Salubrious greetings included in every box….

Posted on March 21, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Early up means early bed, usually, but, only time will tell, as those incipient grammar nazis down at Cliches R Us always say….. They hate me there…. not because I never buy, but because I’m forever browsing their old merchandise, the classic stuff they keep in the basement, trying to memorize as many as I can remember until I get home….. All the best authors plagiarize. didn’t you know? If not the words, the very ideas are fair game, to an author….. Well, so they say down at the pub, anyway, where all the authors hang out between their bouts of writing, and trying to sell some poor fool what they write…. But, they’ll say ANYTHING, pretty much, if you buy them a beer…..

All the above is just so much BS, of course…. It’s getting to the point around here that you can pretty much count on the first paragraph here to be sheer nonsense, or fantasy, at least in any terms of any part of it being based on, or even connected to, Reality. I really don’t seem to have much use for Reality, not when I’m composing, anyway; it just complicates matters, and demands not only accuracy, but truth, and what author can handle writing with those two qualities simultaneously? Not many, I assure you…..

Belay that noise…. shut that fan down, too, and gather together over there, in that corner of reality for the moment, while I deal with this enraged oatmeal….. Okay, so it wasn’t enraged, only giggling, but, hey, how is an amateur cereal killer supposed to know the difference? It’s not like I see oatmeal in an enraged state on a daily basis; it usually just sits in the bowl, rather mundane and boring, if you ask me…. Maybe it was trying out for an acting part? Who knows, and more importantly, who cares? Not me, not in the slightest….

But, then, that may have something to do with the fact that I have not a single clue as to what the HELL I’m talking about now; this has gone completely off the rails, and I have no idea where it’s going, or where we might end up…. I don’t think I WANT to know, either…. I’d be lying if I said I did, anyway, so, it’s best not to speculate without data. And, how can one obtain any data, when one has no interest in doing so? Or in even talking about it? Hell, I’d give almost anything right now, just for some idea of what this is all about, if anything….

But, I’m doomed to disappointment, it seems…. that’s five paragraphs, each more confusing and worthless than the one before, and that, my friends, is enough to call an intro, at least, it is around here…. We’ve lowered our standards quite a bit, you know…. Had to after losing so much in that counter suit over the false pregnancy…. I just can’t seem to find a decent lawyer, which, I suppose would be an oxymoron, anyway….. I know I only know one of that ilk, and he’s no longer a lawyer by trade….

Having completed the minimum allowable number of paragraphs, I’m going to cheat, almost as badly as I plagiarize, and call this a done deal…. I’ve done worse, I know, though I can’t seem to recall when…. I think, as an author, I’m required to say so, even if it isn’t true…. But, you know me, if it’s true, I’ll blurt it out…. Any who, I don’t think I can be any more confused or intimidated, so I’d best get on with today’s dive, before I do something to crack my mask…. Shall we Pearl?…..
__________________________________

In the interests of fair play, and proper health maintenance, I will be cutting down a bit on ranting. I have no shortage of outrage to give impetus to such discussion, but will have to find another outlet for a time, as ranting seems to be evolving a bit, but, into what form I haven’t a clue. All I know at this point is that the urge to pick away at the underpinnings of the BRC and the priestly hierarchies, while still present, doesn’t currently offer the usual degree of satisfaction, and since I am a hedonist at heart, as are we all, I’ll look for other methods of satisfying the urge than taking shots at specific targets… I’ll stick to more general subject matter….

All of which makes no difference at all to this pearl. It put itself together in just about twenty clicks of the mouse, meaning Smart Bee has been saving them up to give me at one sitting…. Hence, here is a five star pearl, with a fairly obvious bent, and a perfect closer to drive home the point….. which comes, of course, from our own Smart Bee…. Enjoy!….

He who searches for truth must not appease his urge by giving himself up to the narcotic of belief.” — Hans Reichenbach, quoted in _ The Philosophy of Matter in the Atomic Age_

“We do not believe in immortality because we can prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.” — Harriet Martineau

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite;
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age.
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before,
Till tired he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744)– Essay on Man, Epistle ii, Line 274

“At twenty, a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he’s seventy, he still wants to reform the world, but he knows he can’t.” — Clarence Darrow

“I would like to buy a fish license, please.” — Smart Bee

Does it get any better than that? Nope…..
__________________________________

It’s been a while since I remembered how much I like the poetry of Walt Whitman…. and it’s always such a nice surprise when I do….

A child said, What is the grass?

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother’s laps,
And here you are the mother’s laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

~~ Walt Whitman
__________________________________

“How’s the wife? Is she at home enjoying capitalism?” — Zippy the Pinhead

It’s hard for me to say just how much I appreciate Zippy’s wisdom, or, more accurately, his expressions of what isn’t always obviously wisdom. His creator, Bill Griffith, has provided me, and society at large, with his unique take on reality since the 1960’s, including his first utterance of the perhaps the most telling iconic phrase of the twentieth century, in 1979, when he had Zippy ask, “Are we having fun yet?”

Spending any amount of time with Zippy, attempting to decode his thinly veiled sardonicism, and his even more thinly veiled cynicism regarding modern culture, is an exercise for the mind’s most subtle editors…. It is all brilliant social comedy, poking fun at the most basic of our beliefs, and allowing us to laugh at ourselves, even if it is with confusion and bewilderment at just what, and who, is being made fun of the most…. society, or the reader….

Therefore, in keeping with my new resolve to keep things a bit lighter around here… I give you a Zippy pearl, chock full of his perfectly crafted truffles made up of apparent nonsense, all of which have been dipped in the darkest of ironic chocolate…..

“Those aren’t WINOS–that’s my JUGGLER, my AERIALIST, my SWORD SWALLOWER, and my LATEX NOVELTY SUPPLIER!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

“I’m a nuclear submarine under the polar ice cap and I need a Kleenex!” — Zippy the Pinhead

“I’m also pre-POURED pre-MEDITATED and pre-RAPHAELITE!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

“Did YOU find a DIGITAL WATCH in YOUR box of VELVEETA?” — Zippy the Pinhead

“Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then–we elected them.” — Lily Tomlin

(Whoops! How did that get in there? Oh well, since it’s Lily, it can stay…. )

“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.” — Mark Twain

(Okay, sorry, Smart Bee is being a smart ass…. Oh well, since it’s Sam, and fits right in with the rest of it…… )

“I’m having BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS about the INSIPID WIVES of smug and wealthy CORPORATE LAWYERS.” — Zippy the Pinhead

Perfect….. and there you have it, a lovely piece of breakfast sausage, metaphorically speaking, of course….
_______________________________

I don’t imagine that any of this will get me arrested…. hell, it may not even get any laughs, though I gave it my best shot, and tried to stay away from anything remotely sober. I suppose not all of these can be gems of the highest quality; somebody has to get a C on the test. I’m just not accustomed to not getting A’s or B’s…. Ah well, old habits die hard, but are well gone…. and I have no idea what I meant by that, so let’s not read too much into it, okay?…..

Having read this over, and still not having a clue as to whether it is any good or not, I’m going to publish it anyway, because, hey, it’s done….. such as it is. Perhaps, in the fullness of time, and the compassionate depths of your heart and mind, you will forgive me…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Plainly, it isn’t wise to bump OR grind….

Posted on March 20, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
While it is true that I did travel there at one time, the stories that have been circulating regarding my, allegedly, legendary trip to Kansas have been exaggerated to an extreme…. I left no broken hearts, or heads, behind, no dead bodies were found in my hotel room, nobody got married, pregnant, or abandoned, and that dwarf wasn’t even looking for me! And, while I’ll admit I was talking to the old lady with the dog and the pony, it isn’t true I was trying to retain their services; that pimp wasn’t even in the room with us!…. The reporter just got mad because I lied to him about the priest…. So, you can just put aside your shock and disgust, as none of it actually happened, and if it did, it wasn’t my fault! It was those damned girl scouts, with their damned cookies!….

Hi there….. Regarding that first paragraph: you may ignore it at will…. No excuses, and no complaints, I guess. I wrote it pre-coffee, so I can’t put the same expectations on it that are valid post-salvation. Given that stricture, it isn’t too bad, all in all, though I think I could have been a bit more graphic in the line about the dwarf…. a dwarf is always good for some laughs, but you’ve got to use good imagery, or you lose the total effect of the contrast in their overall appearance when interacting with, shall we say, less fascinatingly grotesque creatures, such as ourselves….. In my opinion, I could have been clearer in my expression there…. Oh well, tomorrow’s another day, and the dwarf is on retainer….

Now what? Here we are, three paragraphs in, and, so far, nothing is manifesting itself for inclusion. I’m beginning to think I’m going to have to just break down and write a template introduction, that I can just plug in each day at the start, to get me moving, in SOME direction, if not on a specific vector…. You know, something like, “Here’s today’s news,,,,”, or, “Another day dawns without hope here in America….,”, or, “OMG, shut that window, NOW!”…. You know, something gripping, that will pull ffolkes in without hurting or insulting them, and lead them gently into the body of the Pearl…. I’ve considered this idea for some time now; it’s an attractive one, that could conceivably save me a lot of time and worry over getting the intro done…..

But, what fun would that be? I think part of what I enjoy about blogging like this is the freedom I feel to NOT restrain myself in such ways, to allow myself the mental freedom to go anywhere my crafty little grey cells want to go, and say whatever I want to say, within the bounds of good taste and compassion… I do skate a bit close to the edge of the one about good taste, so it’s good for me to keep watch on that….. and if I cop out and make a template, that sense of alertness might get dulled from disuse….. All of our mental strengths are exactly like muscles, and will grow soft and useless if not exercised, so it’s good for me in that sense to have to be creative, in a small way, each morning, first thing….

Plus, it gives me the opportunity each morning to put together five or six of these nonsensical gems, full of absolutely diddly squat (hmm… Spell Checkers are funny… it didn’t like “diddly”, but was okay with “squat”… Oh, right, that’s actually a word… What, they’ve never heard of Bo Diddly?….never mind…), which I find to be both a good warm-up for the typing fingers, and a good warm-up of the grey cells, giving the coffee a chance to work its magic before I get into anything serious (And, as long as I can avoid the use of too many parenthetical comments in one paragraph)…. Yesterday’s intro, which grew into a pretty good-sized rant, happened for just that reason, to wit: I got into what I was writing before the coffee was fully on board….. a dangerous habit to form….

Why look! What’s this? I do believe it’s happened again! I’ve found another complete intro section, just laying here, ready to go…. What do you know about that? Now, don’t get all antsy, and upset with me…. SOMETHING has to go in this section, so what’s wrong with some deliberate nonsense, and a bit of prattle? Nothing, that’s what… Besides, it’s all finished now, so you won’t have to try to figure out if it will ever get anywhere significant…. It won’t. It’s done, It’s time to dive…. Shall we Pearl?…..
__________________________________

“Better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a lamb.” — Smart Bee

I’m in a mood today, one that, if typical of such, will not yield to any sort of alteration or modification into something less abrasive, or more tasteful… In other words, I don’t know why, but I feel like biting somebody. I have no reason to feel this way; all is proceeding quite smoothly in my life just now, pretty much, so I don’t have any really good reasons to feel grumpy.

