As the end of another year passes in this weird society of ours, we are all encouraged to become nostalgic, looking back over the past year, assessing, weighing, seeking meaning in what has transpired in our lives. All sorts of year-end retrospectives begin to appear, and the lists come out to play…. Yes, the year end-lists….

The Year’s Best Photos, The Year’s Best Music, The Year’s Best Movies, The Damn Year’s Bloody Best This, That, and/or the Frigging Other, all begin to shout from the covers of magazines, grab us from the internet pages we visit, blare out over the radio, or inundate us with visuals in the latest videos, all for the BEST of whatever is currently in vogue on the editor’s tiny mind….

I’m not sure how this little tradition became so ubiquitous; we used to see it just a bit, in the newspapers, when I was a kid, and maybe a little bit on the radio…. When TV started to become the media of choice for most households, in the late 50’s & early 60’s, the news departments of the TV stations were tasked with coming up with new lists every year, and the race to find the most egregiously stupid list possible was on!….. Ever since then, we are bombarded each December with whatever ideas for new lists that the idiots in those departments can come up with, trying to get the lion’s share of the viewers to tune in to them, rather than to the competitors….

Actually, what I mentioned above, that I don’t know how this started, is an inadvertent falsehood; I DO know why we get deluged with all of these asinine judgments of EVERYTHING they can think of to list….. It occurs to me that I’ve really ALWAYS known what’s behind the whole scenario…. In fact, it’s really quite obvious why we are subjected to all of this hoopla during this last week of the year…..

Christmas, the biggest shopping spree of the year, is officially over, and the shadowy corporate masters of society, fresh from their latest gorging on the public’s outpouring of cash, but, still greedy, want the REST of the money y’all have squirreled away, so they can squeeze out every little iota of profit from 2013, in preparation for the new assaults on your pocketbook in 2014…. They like to make sure they get it all, and balance their books before starting on the new set….

Yep, ffolkes, it’s all just another mind game, a scam, brought to you, whether you wish it or not, by those avaricious capitalists who use their shadowy influence to direct the wishes and desires of the great unwashed masses, who never even stop to think about whether or not any of what they are seeing or doing has any real benefits for them….

These well-trained consumers are blind to how they are manipulated into spending money they don’t really have, to keep up with the competition with their neighbors and peers, to acquire useless, expensive toys that have no real purpose in their lives….. Magic shoes, electronic wonders, terminally cute icons, sexy cars, all are presented in such ways as to make their acquisition seem to be a necessity, removing it from the realm of luxury into need….

I mean, really, ffolkes, do we NEED to have the year’s hottest selling doll for our own child, just because they are manipulated into wanting it? Is that the correct way to teach our children about giving? About love, or about life? I don’t think so, myself, but, then, I’m strange, as we know…. I never felt the crushing need to have a new car every year that seems to be the ultimate desire of a great many Americans….

Nor do I feel the pressing need to buy gifts for people once a year, when I should be interacting with them, showing them love and compassion, throughout the year…. Being compassionate toward my fellow man isn’t something that should be confined to one season, yet that is how we are taught to view the world by those assholes who have their attention focused on our money, and  their own rapacious desires for power and control…..

Well, when I began this little bit of discussion, I hadn’t intended to rant; this is, after all, the introduction section…. But, it just sort of grew into what it is according to what it said, and how that made me feel as I wrote…. I got madder and madder as I progressed, until I had to take a short break, to find the center again….

Unfortunately for us all, that center slipped quite a bit off course, by a matter of over 120 degrees, at least, and it has taken me an inordinate amount of time to find my balance again…. Bloody damn assholes…. Every time I start to think about all the SHIT they hand out to the unwitting masses of people out there, I get incensed, and want to go buy a gun….

Ah well, at least this came at an opportune time today…. I can now use this as my rant, as well as a much more than adequate introduction, and go on about the rest of my business as if none of it happened…. Of course, that doesn’t get the BRC & PTB off the hook, necessarily…. I’m sure I can still find a verbal bullet or two in my vest, to reload and take a couple more shots before I’m done today…. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even rant again…. Since I have no written agenda, merely an outline, empty of subjects, I can do what comes naturally…. And, most of the time, I do…. Like now, for instance….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.” — Henry Miller
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One of my blogging friends, Professor Chuq, over on his site, In Saner Thought, informs me he is working on a piece on “The Second American Revolution”, and will inform me when it is done…. I’m looking forward to it, as that concept has been in my own mind frequently of late, a concept that I believe warrants more attention than it is currently receiving from the public.

It is patently true that if we wish for things to change, we must go about creating those changes ourselves. The Powers That Be, the beloved ruling class and their shadowy corporate masters, are not going to allow any changes that don’t include their supremacy, not without a struggle, but, if we wish to survive, as a species, there is no other choice but to make changes in the way things are being done…..

