficient,” “Compromised Resistance,” "Drinks Bleach," and “Likes Yummy Bat.” And then the virus came to America but not everybody cared so the virus went to the motorcycle rallies and the Supreme Court nomination ceremonies and the Superbowl celebrations and some of the beasts called the virus “Chinese Flu” but the virus did not pay attention because it did not speak English, although even if it understood what it was being called it would have been offended, because even a simple strand of protein knows racism when it hears it.

The Republican Tax Program

The Senate and House Republicans valiantly opposed the rat‑race‑losing malcontents who enacted President Biden’s broad rescue package over their opposition, and are similarly adamant about the Administration’s public investment package. But, as has been the case in such diverse areas as health care, climate change, immigration, gun violence, infrastructure, deficit reduction, and insurrection, their opposition does not instruct us as to what they are for.

This “what are you for” conundrum dovetails with the party’s search for direction. While their views on transgendered woman’s place in sports and migrants interceded at the border address urgent national emergencies, the party continues to search for new ideas. But they are hampered not just by a lack of will and wit but, as one close source put it, “a profound distrust of anything substantive. Substantive ideas reek of the arrogance of elites who have had an ‘education’ and ‘experience’ and use them to ‘think.’ Two plus two equaling four doesn’t have the same caché it once did.”

So, do the Republicans have new ideas? In fact, they do, and here are some of them.

The Equipment That Doesn't Work Tax Credit. According to the Commerce Department’s economic statistics, albethey contorted by deep state Rumpelstiltskins, American business investment -- everything from lathes to computers to blast furnaces – fell for five straight quarters in 2019 and 2020. “This was one of the great successes of the Trump Administration tax program,” said former Treasury Secretary and producer of the new feature film, Me You Madness: The Sequel, Steve Mnuchin. “Instead of wasting time making risky investments in actual, but unneeded, things, our corporations used the tax cut we couldn’t afford but passed anyway to buy back their stock and to pay their shareholders dividends, which made American great again. Certainly for them.”

But given the plunge in investment, much of the private sector’s equipment is now aging and no longer works. The solution? “We need to pass a tax credit for businesses that donate their equipment that doesn't work to local community colleges or other educational institutions. Our economy's equipment that doesn't work is a hidden national treasure," says Cuthbert J. Twillie, Executive Director of the Business Coalition For The Best Economy We Could Imgine. "A tax credit for companies that donate equipment that no longer works to community colleges would give those companies an added incentive to buy new and better equipment that probably does work, while they would be giving our community colleges equipment that might once again be fully operational if they whack it on the side a little or take it to the repair shop run by those two Palestinian guys over by the industrial park. It's a classic win‑win situation."

The "Negative Income Tax". Fifty years ago, erstwhile Presidential candidate and Communist sympathizer George McGovern proposed a "negative income tax" – a tax that gave rather than took money to people below a certain level of income. Today’s populists have revived that proposal, albeit with a twist.

"Our proposal is different," explains Presidential economics advisor and Medal of Freedom winner Larson Whipsnade. "We intend to tax negative income. That is, if people go broke – or, technically, make outrageous levels negative income – we intend to tax them."

Heartless? Not according to leading conservative practitioners of the dismal science. "People who go broke represent a staggering waste of human and financial resources. So long as we encourage going broke with favorable tax treatment, we'll get more of it. We stand for letting people keep their positive income, but taxing their negative income. It’s a classic win-win situation, except for those who don’t win." They see the government’s response to the COVID pandemic as making their point. “We spent a fortune in taxpayer money to avoid business bankruptcies, and even though it prevented substantial numbers of them, it cost hundreds of billions of dollars we could have used to cut taxes for the rich and the dead. If people who went broke faced a substantial tax penalty, there’d be less whining and idleness and more going to work, even if it’s not obvious where,” said Ambrose Wolfinger, an analyst at the Uriah Heep Institute for Social Change. “It’s essential that we get this proposal into law before immigrants bring the next pandemic to our country.”