No excessive pain going on, money and food are in the house, computer’s functioning well, as is the internet service. I have plenty of reading material, and I just finished watching all seven Harry Potter movies last night. I could ask for fewer sirens at night stopping just up the block, but, alas, there is nothing I can do about my neighbors’ behavior late in the evenings…. My lady friend isn’t feeling well, but, I think, and hope, she will feel better, so I’m only worried a little about that, not enough to cause a grump….

I could also ask for Social Security to move a bit faster, but, they have already shown me over the last two years what their typical pace is…. Their bureaucracy’s automatic cruise control is set at “crawl”, and isn’t going to go any faster anytime soon. I received verbal confirmation of my approval for benefits on Tuesday, the 12th, when the caseworker told me she would be sending out a packet of information for me, with the notice of the granting of my appeal of their original denial (long story….)…

Any who, that was eight days ago, so, I speculated, then, that she might send out the information the next day, or perhaps on Thursday, and I would receive it a couple days later. The office from which the packet is to be sent is here in the same town, so I thought, hmm, two days to go 30 blocks would be a reasonable estimate, even for the USPS, for a 10 X 12 inch envelope…. HAH! So much for speculation about the USPS…. Serves me right for assuming ANYTHING…. Especially for assuming normal behavior from an organization that has already proven to be broken, and abnormally anomalous, or anomalously abnormal, or both….

I suppose I’ve found why I’m grumpy, as these last two paragraphs show on whom my subconscious is placing the blame, squarely…. So, before I give Ms. H., my new case worker at SS a call, to ask WHEN she might be sending the stuff to me, I’m going to put together a pearl, with a specific type of pearls in mind for the search process… those that bring me peace of spirit in some way…. Enjoy!…. Oh, and, given my tendency to not be able to shut myself up, I’ll put any thoughts that occur to me about the pearls in parentheses, which is as usual as it probably is annoying…. 😆

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.” — Agatha Christie

“1 four letter word is sometimes worth 1000 pictures.” — Smart Bee

(Which may be why there are so many of them….. We humans are nothing if not hilariously and prolifically vulgar….)

“In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away
— for the Snark *was* a Boojum, you see.”

— Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

(Ambrose was a Grand Master of Sarcasm, and a social critic of immense genius…. )

” What is it the Bible teaches us? – rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? – to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.” — Thomas Paine — The Age of Reason

( 😳 Sorry, sometimes I can’t help myself…. This one isn’t particularly soothing to most ffolkes, or folks, nor is it part of the connective tissue for this pearl; it just sounded like something I might use for a rant some day, and I saved it before I could stop myself….. Just ignore it, please, or set it aside for later perusal… Thank you for your cooperation….)

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” — Albert Einstein

“Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.” — Spinoza

I don’t know about y’all, but, after those last two, I’m soothed…. Okay, okay, we’re going! No need to shove!….
__________________________________

Here is an obscure little poem from Keats; I like it, which is all it needs to get included here…. but, it’s also a nice example of classical romanticism, with precise cadence and rhyming, and very personal imagery… I hope you enjoy it, as I do….

A Dream, After Reading Dante’s Episode Of Paolo And Francesca

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away,
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

~~ John Keats
__________________________________

“We are the protagonists and authors of our own drama. It is up to us; there is no one left to blame. Neither the system, not our leaders, nor our parents. We can’t go out and hang the first amoeba.” — Rebecca McClen Novick

Oh. My. Goodness. This is the perfect quotation for a rant on global warming, or overpopulation, or climate change, or any of the other immediate threats to our species’ survival one may consider. It begins at exactly the correct point to have a discussion about what might be done, for whatever can be done, can only be done when people admit the need, which, obviously, entails accepting the responsibility for causing it in the first place… Duh!….

But, as I said above, I’m in a mood, which isn’t the time to start ranting…. Outrage is necessary, and a touch of anger to fuel the outrage…. but, in a mood like this, I would likely get vicious, and lose track of what I promised to keep track of, to wit: good taste…. Instead, I’ll do what I always do in such situations, and fall back on yet another old-school pearl… I’ll make it a short one, with only five aphorisms, as small as I can find, on the subject at hand, again to wit: Our own particular brand of human foolishness, or, as I labeled it many years ago, the Principle of Bozoid Tendencies…..

“If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.” — George Bernard Shaw

“These round things Asur has attached to his sled: they take the wood away from the Earth-Mother, they make it move too fast; they turn around and round in a strange, e-ville fashion. Indeed, they are ungodly, and Asur should be stoned to death forthwith.” — Translated from proto-Indo-European — scratched on clay tablets, circa 6500 BC

“I haven’t committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.” — David Dinkins (Mayor, New York City) — Answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.

“Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth…But in today’s technical vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different….. I think we’re all Bozos on this Bus!” — The Firesign Theater

“An INK-LING? Sure — TAKE one!! Did you BUY any COMMUNIST UNIFORMS??” — Zippy the Pinhead

Well, there you go…. Perhaps I should have known better…. Ah well, at least it’s all over now, but for the shouting….
__________________________________

I’ll try not to shout so loudly it will awaken those who decided to nap early….. I probably should be ashamed, but, I’m not being paid for any of this, so I have nothing to feel ashamed about, other than the entire content herein…. Too late now, I’m committed…. Or, will be, once I go back and proof it…. which, I will now do, in the interests of getting something else, anything at all, done today…..

It isn’t often I can write myself speechless…. but, there is a first time for everything, I suppose…. Here it is, such as it is…. WYSIWYG, and that’s the truth….. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

The remainder may go free…..

Posted on March 19, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
In re: motivation…. let’s be honest. The motivation that prompts each of us to write, and then to post what we write, may be simple, or it may be complex; humans have a tendency toward both at times, depending on their predilections, and preferences in life. In my own case, since I tend to complicate matters naturally, it is somewhat complex; I suppose I enjoy the feeling of chaos at work that comes with maintaining an active mental life. In short, I’m crazy as a bed bug, and I like it…..

As the old saying goes, I don’t suffer from insanity, I revel in it….. 😆 In fact, I encourage insanity in others, often, in an attempt to give life a little spice when it falls into one of those routines, that threatens to become a rut….. There is nothing like some general insanity to liven up a party, now, is there? Who’s more popular on the dance floor than the guy with the lampshade on his head?….. Nobody, that’s who!

There are so many aphorisms floating around in my head, I often can’t remember who said what, but, I believe it might have been Voltaire, or another social philosopher of the modern age, who said, “Insanity is a sane reaction to an insane world.”….. Oh, hell, Google will know… Yep, I was right in my being wrong…. it was the psychiatrist and philosopher R.D. Laing who is credited most often with that particular phrase… though other authors seem to lay claim to it without any regard for that information…

Now that we have that out of the way, and we know for a fact that, a) I’m crazy as a loon, and b) it doesn’t matter at all for our purposes here, we can get down to business, and stop with the fluff (Whew! Tough word to type…. took me five tries…. that fluff stuff is tougher than it sounds….). I have some crow to eat, and I’ll thank you to let me chew and swallow quickly, to avoid some of the unpleasant flavor…. It still leaves a bitter after taste, no matter how quick one is in spitting it out, or downing it, whatever….

Yesterday, I ranted for quite a while about missionaries, such as those generally found in remote places lording it over the natives, and specifically targeted the most famous of that breed, Mother Teresa. I knew when I chose the subject that I risked some controversy, but, I happen to believe all I that I write, and still do.

But, a friend, one of the email recipients of the Pearls, happens to live in my building, and we got to discussing the piece in the afternoon, during which discussion, she most excellently, and correctly, scolded me, putting me back into my correct place, for having targeted whom I did. She did so without ever falling into trying to make me feel bad, but, rather, explaining, or, reminding me, mostly, of a piece of the picture I had forgotten to acknowledge….

Essentially, that piece is this: I’ve never met Teresa, and, in the eyes of a great many people, she is considered to be one of the most compassionate, truly loving examples of a follower of Christ that has ever lived, achieving relative sainthood during her lifetime for the charity work she does with the poor.

According to legend (which, right now, I am merely listing, and not questioning for veracity….), she is a perfect example of how a real Christian should live, in the sense that she eschews all worldly material goods in favor of giving herself and all she has to help those less fortunate than herself…. In light of her unswerving dedication to this life-style, and her absolute defiance of typical Church procedures, she is truly one of the heroines of the common man….

I have observed much of Teresa’s life in the public eye, as she, and her books (five of them) all came into the light of public scrutiny when I was a child, so I have known OF her for many years. When I googled her name, the first page of results showed about 15 results, of which five were informational, such as Wikipedia, or sites where images were shown, seven were positive stories about her life, (she died in 1997), and three were articles like mine, that explored the darker side of the missionary activities she perpetrated for the Catholic Church in her lifetime. One was entitled, “The Darker Side of Mother Teresa”, while another headline in the Huffington Post proclaimed, ” Mother Teresa Humanitarian Image A ‘Myth,’ New Study Says”. I’ve included below the Google links to the three articles that challenge the usual image we have of the good sister….

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=mother%20teresa&source=web&cd=9&sqi=2&ved=0CGgQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2F2013%2F03%2F04%2Fmother-teresa-myth_n_2805697.html&ei=eW5IUYTBJoeo2wW00YHQDA&usg=AFQjCNH-3mFJygRAnYL9dRgfh_YWT0FNtA&bvm=bv.43828540,d.b2U&cad=rja

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=mother%20teresa&source=web&cd=10&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CG4QFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slate.com%2Farticles%2Fnews_and_politics%2Ffighting_words%2F2003%2F10%2Fmommie_dearest.html&ei=eW5IUYTBJoeo2wW00YHQDA&usg=AFQjCNGxL857ajNJxrzHQLKqkkYT-Swbmg&bvm=bv.43828540,d.b2U

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=mother%20teresa&source=web&cd=12&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CHoQqQIwCw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fideas.foreignpolicy.com%2Fposts%2F2013%2F03%2F18%2Fthe_dark_side_of_mother_teresa&ei=eW5IUYTBJoeo2wW00YHQDA&usg=AFQjCNHf4kcbwQD3W8Xf9PEcF0tyqopJ0w&bvm=bv.43828540,d.b2U

After speaking with my friend, I went back to read over what I’d written yesterday, and I will confess to a degree of vituperation that may have been overdone. I don’t know the woman personally, so all I have to go on is her public persona, what I know about people and their psyches, and the depths to which they will sink to achieve their ends, regardless of whether or not those ends are either moral, ethical, or even helpful at all. So, I apologize for anything I said about her being an evil person…. she may indeed be a very compassionate, truly Christian woman, so I will acknowledge that portion of the legend that has grown up around her…..

