I don’t believe I’m going to take this any further…. it’s too much like the morning routine around here for comfort…. We’ll leave the poor fools who got stuck colonizing a less-than-perfect choice in planets to their miserable lives, and go on to bigger and better things, right here on Earth….. Lucky us….. I don’t suppose y’all have any cool ideas on tap, do you? I could use a few to punch up this intro section once again, since it seems to have made its usual fast start, and quick death…..

Unfortunately, I’ve already moved beyond the point where anything would actually help; it could even make things worse, should I try now to add ingredients that might not mix well with what is already down on paper, so to speak. In fact, at this point, it could conceivably start a flash fire, and then I’d have to break out the extinguisher, and call the fire department, and…. well, it could end up a real mess. I think not…. I’m not quite in the mood for any such nonsense so early in the day…. Shoot, it’s just barely 0700, no time to play around with potential conflagrations….

If things don’t alter course soon, I’m going to have to use another emergency procedure, and I don’t want to have to do that; I’ve had to use several lately, and haven’t had time to replace them. If I use another one, I’m going to end up with only one on hand for a real emergency, and that would be the one that NOBODY wants to see me use, #9, which involves the use of incubi, enferi, and the invincible armies of Hell, just to clear the way for the real procedure, which, sad to say, involves the end of life as we know it…..

No, I’ll wait on #9, and on # 6, which is what I was going to use today, a rather effective procedure that entails some rather entertaining creatures from a planet halfway across the galaxy, who have a fascinating tendency to explode when they reach a temperature above freezing…. They are a bit tricky to handle, especially in the summer, and expensive to keep frozen between uses. I guess it’s time to stock up again, on #’s 1-5, and #’s 7 & 8, all of which I’ve had to use recently….. Oh, well, it will give me something to do on these long, cold winter nights…. Oops, I live in California; we don’t have any of those here on the coast…. Well, I’ll have to make time somewhere….

Oh, look, it’s an intro section! I wonder how that got here? Gosh, if I didn’t know better, I’d think I designed it this way…. but, we all know better, don’t we? Sure…. Any who, it’s six paragraphs, none of which make any more sense than the one before, and that is enough to fulfill the rather loose standards I’ve come to accept for this section. It’s gotten so that I’ll take almost anything that holds together for that long, as I can’t seem to find a cozy, familiar pattern to follow each day…. Of course, if I did find a method like that, it would bore me to tears within a few days…. Better I stick to what I know, and just babble for a while, before I start diving for pearls….

Speaking of which, shall we Pearl?…..
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“Republican views of the world differ from Democratic views of the world. The reason for this is that these views are based on different compilations of misinformation.” — Smart Bee

There are moments, such as this one, when I believe the people, or person, who put together the database known to me as Smart Bee, is perhaps the most intelligent creature on this planet….. I’ve been ranting about politicians for years, trying to show people how dangerous it is to believe ANY of the stuff that either party is slinging at us to try to convince us they are worthy of our votes. Now, in one short aphorism, of two lines, we are given a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of the crap we hear from them…. Essentially, this says that every one of them is full of shit, and everything they say and do is destined to fail, because it is ALL based on incorrect information, or, to be more accurate, on unwarranted assumptions about reality…..

The most important part of this description is its impartiality of indictment. Both parties are brought into scrutiny, and found wanting, of any real knowledge of the truth, because they are both basing all of their premises on false beliefs, just for starters. Add to that, since they are politicians by choice, their genetic predisposition is to self-aggrandizement, and they show an inherent inability to tell the truth. It becomes rather easily seen why our society has become, well, insane…. It’s a short trip to crazy from where they begin the journey…. and they don’t take any detours on the road….

You see, both parties are convinced of a complete falsehood, one that humanity has been struggling with for centuries…. This lie is so basic, it colors and affects everything they do to try to manipulate the world into going the way they wish it to go. As long as they continue to try to do this, our society is doomed to failure in the long run, for the lie goes against the very nature of reality…. Simply put, these people believe they can legislate morality…. They believe that they can make laws, and people will go against their very nature to follow them, in spite of the fact that the law they propose is contrary to what comes naturally to humans, to wit: self-centered, grasping behaviors that only benefit the perpetrator, and no one else…..

We have laws against stealing…. and the most accomplished thieves we see in our culture wear suits and live in Washington D.C. We have laws against killing each other, but, people still get killed, and, if the killers do so while wearing a flag, or a badge, they are considered heroes, no matter how many they kill. We have laws that supposedly protect women, children, and the aged, from suffering abuse, but, just look around you, and you will see no end to the depredations that society allows to be perpetrated upon these three most vulnerable members of our society, all very much within the legal limits of the public morality, as given in the law books….