COVID State ”Service Charge.” “Too many armchair quarterbacks are criticizing former-President Trump’s reaction to the COVID-19 crisis,” says Eustace McGargle at the Lester Maddox Institute for the Study of Federalism. “His reaction to the pandemic was a stunning victory for our federalism system, in which the federal and state governments are equal partners, even if one of those partners can print twenty dollar bills at will and the other has to balance the books each year, come hell or high water. Had President Trump not forced the states to bid against each other for supplies and equipment on their own dime, there’s no telling what kind of anarchy and ineffectiveness we would have experienced.”

At the top of this list of accomplishments are the various vaccines now being distributed under President Biden. “Consider what the situation would have been if each state were responsible to develop and test its own vaccine,” McGargle argues. “There would be utter confusion. But President Trump had the wisdom to avoid that. So, when you look at it in the clear light of day, the states owe the federal government a debt of gratitude for promoting vaccine innovation, and it’s time to repay it.”

Their proposal calls for the states to repay the costs of vaccine development by imposing a “COVID service fee” on them. “We’ve already established they were responsible for masks, respirators, and a host of other equipment, so it’s illogical to let them off the hook for the vaccine itself. After all, everybody who gets the vaccine lives in a state, or a territory if they’re not white. Let the states pay the federal government a ‘COVID service fee’ for each vaccine they administer. Everybody who gets a shot in their arm not only acquires immunity, but reduces the deficit. It’s a classic win-win situation.”

The “Impeachment User Fee.” Perhaps Senator Marco Rubio said it best. “Only in the Third World do you see this habitual use of prosecutions of former leaders. You go through Latin America; virtually every immediate past president is under indictment or in jail.” Rubio mansplained his remark in The Washington Post. “It is pretty typical in the Third World that, after someone’s out of office, they lose, they leave, the party that takes power then prosecutes them. It happens all over the world. And that’s the precedent we’re creating here now,” the impish legislator remarked, explaining his vote to condone treasonous misconduct.

This insightful remark inspired economists at the prestigious Caligula Institute. Their response is a proposal for an “impeachment user fee,” akin to the fees charged for using highways or ports. “They’re really very similar,” said Edgar Sousé, a Caligula staffer said. “When people use the services the government provides, there’s broad consensus we have the right to make them pay for what they consume. Impeachment is no different. A simple fee imposed on any Member of Congress who votes to impeach a President would roll back this dangerous wave of accountability, particularly in the face of multiple impeachments, which is obvious evidence of abuse. I’m sure we can all agree with Senator Susan Collins, who pointed out after President Trump’s first impeachment, ‘I believe that the President has learned from this case. The president has been impeached. That's a pretty big lesson. And there has been criticism by both Republican and Democratic senators of his call (to the Ukrainian President). I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.’ As she made clear in this insightful statement, a second impeachment would be a waste of time and resources for which those who voted for it should repay the nation, starting with her.”

A Personal Income Tax Deduction to the Unborn. "Everybody except the Supreme Court, the Chinese Communist Party, and the tax code recognizes the unborn are people,” argues T. Frothingill Bellows, chief economist of the Center for Faith-Based Revenue Policy. Under his proposal, families reporting unborn children would receive the same standard deduction of $2,000 as do “post-unborn” children. “Maybe extending this treatment to the unborn will eliminate the widespread practice of jumping up and down to induce labor before the tax year ends in order to gain the extra deduction for autonomously aerobicizing fetuses, or as the mainstream media calls them, babies. It’s a classic win-win situation."

But not all Republicans agree. Economists at the Torquemada Institute for Public Confession express caution regarding the proposal's interaction with other features of tax policy. "It's a fine idea," argues economist and Elmer Prettywillie, "and we support the idea that any inadvertent, helpless product of conception has the right to be brought to term, citizenship, and jury duty. But what many overlook is this -- the standard deduction is phased out at the upper income brackets, which means this proposal would give a greater incentive to poorer people to have more babies than rich people. And since we know that poor people aren't as smart or hard‑working, or for that matter attractive, as rich people, we'll just be creating a greater burden for our economy down the line."

But will the idea work? “I can only hope so,” said Charles Bogle, a seven-week fetus in Waltham, Massachusetts. “My taxes are too high already.”