However, I stand by what I said about her missionary work, and that entire ilk of religious fanaticism, or for how observing how it is demeaning for those it purports to help. In truth, it seems clear to me the practice is motivated by the desire of the priesthood to claim more souls, not out of any particular concern for those souls themselves. The Church doesn’t send out missionaries to save the people, it wants the souls, which translates into power over others, and a lifelong bivouac of luxury and pomp for the clergy….

Nuns are a bit different, as many of them are actually out there in the world, dealing with people, so, they tend to ignore or modify what the church itself might do or say to fit the local circumstances; otherwise they would never get anything done to help people. But, their motivation remains murky, even to them, as almost every nun, or priest I’ve ever known, if they were at all honest people, suffered from crises of faith, where they doubted their vocation… Perfectly natural, and a shame they always seem to talk themselves out of listening to that little voice in their head….

Well, I’ve started to ramble, and it is threatening to turn into another rant, (actually, in looking back, it already did that….), so I guess I’d better get on with this, or I’ll never get done today…. I’ll have to depend on Smart Bee to come up with something different to talk about, but, it never seems to have much trouble with that….

Any who, I’m sorry for picking on Mother Teresa… like the Beatle’s song said about the Queen, “I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl, but she doesn’t have a lot to say….” She may or may not be as bad as I made her out to be; to my mind, even if she is not a bad person, she is still operating under a set of very strong delusions, but, that is not at all unusual in this world, so I can’t hold that against her…. So, sorry, Terry… I hope your compassion can extend to forgiving me for my brashness and the crime of inelegance, if nothing else….

In the meantime, shall we Pearl?…..
__________________________________

“Enough is enough.” ~~ gigoid

I’ve re-read the intro section, as it seemed a bit like it was too long…. It was, indeed, but, I can’t in good conscience take much of it out, or it will fall apart from its own inner weight imbalances (it’s a very weighty discussion, difficult to keep in balance, as each word and phrase changes the moment of vector…. trust me, the math is tricky, but clear….). So, I’ve resorted to one of my own aphorisms, above, one I mutter to myself often, as an incantation against breaking free of the habit of moderation in all that I do…. Moderation is the key to long life, I believe, but, even moderation itself needs to be practiced in moderation; it’s a good thing now and again to just let go, and give one’s wild side free rein…. just long enough to release all the built up angst, but not long enough to land in jail…. 😉

So, naturally, I shall default into the normal procedure for following a rant, even if it is an intro, and submit for your reading pleasure a harlequin pearl, freshly chosen this morning, complete with potential hilarity and possible clarity…. enjoy! Oh, and, no point to this one, it’s all as random as I can make it…. so, don’t hurt yourself trying to figure out if it has one…. Of course, if it should end up with an obvious sharp point, let us know, so nobody hurts themselves on it, okay? Thanks…..

“If Mother Nature doesn’t make mistakes then why does dessert taste better than dinner?” — Smart Bee

Shifu: “If the instrument is broken, the music will be sour.”
Daniel: “The music does not play the musician.”
Shifu: “Normally there is truth in that.”
Daniel: “Really? Good. Because I really didn’t have any idea what I was talking about.”
— from Stargate

“Call on God, but row away from the rocks.” — Indian proverb

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

” — You know it’s going to be a rotten day when you wake up face down on the pavement.” — Smart Bee (?)

Hmm… for a five-star, it’s not bad, if a bit strange… I think two more ought to bring the Force, if not the Metaphorse, back into balance for now…. let’s see what comes up….

“A life lived in fear is only half lived.” — Spanish proverb

“By the time this message gets back on topic, WE’LL ALL BE DEAD!” — Smart Bee
(Doh! 😳 Sorry, this one doesn’t count… Smart Bee isn’t supposed to do that…. bad Smart Bee, bad dB!…. One more, for good measure….)

“Good generally conquers evil. Unless, of course, good is stupid.” — Smart Bee

And there you have it… Smart Bee came through in the end with the perfect closer…. Okay, onward, or we’ll never get done….
__________________________________

In the interests of brevity, along with elegance and depth, where else would I go, but to Emily?…..

Rouge et Noir

Soul, wilt thou toss again?
By just such a hazard
Hundreds have lost, indeed,
But tens have won an all.

Angels’ breathless ballot
Lingers to record thee;
Imps in eager caucus
Raffle for my soul.

~~ Emily Dickinson

Her poems are small enough that two is not crowding….

Rouge Gagne

‘Tis so much joy! ‘Tis so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
And yet, as poor as I
Have ventured all upon a throw;
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so
This side the victory!

Life is but death, and death but death!
Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
And if, indeed, I fail,
At least too know the worst is sweet.
Defeat means nothing but defeat,
No drearier can prevail.

And if I gain – oh, gun at sea,
Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
At first repeat it slow!
For heaven is a different thing
Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
And might o’erwhelm me so!

~~ Emily Dickinson
__________________________________

Faith, n: “That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be untrue.” — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Calm down! And sit down, and relax…. I am well aware that, upon first seeing the above aphorism where it is, you immediately figured I was going to start in on another rant of major proportion, again heaping scorn upon the priestly hierarchies, and the myriad of folks who fall for their rather unbelievable fantasies…. Even I, however, have my limits….

I wrote around a thousand words above, in a general way, about religion, or, at least, religious figures, and I’m not going to burden you with another…. No, this was chosen just to get your blood moving, and to relax you for a final, short group of simple pearls, all on a particular subject, or as near as I can make them…. What that subject might be is for you to guess, should you wish to exercise your imagination in that way…. Otherwise, just enjoy them for their, well, whatever they are….

“When Eudaemonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, “This is a wonderful speech,” said he; “but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Eudaemonidas

‘When they tell you to grow up, they mean to stop growing.” — Tom Robbins

“I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope, and then they disparaged all high hopes. They lived shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and hardly had an aim beyond the day. “Spirit is also voluptuousness,” they said. Then they broke the wings of their spirit; it now creeps about, and defiles whatever it gnaws at. Once they thought of becoming heroes, but they have become sensualists. A trouble and a terror is the hero to them. By my love and hope, I implore you: do not cast away the hero in your soul. Maintain holy your highest hope. Thus spoke Zarathustra.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_

“All religions issue Bibles against Satan, and say the most injurious things against him, but we never hear his side.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

(Well, actually, Robert Heinlein did write a book called, “Job, A Comedy of Justice”, in which the main character happens to meet up with the Devil, when he was picked up hitchhiking, is taken to His home, and hears His side of the whole story… It’s a great read, if one can suspend belief, and exist purely in imagination for a time…. It’s also funny enough in spots I’ll warn you to be seated when you read it…. I will note, in Twain’s defense, that the book was written well after he died, so he can be forgiven for not knowing of it…. 😆 )

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: (1) not going all the way; and (2) not starting.” — Buddha

Well, I don’t think I could have picked a better closing pearl if I had it specifically in mind…. good job, and good recovery, Smart Bee! Well done….
__________________________________

I am almost afraid to go back over this to proof… but, here goes….. I’m really not sure how it happened, but, this is a good one…. I like it, and since that is all that counts, ultimately, it can go out as is, with my blessing, if not my hopes…. Those have already been realized today, when my first tax refund hit the bank electronically…. I’m considering dinner out tonight, as a start….

It’s nice to not have to think about how that might run me short at the end of the month, as it is already almost that time…. More proof that patience, while not an absolutely essential quality to possess, is surely of some value in preserving our dignity, if not our comfort….. And THAT is surely an example of “Enough is enough”…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Such scintillating sartorial services seem simply swell….

Posted on March 18, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Blast and damn! Waking up to such ill-favored language isn’t my idea of paradise, to say the least. Not that I’m offended by vulgarity or profanity; far from it, I’ve been known to curse the air blue a time or two myself. But. to have to overhear other folks’ domestic arguments first thing, before even having the small protection that coffee affords in such situations, is not on my list of favorite morning activities….. nor do I expect it ever will be. I suppose this is the problem with living in an apartment rather than a house; the neighbors are practically in your lap….

Ah well, soon enough, I’ll be able to move into a better place, once my benefits have actually begun, and I can find a place to move into that fits my needs for space and quiet…. Hopefully, I’ll be able to persuade a certain someone to come with me, but, if nothing else, I need to find a place where there isn’t someone living in my pocket… It’s an inherently dangerous situation, in that one of my neighbors is clueless, and places himself in severe danger at times due to his ignorance….. Not that it is my responsibility to protect him from his idiocy, but, when it spills over into my life, I have a tendency to react unfavorably; hence, he’s come close to dying three times now, and never even knew it…. Probably better all around, I’d think….

S’okay, though, the issue seems to have been resolved, at least to the point where he is only ragging on his wife, and not his neighbors…. I just wish he wouldn’t do it so early in the morning…. She could show some sense, too, and kick his ass occasionally, if only verbally, but, hey, to each their own, right? I have no interest in their issues, and just wish they didn’t spill over into their neighbor’s hearing….

Well, my little discussion of societal issues on a small scale has taken up the intro section, mostly. There isn’t enough room left to start anything poetic or fictional without getting all mixed up, and it’s too late to fall back into nonsense. Ranting is out, unless I want to lose everyone even more rapidly…. Hell, now what am I going to do? I haven’t a clue as to where this should either go, or do, or even if it should be continued…. it may be unsalvageable at this point…. hard to say, what with all the blood leaking out now…. Kinda makes it hard to see what’s what….

I’m going to resort to Emergency Procedure #1, which is the oldest, and simplest of the procedures I keep to fix things around here…. it merely involves a big dose of denial…. I declare the above to be a full and complete introductory section of a Pearl, and proclaim it “done”, as far as modern literary science can determine. No further attempts at levity, or rationality, will be needed, or allowed. Please move along to the next section, and thank you for your patience, and your patronage….. Or, more simply put….. Shall we Pearl?…..
__________________________________

“Mother Theresa epitomizes for me the blinkered charitableness upon which we pride ourselves and for which we expect reward in this world and the next. There is very little on earth that I hate more than that.” — Feminist Germaine Greer

I’ve been saving this one up for a few days, letting my outrage and angst build up, so that I can rant on this subject with the proper degree of vitriol and meanness…. This woman (Mother Teresa, that is…. Germaine’s an ass, mostly, but she is honest, at least….) deserves every bit of hard language and disdain that I, or anyone else, can summon, as I consider her to be one of the most delusional, most obsessively crazed, and most viciously hypocritical women who ever walked this planet. I kid you not…. The picture that everyone paints of her shows her as a modern day saint, full of sweetness and light, and filled with the grace of God’s love…. and I say, bullshit!….