In my opinion, any Second American Revolution will need to be more of a spiritual revolution than a physical one, and, in the case of our species, an evolutionary change as well, for it is human nature which MUST change…. It is clear to almost anyone who has a functioning brain cell, one that isn’t focused on remaining ignorant, that we cannot wait any longer to make the changes that will keep our planet from bursting at the seams with the garbage we have dumped EVERYWHERE, sickening us, and all the other creatures with whom we live, killing many of them, and making irrevocable changes to the delicate planetary balance, a biochemical balance that keeps the whole shebang working as it does….

Here I am ranting again, and it’s only six AM in the morning, during the slowest news week of the year….. what a life, eh? Ah well, it could be worse…. I’m not clear as to just HOW it could be worse right now, what with global warming, overpopulation, and imminent extinction for all life as our current set of issues to deal with, but, I’m sure I could think of something that could send some chills down your spine. But, I’m tired of being gloomy and upset, even if my targets deserve all I can throw at them….

Since I’m crapping out on another extended rant, I’ll go old-school, to finish out the thoughts we’re discussing…. I’m looking forward to the Professor’s take on the necessity for changes in this country, and to the dialogue I’m sure it will create…. In the meantime, let’s see what Smart Bee can find for our amusement and/or edification….

“It seems a little silly now, but this country was founded as a protest against taxation.” — Smart Bee

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, –that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

— John Keats (1795-1821) — Ode on a Grecian Urn

“Politicians are the same all over.  They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.” — Nikita S. Khrushchev (1894-1971)

“All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“Society can only pursue its normal course by means of a certain progression of changes.” — John, Viscount Morley

“Never do a thing concerning the rectitude of which you are in doubt.” — Pliny the Younger (61-105 AD) — Letters, Book i, Letter xviii, 5

Ah…. a good one, as it turns out. Eclectic, obscure, subtly ironic, viciously mendacious, yet never mundane, or despairing… just the way I like them….
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I’m not sure how it worked, but I actually picked this out yesterday to run today, not knowing, at that time, that it would fit in this well…. which, IMLTCHO*, it does…. Enjoy!…..

Okay, that didn’t work…. The first three lines I wrote here were incredibly dumb, and were deleted soon after hitting the screen…. Seriously, I don’t think I could have written anything more mundane or, hell, just say it, plain old bad…. Let’s try this, instead….

I’ve ranted, sort of, and made a pearl of the older variety. I’ve poemed. (That’s a word I just made up, meaning I included a poem, either mine, fresh or old, or someone else’s, ditto…..) I’ve cogitated, I’ve composed, and I’ve drunk some coffee. My feet stink, my back hurts, and I don’t even love Jesus…. No, wait, that’s a Jimmy Buffet song…. I think…. No, that was, “my breath stinks, my feet hurt, and I don’t even love Jesus”…. Maybe…. I forget… Oh well… you get the picture….

Never mind. Any who, to get on with it…. It’s still early, and I’m about done, but, I don’t feel up to anything complicated…. so, I’ll foist off another piece from the archives on y’all, my compassionate, understanding, indulgent, unsuspecting audience, no matter how tiny, or huge…. (In numbers, not size…. I have no idea how big or small any of y’all are, do I? No, of course not….)

What I found for y’all today is a simple piece, and much shorter than usual for me, so there’s a small bonus, eh? You can’t say I don’t consider my readers, can you?…. Well, maybe it’s best if we don’t even THINK about that concept right now, okay?…. Here, this is better, for all of us….

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From April 2012:

During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai E. Stevenson “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson called back “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”

Obviously, this implies he was part of the minority, along with not enough voters…. Mr. Stevenson was perhaps the last truly rational man to run for the highest office our country offers, hindered only by his commitment to honesty. I’ve seen a number of articles about that campaign, and it’s clear in my mind that his very rationality is what gave the election to the other candidate.

He made every attempt he could to try to engage the minds of Americans, naively, as it turns out. His opponent, Eisenhower, just mostly kept his mouth shut and let his slogans speak for him, such as “I like Ike!”, and other such intellectual standards, that appealed directly to the American public’s misplaced sense of national pride.

After four years of post WWII and the Korean war economic boom(s), it wasn’t hard for the Republicans to rest on their laurels, firmly attached to the coattails of a war hero…. There was, and still is, no place on the political scene in this country for rationality, obviously, as Ike and his ilk won in a landslide…. So much for the opportunity to see what a “thinking man’s president” might be able to accomplish….

The chances of such a man being elected today are even slimmer, considering that, in today’s media-frenzied world, those candidates who can be the most sly, underhanded, and completely dishonest, are those who catch the eye, and the votes, of the great unwashed, uneducated masses who now comprise the voting public….

“It has been said that man is a rational animal.  All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” — Bertrand Russell
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Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below.

— John Dryden (1631-1700) — All for Love, Prologue

It is apparent to me, and most likely, to the most casual observer, that today, I’ve covered the complete gamut of surface errors to lustrous pearls from far below…. Far be it from me to stand in the way of progress, so, with no further fuss or muss, I’m outta here…. Well, until tomorrow…. See ya….

Y’all take care out there,
and May the Metaphorse be with you;
Blessed Be, dearest  Carole, Mark, and Theresa…
and everyone else, too…

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.