“[…] For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner […] on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. […] That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.” — Carl Sagan

The people who get involved in politics, and religion, for much the same reason, believe they are special, and entitled to take all they can from the universe, because they are the be-all, and end-all of the evolutionary ladder. It says so right there in the Bible….. They don’t care that reality says differently, because their sense of denial has been fine-tuned since shortly after they were born, and they are capable of ignoring facts right up until they slap them in the face…. (Witness the Republican melt-down in the last Presidential election, when the Republican party got slapped in the face by their own lack of contact with reality…..)

In spite of all the massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, these folks believe in their own divine entitlement as the lords of creation, chosen by God to do with this planet as we would, without regard for any of the other creatures that live here with us, or for the beauty and balance of the land that sustains us. As far as they are concerned, other people and animals, and natural resources, are theirs to do with as they wish, with God’s blessing…. The fucking assholes…..

I apologize for the vulgarity, to my readers, but not to those at whom it is directed…. To them, I say, fuck you, and fuck you again…. I regard all politicians, priests, preachers, police, lawyers, judges, and corporate misogynists of all shapes and sizes to be INSANE…. floridly, and viciously insane, without any of the moral standards that the rest of mankind embraces. These assholes are responsible for our imminent demise through environmental destruction of the ecosphere, as well as for the endless preying on the weak and vulnerable to suit their own depravity, and lack of moral fiber.

“All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.” — Joseph Conrad

Sexual slavery, corporate collusion to fix wages and prices, legislative corruption and oppression, judicial malfeasance and more corruption, governmental incompetence, religious repression and collusion with politicians, all serve the purposes of the ruling class to a T, no matter how much suffering it causes to others…. As long as they have what they want, nothing anyone else says or does matters at all….

I hate to be a harbinger of bad news, but, I call ’em as I see ’em, and I see what is real…. None of what is wrong in the world will change, until the major portion of mankind makes a change of spirit, and the people, as a whole, decide that the few among us who are bold enough to act must, in fact, act. The evil among us will not go away, or stop, of its own accord, and waiting for them to come around to a more amenable state of mind isn’t going to work, as that just isn’t going to happen.

If we wish to survive, they have to go, and mankind must find a new way to get along with each other than the out-dated ways we have been trying for millennia… Those old ways leave too much power in the hands of people who will give in to the temptation that goes along with such power over others, and must not be allowed to happen any more, not if we wish to survive to see any future at all….. The universe doesn’t care one way or another, so we’ll have to be responsible for our own actions…. as we have always been, and have always been afraid to admit….

“If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will not produce food either.” — Joseph Wood Krutch
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After a rant, I sometimes NEED some Emily to balance the scales, so to speak… call me Ishmael, or call me crazy, I don’t care…. Any who, here is some Emily that just seemed appropriate, or, if naught else, appealed to my disturbed sensibilities…..

It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,–
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And ‘t was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

But most like chaos,–stopless, cool,–
Without a chance or spar,–
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.

~~ Emily Dickinson
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Since I’ve ranted, and found an excellent poem, I can relax, sort of, and not feel too guilty if I go with an old-school pearl…. They’re less work, and more fun than a rant, though without certain qualities of emotional release that ranting provides. I’m too close to the issue to make a decision as to whether that is a good thing, or not, so, I won’t…. Instead, I’ll follow mankind’s most common tool for dealing with reality, and ignore it completely….

In the meantime, why don’t you enjoy the following group of pearls, once again chosen randomly, as that seems to work the best?…… (I know, the ? mark seems out of place, but, if you’ll look back in the preceding sentence, you will see it IS a query, and the mark is appropriately placed, if a bit awkward…. So says the grammar nazi who hangs out in my head…..)

“Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.” — Walt Kelly, Potluck Pogo

“We accept every person in the world as that for which he gives himself out, only he must give himself out for something. We can put up with the unpleasant more easily than we can endure the insignificant.” — Goethe, Elective

“Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.” — Aristotle (384-322BC)

“The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate.” — Euripides

“History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.” — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1972)

” Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing?   What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you? If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken, get to work on that.” — Epictetus

“It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system would see in our species — which has tended to be cruel, destructive, wasteful, and irrational — the crown and apex of cosmic evolution. Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us as a transitional species makes more sense — and gives us more hope.” — Betty McCollister, “Our Transitional Species”, — Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
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