From all I can tell, this woman has spent her entire life pushing her beliefs on everyone around her, in places all over the world that have no desire for her to be there (I’ve always wondered why the Vatican allowed her to travel around so many places like they do, but figured out they wanted her out of Italy, mostly, and didn’t care what she did anywhere else….as long as she wasn’t bothering them, they don’t care…), and who would just as soon she took her bleating, sheep-like religion somewhere else. She purports to spend her time helping the poor, sick, downtrodden victims of the world, but in reality spends all her time lording it over those weaker than herself, and making sure they are kept in the poverty where she finds them, fulfilling their enforced image as victims….

From all reports, this woman is both tireless and relentless in her fight against poverty, but, in truth, what she is, is totally invested in the vision of her own rightness, and, in my view, she spends a great deal of her time making sure that she is seen as a saint, pointing up the differences between herself, and those she purports to help. Then she will make some off-the-wall platitude, or sappy statement, about love for one’s fellow man, but will never, ever issue any statement against those who keep so many of their fellow man in the state of being victims, or against any of the priests in her own church, who prey on the weak and vulnerable of their own flocks…. She is NOT interested in anything that does not serve her own interests, much like another group of self-centered individuals I know of….

Of course, the BRC loves people like Mother Teresa; she does a lot to keep them in power, without them ever having to pay her at all…. Her constant harping at the middle class to help out, by giving to charities that support her work, provides them with consistent, effective advertising for the maintenance of the system that creates the poor in the first place, without them ever having to address the issue at all. She does it all for them, by her complicit acceptance of their right to rule; it’s a common practice among the religious institutions to encourage their constituents to obey worldly authority, or temporal rule, or whatever words one uses to describe the Beloved Ruling Class.

Without the complicity shown by the priestly hierarchies to the true corporate rulers of society, their place at the top of the heap would be much more difficult to maintain…. Without the priests and preachers constantly telling their followers to obey the rule of law, it would be much more difficult for those who are victimizing the rest of us to carry out their deceptive practices. It would seem to me to be the place of religion to PROTECT their flocks from the degradations of the ruling class, but the fact is that they are in collusion with that same group, with the unspoken but strong agreement on both parts to keep the rest of society in a state of confused fear, making them manipulable, and easily controlled….

Mother Teresa is one of the worst of the lot, in my mind, for the very reason that Ms. Greer points out in the initial pearl, as well as for her blatant hypocrisy, and her evil spirit, which KNOWS exactly what she is doing. She is obviously an intelligent woman; one couldn’t be so successful at anything without some basic mental advantages…. To me, that is her worst crime. She knows what she does is wrong; she knows just how hypocritical it is for her to speak of compassion for the weak, when her entire persona uses that same vulnerability to promote her own agenda. She is the worst sort of predator on the planet, preying on the weak and helpless of her own species, and demanding respect for doing so….

“Be one heart full of love in the hearth of Jesus through Mary. God bless you.” — Mother Teresa, Apr. 17, 1984

See? Is this delusional, or what? I’d bet the tone of voice used in these would be a dead giveaway; “God bless you” probably comes out sounding more like “God damn you!”, I’d wager….. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Sister Act”, think of the scene near the end, when the police are hauling away the criminal, who shouts at Whoopi Goldberg’s character, Sister Mary Clarence, “You’re nothing!”, whereupon she replies, “Vince…. Bless you!”, with the emphasis on the ‘bless’, giving it the exact same emotional tone of “fuck you”…. brilliant! I would dearly love the opportunity to say that to Terry….

If I ever get a chance to meet her face to face, (and I hope like hell I do….) I WILL tell her what I think of her hypocrisy, right to her face, and see how well she can refute my arguments…. I would expect her to fall back on her supporters, though, and to pretend to ignore what I say, as I doubt seriously she would have the courage to try to refute what I say to my face…. If she did, it would be her only hope of convincing me that what I’ve related here is not correct. I might be persuaded to listen to what she has to say, if she would say it to my face…. but, since she will probably never hear of me, I doubt it will ever happen….

And that’s okay with me, too, because, I don’t really enjoy confrontations any more…. Too much chance of random squirts of adrenaline, and it’s so often a futile undertaking, as the general run of opponents for such battles of wit aren’t very well armed, as a rule. I think I’d enjoy going a round or two with Terry, myself; if nothing else, it would be a memorable opportunity to take a saint down a few pegs…. I’d enjoy that, a lot…. Nothing much worse than a mealy-mouthed hypocrite to put a bad taste in your mouth….

“Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.” — George Orwell

Eurybiades lifting up his staff as if he were going to strike, Themistocles said, “Strike, if you will; but hear. — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Life of Themistocles
__________________________________

Occasionally, ranting will stimulate poetry, and today is one of those occasions, apparently…. I wrote the following in about 20 minutes flat, within moments of finishing the above religirant, so I would have to assume that the two are connected in some way. Any other assumption, I believe, would be mistaken…. Since I’m too close to it, maybe y’all could let me know how you like it…. or not…. I do like the last stanza, particularly, so, it’s worth it, if only for that…. I hope you enjoy it, controversial as it may be in content…. It’s all quite real, and immediate, to me…..

Rejection

“Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so…”
I’d be crying a river, I thought
if ever such crap I bought.

Sorry if it hurts your sense of style,
but, hypocrisy always gives me bile.
Being lied to accidentally is okay,
but, deliberate lies make me angry, and fey.

Oh, God, hear what I pray!
Keep me from your followers today.
Having to listen to so much that is wrong
makes me puke, before it makes me strong.

I don’t know why it isn’t clear to other folks,
which is alright, you know, different strokes.
But, why should that mean that they must
force me to believe, or fail in trust?

Spare me the lies, and the make-believe,
fairy tales are easier to hear, and to weave.
They give us a lesson which we can feel
but don’t pretend at all to be real.

Reality can scare us, that’s a given fact,
still, met with care it will leave us mostly intact.
Met without fear, standing tall and alone
Life will allow us to make it our own.

Folly beckons, and so many follow
mass delusions seem to me most hollow.
I’ll have to stick to my own chosen way
while so many go so sadly astray.

It’s lonely at times, it may seem sad,
but really isn’t, and I’m quite glad,
that knowledge is always stronger than fear,
year after year, tear after tear…..

~~ gigoid
__________________________________

There is no other choice but to go old-school here…. another rant seems like overkill. So, here is another harlequin pearl for your perusal, and intended pleasure…. Abondanza!

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”– James Madison

“If you can’t elucidate, obfuscate.” — Smart Bee

“Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth. When perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth, any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.” — Tacitus

“Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.” — Eric Hoffer

“In the handbook, it says that most people ignore the strange and unusual; while I myself *am*… strange and unusual.” — BEETLEJUICE (aka, gigoid… You hadn’t guessed I was the inspiration for this character?…..)

Me, too! Me, too!….. Oh, sorry, got carried away with enthusiasm there for a second… let’s see what Smart Bee has for a couple of closers for today…. to finish the too-obvious point we’ve got going here….

“Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.” — G. K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perfect!…. For extra credit, you may leave the conclusion in the comment section for others to laugh at, er, admire….. Or, you may just go on, like the rest of us…. 😆
__________________________________

Well, that went smoothly enough; let’s see how it flows…. or, if….. Well, I’m not certain that the word, “flow” is the right one, but, we’ll go with it for now…. I like it. But, then, I DID write it, so that’s probably a good thing, all in all. Whether or not y’all feel the same, well, I hope so, but, I’m not gonna hold my breath…. I’m too much aware of my own shortcomings, and my own relative importance…. fortunately. If nothing else, I hope it gives y’all a chuckle or two, or maybe causes a moment of outrage or other real emotion…. I’ll settle for that….. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.gigoid

Bee balm is often useful with such wounds…

Posted on March 17, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
“What we have heah, is a failyuh to obfuscate.” On that hopelessly obscure note, the tiny little alien, which looked suspiciously like a miniature orange bulldog in a green jumpsuit, wobbled what was apparently his head weakly from side to side, formed what seemed to be a smile with what seemed to be a mouth, closed what appeared to be his eyes (I think it’s a he…), and fell backwards into the lap of the fat dignitary seated in back of the podium…. the mayor, I believe….

Everything would have been okay, but the mayor thought the alien was going to throw up on him, and proceeded to dump the poor wee beastie off the stage, into the crowd, which started using him for a soccer ball…. A real mess…. While it wasn’t the most dignified ending to a press conference I’d seen in my days in the mayor’s office, it was better than the one we tried to hold after the sewers all exploded at once…. No matter how hard we blew the fans, the smell wouldn’t disperse….

Ever since the entropy bomb went off last year, it’s been pretty crazy around here, what with the Anti-Alien groups fighting it out with the End of Timers, while the remnants of the churches are busy dealing with the twelve disciples, who ALL rose from the dead, and are now recanting their stories on the talk show circuit, with franchised copies of the shows running even on Al-Jazeera….. When the Chief of the World Police issued his proclamation of insanity, and said his officers would now be found patrolling the subways, because it was too dangerous for them on the streets, well, things really began to deteriorate….

I was sitting here, trying to think of how society might look AFTER the apocalypse happens, and came up with the above….. It was fun, but, all in all, not as smooth flowing, or as good, as I’d like…. Not enough coffee before starting, I’d wager….I’ll do it over again another time, I think, and do a better job of it…. Don’t know why I started out in a negative entropy scenario, but, then, I never do know, do I? No, of course not…. I am perhaps the world’s first unconscious writer.

That is to say, what I write is seldom connected to a subject that has been chosen consciously, and much of what gets written comes from the same unreliable well of inspiration. This is, arguably, an unusual format, but seems to work for me… It works well enough that I’m not willing to entertain the thought of going back to the way everyone else does it, unless I use the “in your cups” method of writing, wherein one creates while intoxicated on adult beverages, or recreational drugs, such as marijuana, or bourbon…. muses of choice, such as they are…. But, they have their own drawbacks, and plain old objective inattention works just fine for me…. It’s cheaper, too….

Of course, this opinion is probably not shared completely by those who read my work; in fact, I would doubt it seriously. But, I don’t write for anyone but myself, ultimately, so I’m the only one who has any investment in making it right…. For others, to wit: y’all, it is merely a matter of finding stuff to read that doesn’t waste your time. Which is why I DO try to make what I write stimulating, and interesting, or at least within shouting distance of either one of those attributes….. I’m selfish, like most people, but I try to make what I’m selfish about amenable for discussion, at least…. and, unlike many folks in this sad world, I DON’T try to push what I think on anyone else….

