I hold these truths to be self-evident;

A brand new child is born in the United States every eight seconds.

That's 10,800 every day, and 3,942,000 a years.

As 75% of our population is urban, then there are 8,100 new urban babies born every day.

They accumulate, to 2,956,500 new little Urbanites each year.

Between birth and toilet training each child can soil 4500 disposable diapers.

Babies, wet or unfed, have a deliberate way of announcing that their needs are unfulfilled.

Mothers are programmed to be terribly bothered by the demanding sounds their babies produce.

Milk (breast, cow or artificial) is one of the customary ways of meeting a baby's demands.

Superbly packaged breast milk may be dispensed immediately at body temperature.

Shelf stored artificial milk is mixed with water, and may be bought in warehouse quantities nearby.

Cows milk is perishable (if processed with Ultra High Temperature Pasteurization it goes on the shelf).

UHT Pasteurized milk will keep for months unrefrigerated if unopened.

Refrigerated cow's milk ought to be used within two weeks of conventional pasteurization.

There are virtually no cows nearby in urban settings, most cows being rural by nature.

"Rurality" is increasingly distant, given urban sprawl.

Shiny stainless steel long distance trucks are used to collect remote milk.

Cows are relieved of their milk by electrically powered suction machinery, usually twice each day.

In a general power failure, most farmers have stand-by generators to avert bellowing of the unmilked.

Farmers can stand the income loss more easily than they can tolerate the bellowing.

Cow's milk is chilled by electrical power until picked up by trucks from the "Creamery".

Creameries are frequently a portion of interlocking Highly Centralized stock market Capitalism.

Cow's milk is centrally processed at the "Creamery" by means of electric power.

During Maine's ICESTORM '98 "Creameries" were without power and did not gather in milk.

Farmers whose milk was not picked up dumped it on the ground rather than into the "pipeline".

Milk is the quintessence "just in time" commodity, so that any glitch in supply is quickly felt and smelt.

Meanwhile, back in the city, three million whimpering small human milk drinkers wait querulously.

On threat of abstinence three million mothers command any fathers around to go forth, seeking milk.

Food purveyors often share corporate names and control which minimizes the need for local judgement..

Circus elephants would not make good Irish stepdancers.

Urban food stores exhaust their milk supplies more quickly than usual to short term hoarders.

Urban food stores, during a power outage cannot refrigerate milk, nor operate checkout counters.

Young checkout clerks cannot add nor subtract using a pencil and paper sack, and are machine dependent.

There are no paper sacks, just plastic.

Chain drug stores carry infant formula, but are ganglia far from the master brain which commands them.

Without electrical energy Central Drug's computer cannot command itself to resupply its many affiliates.

Toward the end of the First Regional Power Glitch, mother command father to go forth once again.

Father is instructed not to return home without baby support items.

VISA and American Express cards are mute and powerless to help in the widespread darkness.

Father slips a small 25 caliber automatic into his formerly wallet pocket.

During a Great Regional Power Glitch the city is motorless, thus silent, except for babies and pistol shots.

Boom! Boom! Why the shotgun?…there are no ducks around here!

Buildings without electric motors and/or fireplaces go cold.

Fire fighters have no water to pump onto towering infernos ignited by wastebasket fires

The crackling of fire follows many hours after the crackling of pistol shots.

The City is a millipede and thus has a thousand Achilles' Heels.

By Cassandra Nostradamus