A statement such as the last one is obviously an invitation to rant, but, since I’m still in the intro, we’ll forgo that small pleasure, and finish up here…. As I look back over what I’ve produced so far, I see that it is, oddly enough, sufficient unto the day as another faux intro section…. Once again, I’ve crafted together six-plus paragraphs stuffed with nothing more than idle chatter, which is enough to satisfy my strange and flexible standards for this part of today’s effort. In short, nyah, nyah, nyah, it’s done…. so there!….. Sorry, sometimes the little asshole in me just has to get in his two cents…. It’s best to just ignore it, and it will generally stop right away….. Shall we Pearl?….
__________________________________

I found a pearl two days ago that I’ve saved for a religirant, but, as of this moment, I don’t have quite enough outrage stored up to pull it off…. so, I’ll save it for another day. It’s a diatribe with Mother Teresa as the target, so I’m sure you’ll all want to see that…. I may be one of the few people in the world who sees her as a force of evil, and is willing to say so…. Besides, I always enjoy taking a few shots at someone I consider to be a waste of sperm….. Her reputation can take it, I think, as she has the wool pulled completely over the eyes of most of the world….

In the meantime, I went diving for pearls to substitute for a rant, and came up with the following seven star grouping, with which I am quite pleased… The group makes a very cogent point, and finishes nicely with a well-rounded piece of nonsense to set the proper tone for cogitation…. I hope you enjoy it all, and, if not, well, that’s just too bad…. your choice…. 🙂

“The truth that many people never understand until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.” — Thomas Merton

“If you think education is expensive, try Ignorance.” — Andy McIntyre

“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.” — Charlotte Bronte
(The latter claim is, it seems to me, true for both initial statements….)

“At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.” — Zeno’s paradox of the moving (still?) arrow

“True is suffering; this is true cause; this is true cessation; this is the true path. Know the sufferings; give up they causes; attain the cessation of the suffering; follow the true paths. Know the sufferings although there is nothing to know; relinquish the causes of misery although there is nothing to relinquish; be earnest in cessation although there is nothing to cease; practice the means of cessation although there is nothing to practice.” — Buddha, The Four Noble Truths

“A man learns to skate by staggering about making a fool of himself; indeed, he progresses in all things by making a fool of himself.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Is it NOUVELLE CUISINE when 3 olives are struggling with a scallop in a plate of SAUCE MORNAY?” — Zippy the Pinhead
(I would answer, yes, yes it is….)
__________________________________

When I went looking for a poem this morning, I had not intended for today’s choice to be quite so heavy, or complex…. But, like much of Sylvia Plath’s work, I find this too compelling to ignore…. and, most certainly not, when it finishes like this, with a chilling bit of precognition about social media…

“The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.”

Enjoy!

Insomniac

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon’s rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments—the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue . . .
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

~~ Sylvia Plath
__________________________________

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time–a tremendous whack.” — Sir Winston Churchill

I have used this quote previously, usually as part of a group of pearls leading to some point or another; it’s a very good quote, strong, positive, with a solid essence of meaning. It’s also damn good advice, which I try to heed at every opportunity I give myself to rant…. Winnie had a very good point here, mainly because he had the task of getting an entire island full of asses who believe themselves to be independent minded to work together to save those selfsame asses from the Germans, who were themselves displaying their own form of assholiness…. A bloody disgusting task, if you ask me, but, he was obviously the man for the job, as he seldom gave a shit about what anyone else thought, about much of anything….

The insight shown in this statement, however, is much deeper than is at first apparent…. Winnie understood that the average Englishman, as is true for the whole planet, as a rule of thumb, is pretty stupid, and stubborn to boot, being mostly unwilling to listen to anything they don’t wish to hear, whether smart or dumb, much less see any need to act on it. This, as might be clear to others, as it is to me, is NOT a particularly valuable frame of mind if one wishes to survive, and Winnie, knowing his people, was quite willing to use a two-by-four as his primary teaching tool to get his points across to the idiots he was forced to deal with during WWII….

Sad to say, this stupidity on the part of the larger part of humanity continues to this day…. Witness, if you will, the current crop of movies, if you wish to get a clue as to where the mind of humanity is focused…. It may amaze you, and will most likely depress you, to see that there is not a single movie about anything more serious than adolescent acne anywhere to be seen… Oh, there are what are termed psychological thrillers, but, they are mostly just shock literature, designed to make a good screenplay more than to explore the human psyche…. Nothing out there is remotely intelligent, because there just isn’t a market for it…..

I’m not proposing any solutions here; this is strictly a gripe session, for my benefit only. I get so tired of watching the parade of human events, because it so often turns sad, and depressing, to see how stupid and ignorant people can be…. and how cowardly most people are in asserting morality in public…. You know a society is going downhill when the police drive around acting as if they are under siege, and the people do not trust them at all to show either fairness, or restraint. In the town where I live, the worst traffic offenders I see on a daily basis are the police, who set the worst possible example for other drivers, even, and especially, when they are NOT responding to calls….

And the government wonders why nobody trusts them? Our society is sick, ffolkes, and I’m out here with my pile driver to hit that point again. That last paragraph was my second hit, and now, the tremendous whack of which Winnie spoke….

We are all responsible for the sorry state of the world, equally…. Those of us who are not actively engaged in actions which are destructive, are guilty of not speaking up often enough to get the attention of those who are, nor are we engaged in doing anything which will stop their deliberate depredations. They are guilty of being assholes, yes…. but we are all guilty of complicity in that, and can claim no less responsibility for when we fall down the hole we’ve been digging for ourselves…. And, that is the TRUTH….

“I’m amoral, and it’s been bothering my conscience.” — Smart Bee

“To escape criticism — do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” — Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” — Romans 2:1
(I’ve always maintained there is a lot of good advice in the Bible, as long as one doesn’t go all fanatic about its origin…. this is a perfect example of that contention….)
__________________________________

Lordy, lordy, what a long, strange trip it’s been!….. I shall now test the proof of the pudding….. Hmm… this Pearl is a bit hard to classify, and I don’t think I’m up to judging it for overall quality at this point…. So…

Tiny Truth, Just in Time

I’ll leave history to say if it’s a crime,
as it will always do….
Who may challenge the prerogative of Time?….
Nobody, that’s who….

~~ gigoid

Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

This recipe calls for “floated ferrets”….

Posted on March 16, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
For a time, it looked as if I was going to make it work….. Then, of course, Reality stepped in to remind me not to make assumptions like that, so, I put aside my anger, and disappointment, and unloaded….

No, sorry, this isn’t going to work, and I’m not speaking in any fictional voice this time…. I had thought to begin today’s Pearl with another spate of fictional fantasy, but, the stuff that is coming to the surface isn’t what I was hoping it would be, quality-wise, and I just don’t feel like forcing it out, then polishing it to a point it would fly unassisted. I don’t like to post stuff that comes out like that; I feel like I’m settling for less than my best….

So, here I am, chatting away, nattering, really, with nothing particularly compelling to say, or discuss…. I guess I could talk about my Life, such as it is, but I doubt that would be any more compelling, and would most likely end up as being much more embarrassing, on a personal level. Besides, I have found that blogging tends to magnify the apparent size of problems, at least in the sense that issues sound worse than they are, and people get the wrong impression of what is real, inadvertently causing them distress…. It’s best not to get too detailed in these moments of sharing….

I suppose I could mention a new piece of information that I realized regarding my SS disability. Once it begins, I am forevermore restricted from working at all for pay. This, apparently, includes writing books…. If I publish a book, any money I make from its sale will be deducted from what SS pays me as benefits, because it would be viewed as income, meaning, to them, I am able to work…. So, in order to be able to enjoy my retirement without worrying about whether or not I can make anything from what I might write, I must forgo all attempts to better my situation, and must accept no more in compensation than they are pleased to give me, until I die….

From one aspect, I can see the virtue in this, as it seems to say that the money should only be given to people who are unable to make money any other way than the accepted forms of work. In other words, if one is educated, and able to use their mind for acquiring income, without using the body, then they are not qualified for disability, no matter how badly disabled they may be, or how much it costs them to perform whatever mental functions they do to make money; writing, speaking, etc. It doesn’t seem to matter that they may be doing all that in pain, or at great physical cost; if they make money, they are disqualified to the extent that they are allowed to make no more than they receive from SS….

As usual with any federal bureaucracy, this policy is treated as if it is a religious tract, and the people who make decisions about whether or not to allow exemptions or exceptions to the rule are chosen for their unwillingness to make any changes at all. They are bureaucrats down to the bone, and their sole purpose in life is to maintain the status quo in re: federal regulations, to make sure NOTHING is done to challenge their validity, or make them more flexible, and thus, more able to help the people for whom they are ostensibly designed. That would make too much sense, and would never be allowed to be taken under consideration in any federal institution.

So, I have to decide if I can make more from “potential” book sales than I would make, for certain, as a disabled retiree…. which is a scary proposition, to be sure. There is no guarantee that anything I publish would sell well… One may hope, but it wouldn’t be wise to count too heavily on the tastes of the general public to support me in my golden years…. That particular grouping is a bit too unpredictable to make that something worth betting on with real money…. People are too random to ever let myself fall into that trap…. But, there is also my pride to consider, and my belief in myself….

Ah well, having reached an age where I can use my mind to look ahead, as well as behind, I know the best thing to do for now is NOTHING. I’ll just go along for a while, and see how I like living on disability, and whether the amount I’m able to count on will be enough for my wants…. I know it will meet my needs, for I’ve been doing that for over two years now, on less than half what I’ll be getting….

If what I will be making is enough to fix my financial picture, set up a legacy, and get some traveling done, then I’ll just go with the flow for a while…. Then, when I’ve got several books ready for publishing, I’ll maybe take a chance, and put them on the market…. I figure I’ll need to make about a half-million or so to be able to cover my retirement for the remainder of my time, so, after a time of waiting, I will have a better chance at making it work…. Hey, it’s a plan, anyway…. Even if it doesn’t come to fruition, it’s will give me a direction in which to travel…..

Well, that was certainly chatty and informative, wasn’t it? Being positive y’all are mostly asleep by now, I’ll quickly change directions, and see if the cabin movement will wake anyone up, without frightening anyone with loud noises…. I’m not sure where all this personal chat stuff came from; I guess I’ve been brooding more than I thought, being forced, again, to wait for the bureaucracy to finish grinding its wheels…. I’ve got verbal confirmation, but, so far, nothing else…. Oh well… Since this intro has grown beyond all rational bounds, I’d best be off to dive…. Shall we Pearl?
__________________________________

I’m uncertain at this juncture whether a rant is on tap, so we’ll begin with an old-school pearl, to see how the waters are today…. Random pattern, with, hmm, let’s see, I know…. I’ll keep the word “truth” in mind today as I cruise, using it as the touchstone for picking today’s pearls, and we’ll see what we can come up with for your edification, and positive delectation…..

“It matters not what you are thought to be, but what you are.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 785

“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he _must_ do.” — Ursula K. LeGuin, _A Wizard of Earthsea_

“It is not enough that we swallow truth: we must feed upon it, as insects do on the leaf, till the whole heart be colored by its qualities, and show its food in every fibre.” — Coleridge

“The goal of all life is death.” — Sigmund Freud

“Beware of me, for I am a poet!” — Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spake Zarathustra”

Well, that turned out fairly well….. Let’s see what else we can find…..

“.. does your DRESSING ROOM have enough ASPARAGUS?” — Zippy the Pinhead

Whoops! 😳 Sorry, couldn’t help myself…. One more, then I’ll leave you be for the moment….

“Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.” — Lazarus Long

There you go, a complete, accurate take on truth in advertising in modern America…. Really, it is…. Oh, hell, just let is simmer for a while, until it gets to a consistency you can use….. Meanwhile, we’ll go on….
__________________________________

I had hoped that a poem was percolating in my head, but, if so, it’s not giving out any advance notices…. so, I will retreat into one of my default positions, and find an appropriate piece by another of my favorites…. We’ll see what Google comes up with today…. Okay, this will do nicely…. Here is one from a most powerful voice; the poem has nothing to do with anything in particular for me today, I just like it….. and so will you, I think….

SWEENEY AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES

APENECK SWEENEY spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.

The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the horned gate.

Gloomy Orion and the Dog
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees

Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganized upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaning in,
Branches of wisteria
Circumscribe a golden grin;

The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid droppings fall
To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.

~~ T.S. Eliot
__________________________________

Okay, so I’ve decided to cheat…. I’m feeling lazy, and late, so I’m going to fall back on some of the material I’ve written in the past…. Below you will find two Pearls, both of which were created sometime in 2006 or 2007; it’s hard to tell, but from the format, and the placement in my archives (which are NOT clearly labeled for posterity….), that is about when these first appeared. Both were written for the 250 or so ffolkes who received it when I was sending them out at NSH, from my office in Program 3…. The first is from a Friday, the second is from the following Tuesday, I think…. Any who, I think they’ll be perfect for today’s mood….

Fit is never a problem…

Ffolkes,
No I don’t know, so don’t ask. It is Friday, and it promises to be very….interesting. And it has already been a somewhat remarkable week, in perhaps too many ways. I can’t recall feeling this fatigued, even on a Friday, for a long time. Some of it is no doubt medication related, but the brain is not just tired, but deep-fried. Hence….

Warning: Whimsical when bored.

Paradise : two cubes with dots on them.
Paradox : Dr. Kildare & Doc Holliday

“Consciousness is that which it is not, and is not that which it is.” — Sartre

“This writing business. Pencils and whatnot. Overrated, if you ask me.” — Winnie the Pooh

Y’all take care out there….

Next, this little gem, from a few days later….

if you have to ask….

Ffolkes,
When I am distressed I tend to retreat; I think that is a natural reaction. What may be the important thing to consider is to where we retreat. What gives us shelter from Reality and its’ harsh and painful nature? Most times I’ll pick up a book, and try to find something in it that eases the pain, or at least postpones it until I can deal. Here is what I found today……

“It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man’s fate is not important.
If it is not, what is?
He could not endure those remembered words.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin

Too, too deep, and yet deeper still we shall go, in search of a Truth…

Y’all take care out there…..

So, there you go…. a double blast from the past…. I hope you enjoyed it…. 🙂
__________________________________

Alright, so it turned into a real battle today; this Pearl did NOT come quietly….. But, it’s done. Let’s see how it drapes on the wall…. Aside from the altogether-too-long intro section, not too bad. The intro, though not quite classifiable as a rant, nonetheless used up most of what I might have had to say about either politics or religion today, so, they get a rest, no doubt well-deserved…. I try not to give them very much slack; they already have things too much their own way….

Any who, it all works, I think, for another attempt to rescue my head from tearing itself to shreds from inside…. which is often how it feels in there…. Don’t think too much about it, it will only give you a headache, like it does me…. Better to just ignore it, and now that you’ve finished today’s torturous path through the wilds of Neddom, (homeland of the dubious few, the ONLY place where gigoid’s rules are valid), you can congratulate yourself at having gotten through the experience without bruises, bloodshed, or excessive stains on your character…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

An aged, elegant marmoset sat beside the oracle…..

Posted on March 15, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
The baleful, weary eye of the sun poked itself reluctantly above the horizon to the west, spreading a pale, washed out flood of light over the stunted, ugly landscape. Shadows deepened behind the huddled buildings by the side of the slow moving river, rippling against the cold, dark water, as the weakling sun rose slowly into the angry purple of the lightening sky. Huge, ragged-looking birds rose in the air, cawing in hoarse, angry-sounding squawks, arguing over pieces of rotten trash. Calls to morning prayer echoed in the alleys and courtyards, along with curses of adults, and the irritated shouts of children getting dressed. Morning came hard to all of the denizens of planet Malorda, as it did each day, on this world of trouble and woe…..

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?…..
__________________________________

“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
__________________________________

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
__________________________________

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
__________________________________

Well, it’s about damn time…. that’s better…. Today’s Pearl was brought to you by a special effort, due entirely to my own sense of honor, and how to keep it….. It probably won’t win a Pulitzer, nor will it make me rich; it does, however, please me, and that will do…. I’m not going to tempt Fate any further today, and so, I bid thee adieu until tomorrow…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Psst! I got rhododendrons, cheap…..

Posted on March 14, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Well, hell…. Hellooo! Anyone in there? I know there is nobody OUT there yet, as this is not yet posted; the apparent issue is that there is no one in here, either…. I’ve been up almost an hour, have even had a few sips of coffee, so there is no reason for this vast featureless plain I see in my head, void of anything to draw the eye or the mind, currently serving as my sole source of imagination. If I were into horror fiction, I could easily build up a lot of tension, just gazing out over a landscape, empty of hope, empty of life….

I’m pretty sure I know the problem here…. I’ve been thinking a LOT the last couple of days, trying to make decisions about all the stuff I’ve been planning to do when my Social Security benefits begin. That day is fast approaching, and I’ve been attempting to prioritize all of it into a list that is workable, regardless of how much in resources I will have to use.

I have certain goals for the influx of cash that is coming, as well as plans for how to organize my new monthly income, more than twice its former size once it is all in place. The problem is, there are too many choices, and I am having trouble deciding which ones are the most important…. Coupled with not knowing any exact figures makes it a chancy proposition, at best….

Any who, since I seem to be like the donkey who starved between the pile of hay and the pile of carrots, and, the influx is still a few days in the future, at least, I wanted to make today’s Pearl a special one…. Unfortunately, my brain decided to take the day off to chew on what I’ve just been describing as my mental quandary, so I’m going to have to fake it, again…. 😳 I have no shame, you see…. and very little pride left. Poverty, or near-poverty, will do that to a man….

Okay, enough…. I’m being self-indulgent, and, given how I see my future, that could easily get to be a bad habit…. Now the question arises, what am I going to do about it? Well, first, I’m going to finish this Pearl, which I have started, and thus, have a duty to finish. If you know me at all, then you know that duty comes first…..

All I have to do is figure out how to carry it out, without injuring myself, or anyone else, and without relying on cheap tricks, such as deus ex machina, or other such morally reprehensible acts…. I don’t feel a poem trying to get out, so, you won’t have to worry about trying to decode my metaphors there…. I’ll make it simple, with some Emily, or someone else who writes clean and simple; it always makes a nice contrast to my own heavy prose….

Now that I’ve blathered about all of this irrelevant BS, I guess we can get on with today’s effort…. I’m depending on Smart Bee today, to find stuff that will SAVE THIS PEARL!!! It needs it….. It really and truly does….. Shall we Pearl?…..
__________________________________

Okay, here’s today’s offer…. I’ll stick to old-school pearls, no ranting. I think it’s the only way I’m going to be able to carry this off; my ranting state today would probably come off like something from Rush Limbaugh, or Geraldo, or Hannity, or whatever that guy on Fox is called….. not in terms of content, but of quality (no remarks, please….). Since I won’t give that idea the consideration it doesn’t deserve, I’ll instead submit the following group of pearls, which speak about how to live life, in such a way that, when you are nearing the end, you can still look yourself in the mirror of a morning….

“Even as a great fish swims along the two banks of a river, first along the eastern bank and then the western bank, in the same way the Spirit of man moves along beside his two dwellings: this waking world and the land of sleep and dreams.” — Upanishads

“To stake all one’s life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not – there is no weakness in that.” — Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“He would be the finer gentleman that should leave the world without having tasted of lying or pretense of any sort, or of wantonness or conceit.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, ix, 2

“When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.” — Thomas Jefferson, Writings

“When Po-chang was asked about seeking for the Buddha nature: “It’s much like riding an ox in search of the ox” — Smart Bee

“Happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.” — Robert G. Ingersoll

“I would have been here right after you called, but I had to shake the weasels.” — Deloris, from Roger Rabbit

If you don’t get it, that’s okay, it’s pretty subtle, and obscure…. in fact, just as much so as I could make it….. 🙂 Nevertheless, I think it will say what it needs to say….
__________________________________

Today’s choice in poetry will no doubt cause some head-scratching, but, it can’t be helped….. As you may or may not know, I try to use very little conscious thought in directing my choices for pearls, and/or the content therein, beyond a certain standard of quality. This poem may seem as if it doesn’t fit in, but, it does, so, deal with it, okay? Thanks…. Just kidding, it’s a great piece, and more relevant than it may seem at first…. enjoy!

Dialogue In Verse

_Jack._ Seest thou not yon farmer’s son?
He hath stolen my love from me, alas!
What shall I do? I am undone;
My heart will ne’er be as it was.
O, but he gives her gay gold rings,
And tufted gloves [for] holiday,
And many other goodly things,
That hath stolen my love away.

_Friend._ Let him give her gay gold rings
Or tufted gloves, were they ne’er so [gay];
[F]or were her lovers lords or kings,
They should not carry the wench away.

_Jack._ But ‘a dances wonders well,
And with his dances stole her love from me:
Yet she wont to say, I bore the bell
For dancing and for courtesy.

_Dick._ Fie, lusty younker, what do you here,
Not dancing on the green to-day?
For Pierce, the farmer’s son, I fear,
Is like to carry your wench away.

_Jack._ Good Dick, bid them all come hither,
And tell Pierce from me beside,
That, if he thinks to have the wench,
Here he stands shall lie with the bride.

_Dick._ Fie, Nan, why use thy old lover so,
For any other new-come guest?
Thou long time his love did know;
Why shouldst thou not use him best?

_Nan._ Bonny Dick, I will not forsake
My bonny Rowland for any gold:
If he can dance as well as Pierce,
He shall have my heart in hold.

_Pierce._ Why, then, my hearts, let’s to this gear;
And by dancing I may won
My Nan, whose love I hold so dear
As any realm under the sun.

_Gentleman._ Then, gentles, ere I speed from hence,
I will be so bold to dance
A turn or two without offence;
For, as I was walking along by chance,
I was told you did agree.

_Friend._ ‘Tis true, good sir; and this is she
Hopes your worship comes not to crave her;
For she hath lovers two or three,
And he that dances best must have her.

_Gentleman._ How say you, sweet, will you dance with me?
And you [shall] have both land and [hill];
My love shall want nor gold nor fee.

_Nan._ I thank you, sir, for your good will;
But one of these my love must be:
I’m but a homely country maid,
And far unfit for your degree;
[To dance with you I am afraid.]

_Friend._ Take her, good sir, by the hand,
As she is fairest: were she fairer,
By this dance, you shall understand,
He that can win her is like to wear her.

_Fool._ And saw you not [my] Nan to-day,
My mother’s maid have you not seen?
My pretty Nan is gone away
To seek her love upon the green.
[I cannot see her ‘mong so many:]
She shall have me, if she have any.

_Nan._ Welcome, sweetheart, and welcome here,
Welcome, my [true] love, now to me.
This is my love [and my darling dear],
And that my husband [soon] must be.
And, boy, when thou com’st home, thou’lt see
Thou art as welcome home as he.

_Gentleman._ Why, how now, sweet Nan! I hope you jest.

_Nan._ No, by my troth, I love the fool the best:
And, if you be jealous, God give you good-night!
I fear you’re a gelding, you caper so light.

_Gentleman._ I thought she had jested and meant but a fable,
But now do I see she hath play[‘d] with his bable.
I wish all my friends by me to take heed,
That a fool come not near you when you mean to speed.

~~ Christopher Marlowe
__________________________________

I found this image on a WordPress site the other day, and had to save it to share…. in fact, it may be a bit of a cheat, but, this will serve as a complete pearl, all by itself…. I could speak a long time on this stanza, and have in the past. Today, though, it will serve as well on its own…. enjoy!__________________________________

Okay, so I ended up cheating a lot… so sue me. I told you it might happen, so, I figure I’m good, if only for insurance purposes. Plus, there is the added bonus of no bloodshed, and no major disruptive incidents requiring a call to the local mental health facilities….. These all make for a good morning, even if nothing else of particular note happens…. A day without legal action is a good day…. On that encouraging note, I bid thee adieu, with sincerest apologies for all the above…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..
—

Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Xenophobia never smells very well….

Posted on March 13, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Yesterday’s querulous chipmunk would feel right at home here today, though that word, querulous, doesn’t come close to my own feelings…. which, if you must know, are still flying high on the adrenaline-like rush of joy I felt, and feel, knowing my ordeal with Social Security is winding down to a conclusion….. It’s almost like graduation from culinary school, in 1987, in the intensity of the emotional outpouring; that’s the last time I experienced this kind of emotional release all at once…. it’s quite heady, and intoxicating, in a way….

I know now what all those British authors meant…. the British are so bloody good at suppressing emotion, they became quite good at writing about how those repressed feelings act when they come forth all at one time, describing in great detail the storm that takes one away from one’s normal self, and fills one with more feeling than can be easily handled….. I must say, it’s quite exhilarating, don’t y’know?…. Quite makes one feel like a barbarian at the gates, what?

As you can see, I’m practicing my English speech patterns, for when I’m able to begin traveling soon. I should also practice my Irish brogue and lilt, as that is where I intend to go first. I’m not sure whether to book a tour or not; I’m tempted to just step on a plane, fly over, and start exploring on my own….

I used to be good at that sort of exploration, and Ireland has the distinct advantage of not requiring visas, just a passport…. and I carry that with me always…. I’m glad this happened now, as I was afraid I would have to get the passport renewed next year with only the one visa stamp in it, from China… Now, when I turn it in for another, there will be at least one or two other stamps, indicating countries I’ve visited, to go along with the one from Beijing in 2004.

It’s also damn nice to be able to think about something other than austerity measures…. I know now why the Greeks are protesting, along with a number of other European countries, all of whom are experiencing tough economic times. Austerity is no fun, even when self-imposed…. it is an emotionally trying experience to have always be thinking about where the next meal comes from, to admit one’s own poverty, and ask for help, and it is easy to place the blame on government, as they are the ones who are considered responsible to fix such issues….

This is also a point of view which forgets, of course, that it is the public theft and corruption of those self-same officials that are responsible for the problems in the first place; also of course, they have no more clue of how to fix it than do the ones suffering from it….. Pathetic…

Ah well, the whole world is going through tough times, economically; it’s all part and parcel of the overall breakdown in society that naturally accompanies the breakdown in the environment, and the impending doom that awaits us all. At times, my plans for travel and sightseeing seem a bit optimistic, as there may not be much time in which to enjoy a peaceful enough world to even be able to move around without difficulty.

At this point, there is no way to tell how much longer things will remain fairly normal; once the breakdown actually gets going, it will proceed rapidly, but, the build-up to that point is slow. and deceptively, seemingly far away….. However, one must remember, objects in the mirror are closer than they appear…..

Now, how did I get from my own sheer joy to the depressive notion of apocalypse? And, in just a few paragraphs, too!…. Amazing…. I have to say, that was a particularly strange intro, ranging through several states, none of which are compatible, but, seemingly, worked together today toward a common cause, though, I have to admit, I have no clue what that might be….. I just work here….

Oh, wait, no I don’t…. I forgot, I’m retired….. 😆 I’m going to quit this torture, and go on to find a pearl worth discussing…. or at the least, a group of them that will make me use my brain, instead of just sitting on it, as it currently seems to be utilized….. Ah, the hell with it, I’m diving in…. Shall we Pearl?…..
__________________________________

So, there I was, cruising through my database, when these five pearls stuck to my bag…. When I stopped to look at them, I found a pearl of great subtlety and depth, shining out at me in elegant apparent simplicity…. Now, you may look at these pearls, and have no clue as to what I saw in them…. or, conversely, the same gloss will strike your eye, and you will know instantly just why this is here…. Either way, it is sufficiently strange to fit in with the typical modus operandi that holds sway in this locus….. meaning, take it, or leave it…. but, do try to enjoy it in the process…. Otherwise, what’s the point, eh?….

“The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.” — Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)

“Love may not make the world go round, but I must admit that it makes the ride worthwhile.” — Sean Connery

“Pok pok pok, P’kok!” — Superchicken

In the midst of life we are in death. — Book of Common Prayer — The Burial Service

“Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. You cannot consistently practice any other virtues without being courageous.” — Maya Angelou

There you go…. classic wisdom in a strangely colored wrapper, served up with gusto and panache for your cogitative pleasure…. and, if not, well, we do sell Tums in the machine in the lobby…..
__________________________________

In lieu of a rant today, I’m including this classic poem from one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, Ogden Nash. This light-hearted indictment of the corporate class is brilliant in its cultural accuracy and subtle irony, and goes as far toward chastising the 1% as any of my rants…. Enjoy!

Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer

This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.
Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage withdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe
betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless
they don’t need it.
I know you, you cautious conservative banks!
If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny
them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving
of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks;
Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must
look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the
jungle,
And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had
better go get the money from their wife’s aunt or ungle.
But suppose people come in and they have a million and they
want another million to pile on top of it,
Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you
urge them to accept every drop of it,
And you lend them the million so then they have two million
and this gives them the idea that they would be better off
with four,
So they already have two million as security so you have no
hesitation in lending them two more,
And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm,
And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the
money sent or do they want to take it withm.
Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks,
the jackasses who go around saying that health and
happiness are everything and money isn’t essential,
Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant
money to maintain their health and happiness they starve
to death so they can’t go around any more sneering at good
old money, which is nothing short of providential.

Ogden Nash
__________________________________

“Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained.” — John Powell

I have been sitting here now for about 15 minutes, staring at this pearl…. I’ve subjected it to the most rigorous logical and deductive tests I can devise, and run it past several cultural editing and evaluation experts…. It’s perfect. It is my new vision statement, it’s that good….

It occurs to me that you might be sitting there thinking, “Well, he’s finally done it… slipped off his leash for good, and is lost wandering in the big, bad world.” In that assessment, attractive as it might appear on the surface, you would be erroneous, because, you see, I CAN, and DO laugh at myself, at the slightest provocation, so, I am guaranteed a lifetime of free entertainment, and you aren’t, so there….

Well, I suppose, if you were to continue to observe me, and join in the laughter and fun, it could be entertaining for you…. for a while, at least. Of course, like any good dealer, the first couple of times are free…. after that, you will pay, believe me, you will pay…. heh, heh, heh….. (Did that come across as evil enough? I could throw in a bit more twisted humor to seal the deal…. 😈 )

Sorry, didn’t mean to wander… somebody on Facebook recently asked if anyone remembered the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and I was, as far as I could see, the only one who not only knew who they were, but knew the first names of all three of the brothers…. Franklin, Phineas, and Fat Freddy…. and the Freak Brothers have been stuck in my head ever since….. along with all their tons of good advice for young freaks…. as we were fondly called by the mainstream folks back in the sixties…. and I’m done now with this atrocious run-on sentence/paragraph/unrecognizable literary device of dubious value….

Although the aphorisms that the brothers made popular had mostly to do with freak culture, to wit: pot smoking as a way of life, they were so structured and wise they are easily applied to other situations in reality, with equally favorable results in consequence of their use. For example, one of the most valuable statements commonly made in the stories was this: “It is far better to have pot, and no money, than to have money, and no pot.” This, as is obvious, can be stretched to include almost anything one may consider to be a staple item in Life, such as peanut butter, or toilet paper, or, flash drives…. Just substitute those words for “pot”, and the advice becomes incredibly relevant, and of great value in living successfully….

The FFFB comix, written, I believe, by R. Crumb, contained many other examples of advice and cultural acumen, such as the SDDMU, an economic principle that applies to any form of barter, or other economic transaction. The Standard Dope Dealer’s Mark Up is the price one demands to sell an ounce of pot, as determined by experience over time, in relation to what one paid for that ounce. The standard mark up is 330%, typically, which ensures that the original vendor is paid and happy, the dealer is compensated for his risk, and most importantly, the dealer smokes for free…. The customer is also happy, as he gets the desired comestible at the going price on the street, which is the best one can expect at that level of society….

Everybody involved gets what they want, except, naturally, the Man, who loses out on the taxes they could be making if they would legalize the substance, as well as the continuing loss of respect by the users of the pot, who become more disillusioned with established society as time goes on…. It is a double, or even triple loss for the police, as they also can’t seem to play a part in the issue that has any purpose other than wasting their time chasing something that has no place being illegal in the first place….

Hmm… it seems I was able to find a small rant in there… all it took was a short trip back to my radical political days at UC Berkeley, in 1968 & 69…. ah, memories! Those halcyon days of youth are sweet on recollection, though more compelling at the time, and not as sweet, but rather more bitter in flavor, as we carried on the fight against ignorance in society…. I suppose it kind of pulls my covers, and it becomes clear why I do rant about political and religious philosophy…. with my early intellectual training, it could hardly be otherwise.

Though I am less radical now, in some ways, I am still pretty far out of the mainstream, politically, religiously, and, I have no doubt, artistically (however small the amount of that quality I can claim….)…. I still favor rather radical treatment of the 1%, if and when we can bring them to heel; I don’t think they will give us any choice but to completely excise them from the gene pool, as they will not be willing to give up their stolen booty easily. Since they have shown absolutely zero compassion for anyone else in their insane grab for power and resources, I don’t feel any compunction at all about killing them, quickly and quietly, and then getting on with the business of healing the planet, and bringing reason to humanity…. One can always hope, can one not?…..

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” — Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

Well, maybe hope is a trifle optimistic….. 😆
__________________________________

Well, let’s see how it shapes up….. I am forced to admit, it ain’t bad, all in all. Not the usual, to be sure, but, then, what is? Suffice it to say, it’s done; so be it….. I’m going to go have some fun…. 😀 Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

That is one querulous chipmunk…..

Posted on March 12, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Fear, correctly handled, can be a powerful motivator; just ask any married man…. Ba da bing….. Rim shot….. No? You didn’t recognize the classic format? Shoot, I could have sworn y’all were old enough to remember that kind of stuff….. Maybe you do, it just doesn’t register that you do….. You know, a comedian makes a joke, usually very punny (sorry, never can resist a good pun….. or, a bad one, for that matter….), and the drummer in the band does what is called a “rim shot”, three quick drum beats, ba da bing, indicating the feeling of dropping off the edge of a cliff….. No, still no stirring of the old memory box?….. Hmm, this is more serious than I had imagined….

If this evidence is typical, we, as a society have a big problem….. we’re losing our sense of humor….. Everyone alive should be able to recognize the rim shot joke format; it is perhaps the only classic, truly American style joke that exists. Though it was present, and in use for a time in Europe, it wasn’t until Americans such as Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, and the sociological genius, George Carlin, in the late twentieth century, that the genre became recognizable as an American art form, brought to its peak in the latter half of the century on TV, with proponents like Jay Leno, and most particularly, David Letterman, the savior of late night TV, upon the retirement of Carson, and the clear winner in that time of TV history known as the Late Night Wars of the Eighties…..

Whew, love those run-on paragraphs…. Any who…. Now, it appears that modern culture has lost touch with this classical American style of humor, which grew out of the ancient styles of Groucho, Zeppo, & Harpo Marx, (Leonard & Gummo only appeared occasionally), and Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe, the inimitable Stooges. Never again will the stage or screen see the kind of uninhibited nonsense as produced by those two genius comedy groups, the Marx Brother’s, and the Three Stooges, during their periods of popularity…… No one will ever poke their finger in an eye with quite the panache that Moe could give, and it is a foregone conclusion that the art of clowning lost its greatest genius when Harpo Marx passed on…. I still get a runny, big, red nose on the anniversary of this death….

How will future generations ever cope with all of the stress and angst they will have to face, in the fight to survive the environmental damage being done by today’s Beloved Ruling Class and the Asshole Division of Megacorpse? Humanity will be assuming a heavy handicap in trying to face down such experienced evil-doers without the benefit of having George C on their side…. Nobody could issue indictments of the asinine behavior of the 1% better than Grandmaster Carlin, and the video discs he left behind, targeting the corporate assholes, are as valid now as when he filmed them 10-20 years ago, all precise, detailed attacks on the people whose sole purpose is to fuck the rest of us at every turn….

I would suggest that society take a very close look at the state of humor in today’s culture, and begin the attempt to bring back the jokes needed to motivate society to action. Our artists have always shown the way, in revolutions and historical times of tension, by singing, and quoting poetry, and carving statues, and making jokes about the government, or otherwise expressing the outrage and feelings of anger that people have when confronted with the chicanery of their peers; we look to Art to show us how to live….. It will be a sad thing indeed if we cannot learn to at least laugh at the foolishness of our own demise, because, damn if it isn’t hilarious…. from the point of view of the rest of creation, anyway…..

Hmm…. without even noticing, I’ve already ranted once, and managed to get an intro section out of it as well…. Cool, eh? If nothing else, it’s different than your average intro, without question…. whether that is a good sign, or not, remains to be seen….. I’m going to bow to the inevitable now…. Shall we Pearl?…..
__________________________________

It’s time, as is obvious from the intro, to mix things up a bit…. Oh, don’t panic, just a little shake-up, no major disruptions…. In this section, rather than the recently typical entry of a politirant, or a religirant, I’m switching to a harlequin pearl, the quickest, most efficient form of pearl creation in my somewhat limited repertoire of same….

I’m confused, which is both normal, and expected, so I’m going with my usual response to that condition, and making random changes to routine, so as to “go with the flow”, as it were…. You should know by now not to encourage me like this….. There IS a point to this pearl, and you SHOULD be able to figure it out fairly easily…. If not, well, you can always look at the ads while the adults are busy playing…..

“The dictate of the light says: ‘Know yourself and what you are.’ The dark replies, ‘By all means, but then become afraid.'” — Tanith Lee

“The only way to combat criminals is by not voting for them.” — Dayton Allen

“And never, ever cut a deal with a dragon.” — Smart Bee

“Plato affirmed that the soul was immortal and clothed in many bodies successively.” — Diogenes Laertius (c. 200 AD) — Plato, xl
(I don’t know about y’all, but it’s nice to have this confirmed by ancient decree…..)

“What I need is a MATURE RELATIONSHIP with a FLOPPY DISK…” — Zippy the Pinhead

“Individuality seems to be Nature’s whole aim — and she cares nothing for individuals.” — Goethe

For those who didn’t make it to page 249 of “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle” by John Barrow and Frank Tipler, I quote : “In a randomly infinite Universe, any event occurring here and now with finite probability must be occurring simultaneously at an infinite number of other sites in the Universe. It is hard to evaluate this idea any further, but one thing is certain: if it is true then it is certainly not original!”

I have no excuses, and no rational explanation for my behavior…. too bad, so sad…. They said he showed such promise…..
__________________________________

Something about Sylvia Plath’s poetry draws me…. like my own poetry, I don’t wish to lose whatever it is about it that feels so right, so I don’t question it closely, I just enjoy…. and hope you do as well….

Child

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate —
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

~~ Sylvia Plath
__________________________________

You are about to witness an unprecedented event of major proportion…. Well, for this corner of reality, it’s major….. The remainder of today’s Pearl of Virtual Wisdom is hereby canceled. The reason is not one of a malicious nature, but, rather a sudden burst of good news that will require some thought and assimilation in order to settle comfortably…. which is a long winded way to say, YIPPEE!

Following up on a phone message from yesterday, I spoke this morning with a Mrs. H, who informs me that a) my status as a disabled retiree has been approved by Social Services, and b) my benefits can start immediately…. oh, and c) she would be my caseworker from now on…. I am still trying to catch my breath, as the adrenalin is making it hard to settle down long enough to cheer….

After almost 3 years, it is an exquisite feeling to know that my wait is, essentially, over. The money owed in back pay will be in my account within 30 days (or, possibly, by her report, less than that….), and my monthly benefits should begin by the first of April, or May, at the latest.

Needless to say, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, so I’m taking the rest of today off, in re: these Pearls, and am going to go do something fun, if not foolish…. Hopefully, I can avoid anything legally actionable, but, I’m making no promises….

I leave you in this last section, not with a rant, but with a pearl of nearly infinite luster…. Well, actually it’s a pearl and a rant, all in one…. It doesn’t have anything to do with my news, it just seemed like a good substitute for the 1200 or so words I would usually accompany this with…. Just feel grateful I didn’t have the impulse to discuss this one…. we would still be here late tonight….. Enjoy, & I’ll see ya in the closing….

“Conservative intellectuals have taken on the left’s sense of persecution and repression — though in this case, at the hands of cultural commissars. The same conservative intellectuals who denounced the psychology of victimization have been nursing a fine sense of victimization of their own. How many times have we read or heard the same half-dozen stories about the horrors of political correctness? This sense of being victims at the hands of multicultural barbarians, militant feminists, and spineless university administrators (the usual characters in this drama) gives conservative intellectuals, as it has long given their counterparts on the left, a kind of collective identity. It is a powerful, organizing myth, which is not to say the individual stories are untrue– it is the total picture that is false. The myth of liberal repression allows the conservatives to cross-dress as intellectual insurgents. Charles Murray has perfected this appropriation of radical rhetoric– the courageous, lonely truth-teller, sadly bearing the hateful facts but facts they are, willing to voice the unspeakable, to break through the repressive apparatus of liberal conformity.” — Paul Starr, at http://www.princeton.edu/~starr/libcon.html
__________________________________

Okay, I can relax a bit now…. I was afraid I wouldn’t get this done before exploding… and if I don’t hurry, that statement will be a lie, or at minimum, wrong. In any case, it’s done, and I can go start my random wandering around in a daze, trying to figure out what to do first…. It may sound like a threat, but it’s really just a promise…. I’ll be back….. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Ned Moore, aka gigoid, is a 70 year-old, (!!!… When did that happen?….), retired dilettante, who would rather read than eat, most days. His first blog, "gigoid’s folly", has been emailed out to folks he knows for about 18 years now. He still considers it his best defense against angst, and the ever-present specter of sheer insanity..... Due to rigorous curmudgeon training requirements, he has discontinued his Facebook presence, but still indulges in the occasional Twitter session... In essence, he's socialized, but, not overly sociable; all labels and stereotypes are forbidden in his presence... and he doesn't care what anyone thinks about that..... In fact, he doesn't want to talk anymore.... If you feel you MUST contact gigoid, his email address is: alphagigoid@gmail.com You can go read now.... Go on, beat it.... gigoid, the dubious

View Full Profile →

	katiemiafrederick on Are those Foster Grants to blo…
	katiemiafrederick on Funk-o-matic accessories are o…
	katiemiafrederick on Dodge those taxes with dignity…
	katiemiafrederick on Dodge those taxes with dignity…
	katiemiafrederick on But…. but…. what a…

gigoid

Exploring Consensual Reality

Monthly Archives: March 2013

Salubrious greetings included in every box….

Plainly, it isn’t wise to bump OR grind….

The remainder may go free…..

Such scintillating sartorial services seem simply swell….

Bee balm is often useful with such wounds…

This recipe calls for “floated ferrets”….

An aged, elegant marmoset sat beside the oracle…..

Psst! I got rhododendrons, cheap…..

Xenophobia never smells very well….

That is one querulous chipmunk…..

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: