How to train predator birds with vertigo….

Posted on March 31, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

Was Emily channeling the future with this poem? With the correct tilt to the head, with a slight look around the corner of the eye, this ~~would be~~ IS a very good statement to support the concept of blogging…. Each of us bloggers MUST abide by this feeling, in order to continue to post….

Well, I do, anyway…. But, I’m an Emily fan, so maybe that has something to do with it….. We all tend to fall back on the words of our favorites when it comes to justifying our own existence, or, in this case, our own continued presence on the web….

Okay…. So, was that a bit more comfortable? I thought a bit of a different opening might be in order….. Not that I feel the old way wasn’t working, but, I’ve never been quite satisfied with that part of the Daily Pearl…. Breaking past the morning block that almost everyone’s mind suffers upon first awakening has become, if not easy, at least doable….. But, the fear of the blank white screen still hovers in the background, always ready to jump up, freeze my brain’s connection to my fingers, & generally put a complete halt to the morning’s process of writing….. Damned neuroses!….

In the last few months, I’ve managed to NOT feel the fear so consistently, by using a combination of trickery, cheer leading, and flat out lying to myself, which seems to be working fairly well…. we haven’t had a freeze-up in close to a year. But, it’s never been an easy process, and I’ve never felt fully engaged in how it gets done….

I’ve always felt that somewhere, deep inside the back reaches of my brain, there is a structure, a building of words, so to speak, that I will someday find, establishing a solidly constructed edifice here at the beginning of each Pearl, to mark the beginning of another fine piece of work….

That is probably just another of my fantasies, but, hey, it’s MY fantasy, so leave it alone, okay? We all need our illusions to keep us going…. I know this; otherwise, why would we put up with so much fictional bullshit from our leaders? I’ve always known, and been saddened, by the knowledge that our leaders are liars; congenital, trained, or just naturally glib, it doesn’t matter, they’re all a bunch of self-serving assholes who would lie to their own mother if they thought it would buy her vote….

Oops! Ranting mode…. stand clear, please…. Okay, I turned it off, you can relax….. Almost started in on the BRC there…. I guess they just make too attractive a target to leave them alone too long…. I’ll not start that here in the intro today, though, for which I’m sure you are thankful….

I suppose, given we’ve managed to wander through a number of paragraphs already, we could conceivably call this completed, and get on with the day’s business…. Since I’ve had eight sold hours of sleep, and my pain meds are currently ahead of the pain, score-wise, I think I’ll go ahead and do that…. I suppose there are worse ways to start the day….

In fact, I KNOW there are, as I’m familiar with just about ALL of the different ways one can start badly….

Shall we Pearl?….

How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

— Robert Browning (1812-1890) — Saul, ix

_____________________________

As iterated above, ranting is on hold…. Since it is, and I want to keep going, we’ll put today’s old-school pearl here…. It will give me something easy to do, and pass the time until I am ready to go find something in the news upon which to focus my vitriol…. a waste bin, as it were, for the angst I wish to throw away…. For now, let’s find a group of pearls that says something about Life At Large….

“You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist, he is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.” — Sydney Harris

(Side note: When applied to politicians, the accuracy of this statement approaches 101% validity. — gigoid….)

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) –Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

“Wisdom outweighs any wealth.” — Sophocles (406 BC)

“I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.” — George Bernard Shaw, “The Apple Cart” (1929), Act II

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” — Beverly Sills

“In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.” — Mrs. Jameson

“Why does there have to be an end to the rainbow? Can’t we just let beauty exist without trying to prove that it dies?” — Spite, The University of Akron

PERFECT! Q.E.D., mon amis….
_____________________________

Here is one of my favorite poems; it’s been here before, and, no doubt, will be here again…. This time, it has the name of the translator, who does an excellent job of creating a compelling English equivalent from the ancient Chinese verses….Enjoy!….

Drinking Alone

I take my wine jug out among the flowers
to drink alone, without friends.

I raise my cup to entice the moon.
That, and my shadow, makes us three.

But the moon doesn’t drink,
and my shadow silently follows.

I will travel with moon and shadow,
happy to the end of spring.

When I sing, the moon dances.
When I dance, my shadow dances, too.

We share life’s joys when sober.
Drunk, each goes a separate way.

Constant friends, although we wander,
we’ll meet again in the Milky Way.

~~ Li T’ai-po ~~

tr. Hamil

_____________________________

“When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” — Richard Cardinal Cushing

“If you call a dog’s tail a leg, what do you have? A dog. Calling a tail a leg, doesn’t make it a leg.” — Abraham Lincoln

Aren’t these complementary pearls great? They’re the perfect lead-in for a rant about politicians, most of whom are of the type of person (I use the word liberally….) who regularly attempts to convince the public they are NOT a duck, or a dog, when, in truth, they either quack, or bark, quite clearly…..

The subject of politicians lying to the public is one I spend a lot of time writing about here, so it would fit right in with all of my other rants very well…. Unfortunately, the news is currently being usurped with a story that makes it far to EASY to show how wide-spread the issue is in our government….

Leland Yee, a California State Senator from San Francisco, and Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a Tong leader from SF’s Chinatown district, (Kinda makes ya wonder, don’t it? “Shrimp Boy?”….. Personally, I get all SORTS of weird mental images popping up when I say those two words to myself….), have been arrested, and are being charged with a number of counts related to their (alleged….. 🙂 …) long-term involvement in drugs, gun-running, political corruption via voting, murder-for-hire, and just about every crime against society that exists, save for, perhaps, stealing from babies….. and that one isn’t out of the question for these two…. I just didn’t see that among the charges for which they were indicted….

It seems that for over twenty years, Yee was selling votes and political influence to Chow, and others, for lucrative economic advantage, for him, and for those who benefited from the programs he voted in to being. He also laundered millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains, by using his political campaign accounts to accept donations, for the Chinese Tong, run by Chow….

This money was collected from prostitution, drug, and racketeering enterprises, all run by the Tong. An undercover FBI agent infiltrated the Tong organization, establishing trust by posing as an ex-Mafioso of high repute, whereby he was able to gather tons of condemning evidence of their corruption, for over four years before the arrests were made…

But, it’s all too easy a target…. In fact, the focus being placed on these two will, long-term, have the opposite effect that it should….. These two clearly criminal individuals are providing too obvious a target for the public’s ire, thus taking it AWAY from all the other, less obviously corrupt politicians out there, almost ALL of whom are hard at work raiding the public treasury, but are much better at hiding their machinations than these two clowns appear to be…

Putting all the public’s attention on a couple of bozoids, who managed to get caught, literally red-handed, with their fingers in the public till, will ultimately have the effect of making other politicians appear to be more honest than they actually are…. That’s human nature, and the pundits, who all know this, will be using it to their advantage for a long time to come….

So, rather than waste a lot of my time and angst-driven energy on ranting about the corruption they are exposing, I’ll just remind you that what you are seeing is NOT atypical for politicians, and shouldn’t be thought of as an anomaly, but, rather, as an omen of things to come, when we expose ALL their asses, and throw them ALL out of office, and out of our lives…. (Picture an iceberg, 90% unseen, floating on the ocean…. Yee & Chow are a small part of the ice visible above the water line….)

Then, when I know you’ve realized that, in spite of all the nonsense in the news, detailing the shenanigans of what they’d like us to believe are swans swimming in the public pond, you now see they are really only ducks, stealing food from the swans, and the dogs, to wit: from you and me… Once you’ve realized how the politicians of this government are NOT in the business of helping us, but are only in Washington to steal as much as they can during their term of office, is the absolute truth, with a capital T, we can go on…..

Now, since y’all have put up with my blathering for so long on such an obvious issue, I’ll reward your forbearance by throwing together a set of pearls to further illustrate and/or enhance my points, to close this off with a flourish…. which, though not particularly common here, is, no doubt, warmly welcome when it occurs…. Enjoy!…..

“The seeds of our own punishment are sown at the same time we commit sin.” — Hesiod

(Sin, otherwise defined as voting…. the two words are interchangeable when politics are involved….)

“Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.” — Theodor W. Adorno

Gerald Ford: In the Bob Hope Golf Classic, the participation of President Gerald Ford was more than enough to remind you that the nuclear button was at one stage at the disposal of a man who might have either pressed it by mistake or else pressed it deliberately in order to obtain room service.” — Clive James

“If they become politicians they were switched at birth.” — Mom’s Hint #096

“A kitchen in every pot. I mean, a pot in every — I mean, a chicken in every…” — George Bush, 1988

“All a man needs to be elected President is the kind of profile that looks good on a postage stamp.” — B.B. Franklin

“We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans…” — President William Jefferson Clinton, USA TODAY 11 Mar 1993

“As Athenodorus was taking his leave of Caesar, “Remember,” said he, “Caesar, whenever you are angry, to say or do nothing before you have repeated the four-and-twenty letters to yourself.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Caesar Augustus

“Now I’m having INSIPID THOUGHTS about the beautiful, round wives of HOLLYWOOD MOVIE MOGULS encased in PLEXIGLASS CARS and being approached by SMALL BOYS selling FRUIT..” — Zippy the Pinhead

Damn, that was close…. I thought for sure I’d NEVER get out of there!…. Smart Bee took me at my word, and proceeded to inundate me with pearl after pearl that just fit into the group seamlessly…. I managed to keep it down to eight, then got lucky, and found the perfect Zippy quote for closing it off with just the right touch of nearly-coherent insanity…. “He was bigger than me, Ma, but, I took ‘im down!”….. Now we can all go get some rest….

You, you, and you, panic. The rest of you, come with me….
_____________________________

I suppose we will be forced at this point to declare a moral victory…. We only had to leave behind three bodies in a state of panic, but, the rest of us made it through to here, so, I have to count that on the positive side of the scale…. Otherwise, they’d close me down….

Besides, one of the three bozoids we left behind was a trained bozoid, so they’ll all eventually stop screaming & jumping around like idiots, whereupon the bozo will get hungry, and the others will follow as he goes off to find the exit door behind the nearest banyan tree….

On that phantasmagorical note, I’m outta here…. and, none too soon, I’m can tell…. See y’all tomorrow, ffolkes…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

As dragons go, Smaug is a wuss…

Posted on March 30, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

If it weren’t for the previous twenty-five years, I’d give up trying to sleep altogether…. Those years, spent living, for the most part, without the boon of sleeping more than six or seven hours a day, on average, (if I was lucky), gave me plenty of reasons to try to find ways to increase the amount of time I spent horizontal, unconscious, in imitation of Morpheus….

Dwelling, as it were, upon the fields of Endymion, became an important task, if only to arm myself with more than the minimum of energy to deal with the demands upon your average middle-aged husband and father of two….. Sleep is a weapon, as you may know…. It helps dealing with the energy levels of the kids, when one doesn’t have to, almost literally, drag one’s sorry ass to the bathroom each morning before work…. Too late now…. However, I managed to make it through all of that, reasonably successfully, (in my own mind….), without the sleep…. But, I missed it….

As a consequence of this search, this last few months, experimenting with cannabis products to find the best ones to replace or augment my other pain medications, has had sort of a vacation-like quality to it, as I’ve found a couple of products that have enabled me to sleep better than I have since my twenties. The last couple of days, I’ve actually gotten spoiled, getting upwards of eight to ten hours of relatively uninterrupted sleep, awakening stronger than I’ve felt in many years…. Amazing what a bit of unadulterated rest will do, isn’t it?….

Once again, I see I’ve allowed myself to ramble through my own backyard, unashamedly sharing my patently boring personal intimacies, but, in the process, filling in a lot of empty space on the screen, all with reasonably good English…. If nothing else, I punctuate splendidly, and my grammar is a thing of beauty to behold, don’t you think? I do…. Of course, none of what has gone by has any relation to what we are supposed to be doing, which is finding an interesting way to pass time while y’all wend your way to your seats, to get safely strapped in for the day’s dive….

Oh….. It seems that while I was rambling around like that, that is exactly what happened…. I’ll be damned…. I’m not sure it has EVER gone quite so smoothly…. I’m not sure if I should be happy, or nervous, waiting for the other shoe to drop…. Oh, hell, I’m going to assume the best, for once, and get on with the show, before anything has a chance to go wonky….

By the way…. I forgot to tell y’all…. I found an old report, from back in February of 2012, when the doctors were finally able to pinpoint what’s wrong with me. At that time, I was diagnosed with “witzelsucht” (vit’sel-zoocht) [Ger.] , which is defined as, “A mental condition characteristic of frontal lobe lesions, marked by the making of odd jokes and painful puns, and the telling of pointless stories, at which the patient himself is intensely amused.” …..

Oh….. Well….That would explain it….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Let us suffer any person to tell us his story morning and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will become our master.” — Edmund Burke

Hmph…. a lot HE knows! I’ve been at this now for going on THREE twelve-months…. I don’t see anybody calling ME master!!!! Okay, I’ll stop now….
_____________________________

Beset by personal demons on every side, I’m retreating, at top speed, to a more stable vantage point…. Once I’ve gained my footing in a more trustworthy setting, I’ll be back to rant, or pearl, or do whatever I need to do to keep this on track…. For the nonce, hold your breath….. If I’m not back by the time you can count to oh, say, seven hundred eighty-three, then, go ahead and take another breath…. I shouldn’t be too long after that….

Better…. I found a nice little hill, with a commanding view of the surrounding terrain, and a nice, tall cliff at my back; very defensible, with a pool of water in a cave in the cliff, in case we come under siege…. Now I can afford to take the time to decide on a rant, or go dive for some pearls…. In fact, I’m going to do that, without telling you first which one it will be…. You’ll just have to figure it out on your own, when you see what comes next…. Hell, you could get lucky, and I’ll find some ART….

My god, it’s something new and different! What WILL he think of next?….. Enjoy…..
Okay, ffolkes…. the decision as to a rant or an old-school pearl has been taken out of my hands…. The above photo, the first portrait of all three of them released by the royal family since George’s christening, last October, is one of two potential pieces of news that would serve for this section’s espoused purpose….

The other choice is a story about California State Senator Leland Yee, and his partner in crime, Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a Chinese Triad Tong leader, both residents of SF’s Chinatown, who were recently arrested on charges of money-laundering, corruption, drug trafficking, and murder-for-hire…. As a long-time city and state politician, Lee makes an excellent target for a rant, as a very obvious member of the BRC caught with his hands in the till….

Political corruption for a rant, or some nice, bland little rant about the uselessness of royalty in the modern age?…. But, I don’t know….. with a Grand Doofus Face like Prince William’s, how can I pick on them, royal twits that they are?… It’s not honorable, nor is it cricket, to pick on the handicapped…. Besides, it’s a cute kid, and he’s got a tough life ahead…. Politician Lee and Tong Leader Chow are too obvious a target for my taste…. Such a rant would be like taking candy from a baby…. So, we’ll go with an old-school pearl, and keep the parameters loose, so there isn’t any real damage to anyone, other than, perhaps, to their sense of fair play…. Let’s dive!….

“In adversity remember to keep an even mind.” — Horace (8 BC)

“Keep the juices going by jangling around gently as you move.” — Satchel Paige

“One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.” — Josh Billings

“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.” — Confucius

“Fear is the lock, and laughter, the key to your heart.” — Steven Stills

“Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love all year round, madam; that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals.” — Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro

A monk asked Nansen, “Is there any great spiritual teaching that has not been preached to the people?”
Nansen said, “There is.”
“What is the truth that has not been taught?”
“Nothing,” Nansen replied.

— Smart Bee
_____________________________

It’s now just barely 4 ack emma, so decision making is probably not an advisable pastime for someone such as myself, who makes an unfortunate habit of being up at this hour…. It’s probably not advisable, even though I’m careful about making decisions more critical than which subject matter to choose, regardless of the potential for nonsense…. I’ve haven’t lived to this ripe age without a certain degree of intelligence making itself felt; I’m actually getting pretty good at thinking ahead. Sometimes, though, the process of making ANY decision becomes a chore, an ordeal of note, otherwise known as a pain in the proverbial ass….

Such is the decision as to the poem for today…. I can’t seem to pin down any particular mood, or feeling, which might give me a clue about which author to pick…. I just used Emily yesterday, twice, so, I don’t feel right about going to that well again…. Oh, hell, I’m not in the mood to waffle about it any more, so I’ll just pick one of mine, and be done with it…. I’ll look for one that isn’t TOO depressing, just as a minor parameter by which to choose…..

Relative Cynicism, with Caramel Sauce

Absolute stillness follows violent movement,
it can happen during a downhill race,
as an immovable piece of asphalt pavement
meets the once handsome racer’s face.

Yuk, yuk, yuk said that asshole Moe,
after poking both of Larry’s eyes,
bashing face, head, & crotch of Curly Joe
and only ever got hit with pies.

Lonely moments never really come along
when Murphy’s got us in his sights.
Not for money, love, or siren’s song
will he abrogate his natural rights.

All we can do is sigh, or laugh in pain,
as Life portions out our ration of shit.
Silver linings melt in the slightest rain,
so we may as well learn to live with it.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

“For several years more I maintained public relations with the Almighty. But privately, I ceased to associate with him.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

I can relate…. This sentiment seems to me to be one that might be common, to any of us who have refused to fall into the delusional system that is so prevalent in our society, the one they call religion…. or, in deference to accuracy, in my estimation, the cult of deliberate ignorance…. For well over 10,000 years, since before the advent of writing, people have been trying to foist the idea of supernatural origins for all we see in reality upon the rest of humanity, as a means of justifying their own particular penchant for manipulation of others, their avarice, and their gratuitous, insane notions of piety….

I suppose, if they didn’t work so hard to make other people go along with their insanity, it wouldn’t piss me off so much….. I understand they are just trying to figure out in their own minds how to deal with their own fears, and their unwillingness to use what brains they have to take care of themselves, to take responsibility for their life, and their actions…. These cowardly fools would rather place their ignorant faith in a supernatural entity, for which there is no convincing evidence in reality…. God has always made an excellent scapegoat, though, which is why He is so popular among the cowardly….

It has always been somewhat irksome to me, ever since I was a child, to have people expect me to fall right in with this nonsense…. Even at the tender age of four, I knew there were flaws in the story I was getting… There were too many internal inconsistencies in the logic, which caused my already logical mind to question what I was hearing, even then….

There were too many flags coming up from my internal crap detector, which tended to go off like crazy, every time I went to Sunday School…. and this was in the Presbyterian Church, which is about as bland and flexible a creed as exists among the myriad of Biblical interpretations that are floating around out there in the world at large…. Plus, I just KNEW it had to be a big joke, or lie, or something, when they tried to convince me of the “rightness” of “everything” I was reading in the Bible…. For example, that women were less important than men, especially in the church, as exemplified in the following short discussion….

“In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were her dwelling places upon earth. In the Renaissance, while remaining the Queen of Heaven, she became also the human mother in whom everyone could recognise qualities of warmth and love and approachability… The stabilising, comprehensive religions of the world, the religions which penetrate to every part of a man’s being– in Egypt, India or China– gave the female principle of creation at least as much importance as the male, and wouldn’t have taken seriously a philosophy that failed to include them both… It’s a curious fact that the all-male religions have produced no religious imagery– in most cases have positively forbidden it. The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle.” — Kenneth Clark, 1969

Let’s not even get into the other crap they were trying to get me to buy…. original sin, the holy ghost, blasphemy, worshiping graven images, etc.,…. it’s all even more outrageously manipulative, and unbelievable than believing women are inferior to men, by design (which is, obviously, not true….). Also annoying is the way this philosophy, Christianity, is touted as oh-so-wonderfully inclusive, oh-so-compassionate, and oh-so-generous in nature…. all the while they are trying to convince everyone of these qualities, they are displaying their bigotry, ignorance, aggressiveness, and fear of aliens of all kinds….

These people, the white Christians, have been shown to be ultimately responsible for most of the wars we’ve seen over the centuries, as well as having the responsibility for having kept the general populace under the control of the savage master ruling classes, those humans with no compassion at all, assisting them blatantly with their constant admonitions to obey worldly authority, on the promise of immortality…. AFTER THEY DIE….

Can you think of ANYTHING more stupid? To buy into the notion that our actions on this plane of existence have some kind of regulatory effect on where we might go when we die, is the most egregiously distorted view of reality I can imagine, one with absolutely NO proof, or even evidence that can be even pointed at, much less held in the hand….

Well, ffolkes, I just can’t bring myself to do it. I won’t refuse responsibility for my own actions, and adjust my behavior to fit some other asshole’s idea of what is right, just on the promise of a reward when I die…. It doesn’t make any sense, and I’m not going to do it, so there….

To finish out this indictment, of religion in general, and of Christianity in specific case, here are five pearls that show exactly what is important in modern society, all to maintain the status quo….

“Irresponsibility isn’t a sickness–it’s an art.” — Remington Steele

“If words were invented to conceal thought, I think that newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention.” — Thoreau

“Prejudice is when you don’t hate an individual, but you hate what they stand for, when without knowing them personally, you decide they are worthy of your derision.” — Callan Williams

“Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.” — Robert Orben

“Ignorance is Strength.” — George Orwell’s 1984

These statements, then, become the rallying cries of modern society, pointing out to people how to be successful in life, by encouraging everyone to avoid all blame, and all virtue….. And we wonder why we’re going to hell in a handbasket….

A fig for those by law protected,
Liberty’s a glorious feast;
‘Courts for cowards were erected,
Churches built to please the priest.

— Robert Burns (1759-1796)
_____________________________

This will someday be noted as an example of a “typical” Pearl from this era…. I can’t say at all how good it is, or even whether it is readable; that would be too egotistical, even for me. I will say this…. It’s done, and I’m glad, because I managed to create this one in spite of all the handicaps I’ve been encountering of late, most of which I’ve been strong enough to keep from mentioning (that’s scary, eh?….)…. Any who, as I said, and will now reiterate, it’s done…. So….. see ya…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

Assaulted with logic by a Master of Balliol…..

Posted on March 29, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Oddity after oddity keeps piling up in front of me, daring me to question why all these strangenesses are happening so closely together…. Therefore, going with standard policy, I won’t bother to even think about it, as I’m not in the habit of answering dares from reality….. I’m old enough to have learned the usual consequences of that sort of stupidity, & have no desire to spend the rest of the day dealing with whatever my stupidity has cost me, in terms of having to fix something that can generally found to be both real, and critical to my serenity of spirit…. elusive as that may be…..

Having thus dodged a number of bullets at once, I’ll head off into the wilds of Consensual Reality,to see what kind of mischief I can find….. I suppose it doesn’t HAVE to be mischievous, but, that’s the venue I end up choosing most often, and I’m not one to break tradition, as you know, without sufficient reason to do so….. We have NO reasons today, so, mischief it is, provided I can find any…. It isn’t very hard, most days…..

Of course, most days, I’ve got more than five functioning neurons to work with; this morning, my brain feels as if I swapped it out for a bowl of oatmeal, or something; I just can’t seem to get going faster than it takes to keep up with this little snail over here….. Oh, wait, that’s a hallucination…. Never mind….

No, actually, my brain IS pretty foggy today, a result of once again getting more sleep than I know what to do with…. I had an attack yesterday afternoon, where my back seized up for some unknown reason, putting me into severe grunting mode for about an hour and a half, until shortly after six o’clock, pip emma, when I gave up the fight against gravity, & trundled off to bed…. Once I found a comfortable position, I fell out almost immediately, oddly enough, and spent the next nine hours in a restless, but heavy sleep…. go figure.

Now, it’s a bit past 3 AM, and I am once more up, typing, and hoping to find a bit of clarity, or inspiration, both of which have thus far been well-hidden from my desperately seeking gaze…. The cat is happy, but, I’m a bit less than perfectly situated, attitude-wise…. I’m feeling a bit of a grump, actually, & finding it convenient that nobody else is about, as I’d be sorely tempted to take a big bite out of them, just for existing in my space…. As you can tell, I’m finding it a bit tough to gather my wits about me….

I suppose I’ll have to cut this off here…. It would be completely self-centered, and more egotistical than usual, for me to continue in this vein; probably isn’t very interesting for y’all either…. So, I’ll head out now, to go for a dive…. Maybe the peace and serenity that often settles over the oyster beds at this time of night will seep into my soul while I’m there, and help me find some peace of mind…. Or, maybe not…. I suppose we’ll see, won’t we? We always do….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Some obstacles exist in order to challenge us. They are a test of our resolve. Others however, are there to awaken us to the undesirability of a course of action. Their purpose is to make us turn to some more fruitful path. The hard part is telling one kind from the other. ” — Smart Bee

Sometimes, Smart Bee is smarter than others…. This pearl was the very first one that came up in front of me today…. As you can see, it is a PERFECT pearl for the introduction that precedes it, restating the gist of the entire six paragraphs in three short lines…. and, in the process, waking up my mind, with the shock of recognition….. My first thought, upon reading it, was, “Well, no shit!”…. a clear indication of how much I liked it….

Okay, we can go Pearl now….

“The moment of enlightenment is when a person’s dreams of possibilities become images of probabilities.” — Vic Braden
_____________________________

Given the state of my intellect this morning, I’m not going to even attempt a rant until the third section…. I could hurt myself, as well as many of my Gentle Readers, in the state I’m in, if I tried to bring myself to the point needed to carry out one of those rather emotional episodes….. As cathartic as the experience may be, it’s still pretty volatile…. Since I’m well aware of my own (potential) lack of control today, we’ll skip right past a rant, to the next available old-school pearl we can put together on short notice…. Let’s not waste any more time, & get right to the dive, shall we?….

“So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Life of Pericles

“Diogenes said once to a person who was showing him a dial, “It is a very useful thing to save a man from being too late for supper.” — Diogenes Laertius (c. 200 AD) — Menedemus, iii

“If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.” — Latin Proverb

“Morality is learned, not legislated.” — Smart Bee (at gigoid’s insistence…..)

“Bother!”, said Pooh, as he rolled another joint for the President. — Smart Bee

“Although it is tempting to resent disaster, there is not much use in doing so… Whether we remain ash or become the phoenix is up to us.” — Deng Ming-Dao

“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.” — Carl Sagan

Not bad at all, even WITH the “one of these is NOT like the others” entry, from Pooh…. but, I will point out, even that one has a point to make….
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I’m in the mood for Emily, so Shawna will have to skip over this section today…. (Sorry, S….)…. In fact, I’m SO in the mood for Emily, you get a two-fer….. Enjoy!…. I did….

A Book

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

A Bird Came Down

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,–
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

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“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends…that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” — Adlai Stevenson

I really, really love this; it’s a PERFECT political insult, and much closer to reality than most would care to admit…. Of course, both parties lie about each other, so, one must keep in mind that to be truly perfect, one must realize it works also in the opposite direction, swapping the position of the party names in the joke…. An all-purpose political insult is always good to find, to paraphrase Mae West….

My memories of Adlai Stevenson are vague, beginning as they do when I was very small; he was involved in national politics during the years following WWII, and after I was born in 1950, during the Korean conflict, which, thanks to my birth, my father was not required to attend (though he did get stationed in Japan AFTER that time, in 1954, when the US ARMY was still there in force, keeping a weather eye on the Japanese, AND on Korea…..) But, I do remember that he was the sworn enemy of Joe McCarthy, that bigoted paranoid who caused such a stir back in the early part of the second half of the century….

During those years, McCarthyites pounded the public awareness with all kinds of verbal garbage, trying to drum up the public’s fear of Commies and Pinkos…. I remember a lot of the rhetoric being bandied about then, and can only be glad that such nonsense didn’t last too long…. thanks to people such as Adlai, who, even back then, as a four to seven-year old, I could tell was hated by the McCarthy camp….. The vitriol with which they spoke of him was VICIOUS, and had the effect of convincing me, and probably several adults, his was a voice of reason, one who spoke gently, clearly, and with intelligence, in contrast to all the loud, bombastic, ignorant bullshit being flung about by the idiot Senator and his cronies….

Today, of course, our political legacy from the past is one of unadulterated fiction; in my admittedly critical point of view, there isn’t a single elected official among the 455 men and women who sit in our federal government (SOTUS, HoROTUS, pOTUS, vpOTUS, & 12 judges on the SCOTUS….) who speaks to the public with only the truth to guide their words…. all of which is a long winded way of saying they ALL lie to the public, regularly, and consistently….

If you have evidence to the contrary, PLEASE, PLEASE, show it to me…. I honestly would LOVE to see some conclusive proof that even ONE of our elected officials habitually tells the truth when making statements to the press…. Just ONE would be good… It would imply the potential presence of others, which would be a big improvement over what we have now, which is a big ZERO….

SIGH…. I’m ranting, aren’t I? I didn’t even notice when it began, but, I guess I am…. Oh well, it’s never out of place, not in this society…. I’m going to pull an Adlai, though, and do something which, if not enlightening or particularly uplifting, may well come as a relief…. I’m stopping the rant here, and will come back to praise Mr. Stevenson (and, further vilify Mr. McCarthy) another time…. For now, let’s find some old-school pearls on the subject of our Beloved Ruling Class, and have some fun with that…. It will be better for all of us, I’m sure…..

“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.” — G. K. Chesterton, ILN, 3/14/08

“We have met the enemy; in fact, we elected him.” — Cruickshank’s Law #1

“To be overtly queer, in a culture that denigrates and hates queerness, is to be political.” — Michael Bronski

“Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.” — Seneca (8 BC) — Hercules Furens, i, 1, 255

“Anyone can grab a Tiger by the balls, but it takes a real man to squeeze!” — Smart Bee

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.” — Mark Twain

“There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth.” — G. K. Chesterton, ILN, 7/18/08

Aha!…. An Oreo pearl…. and if I need to explain that, I’ve done something very wrong….. Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, because I damn near orgasmed there on the Twain quote!…. Bwuuuhahahahahaha!!!…..
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I was right, or write, whatever the case may be, when I implied my own level of mischievousness today; it almost got away from me, but, I managed to keep it within the assigned limits, so, we’re good to go…. I’ve proofed the above, but, if my recent attempts at that are any indication, you’ll find at least one, if not many, egregious typos and/or errors of syntax, or grammar…. You can bet on it…. If not, well, good, but, otherwise, so be it…. I’m done with this one, and will now perform the necessary incantations and spells to get it online…. See y’all tomorrow, ffolkes…. Be well, and happy…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

Four coconut-periwinkle macaroon omelets, please, to go….

Posted on March 28, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Save for the hour, I’d be happy to be up and writing; that’s on the one hand….. On the other hand, given the hour, I’m happy to be retired, without the need to get going to get ready for work (when you see those 4 letters arranged into that word, imagine it spoken aloud with Maynard G. Kreb’s pronunciation, sort of a high-pitched squeaking, with a heavy note of fear, and a querulous, wavering tone…. WUURK?!….). In fact, I’m up at what seems to be my new normal time, between 0330 and 0400, in time to beat the coffee, but, not the cat….

Not that I’d actually BEAT the wee thing; she’s annoying, but I’m not a species chauvinist, and would never allow myself to treat an animal like I would a human…. they deserve far better than that…. To a human, I can justify almost ANY sort of cruelty or antagonism, as they are, at least, my peers, and whatever I can do to them, they can do to me (if they dare….)…. With animals, that does not hold true; to abuse ANY animal, in my mind, is about as low on the morality scale as one can go….

My own moments of regret over immoral behavior, and, the time spent flogging myself in the lower levels of my personal hell, all have their origin in those few times in my life when I’ve forgotten that, and have been inadvertently cruel to an animal…. Whatever I’ve done to any human has already been returned to me, tenfold, so I don’t fret at all about whatever happens with them…. Animals, by nature, do not have the same sort of cruelty in them, so it isn’t cricket to put the onus of our own nature on them; nothing they’ve ever done deserves that kind of dark, evil response…

Hmm…. How the hell did I end up there? That has to be one of the oddest little mind-trips I’ve ever taken, all the more so for having done it right out here in the relative open, where anyone & everyone can witness the strange manner in which my mind “does its thing”…. so to speak. I haven’t the foggiest why I felt compelled to take that little journey into the dark side of Man’s nature, but, it must have had something to do with the cat…. She’s gotten used to me being up early, & now feels entitled to my company when SHE wants to get up…. Hence, early morning mischief, to get my attention….

Ah well, being up early seems to work better for me, anyway…. and the wee furry beast has at least stopped trying to wake up milady Pat, so that’s a good thing, I suppose….. Now, if only there were some way to sync the hours that Pat and I sleep, maybe we could spend a bit of time together, while actually awake and aware, rather than being on the same schedule as two people working opposite shifts to save on babysitting, like when we were young, raising kids….

Ah well, one can’t have everything, I suppose…. I complain about our BRC’s false sense of entitlement so often, I feel as if I should keep from exhibiting it in my own life, as far as possible…. I take what reality gives me, and try to be happy with that…. It also gives me the chance to practice the wisdom of Lao Tzu, as related in yesterday’s Pearl, who reminds us…. “He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”

Shall we Pearl?…..

“OK, so you’ve got a Ph.D. Now, don’t touch anything.” — Smart Bee
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Back in the early days of this thought experiment gone rogue, which WordPress, and the forces of peer pressure insist I call a blog, the Pearls of Virtual Wisdom were shaped differently…. Originally, back in the time before the word “blog” existed, in the original email format, Pearls consisted of a short, hopefully powerful intro, followed by three to five pearls, which comprised the majority of the material under consideration.

By the time the Daily Pearl was posted on 3/12/2012, it had grown to include five sections, each of which began with a single pearl, followed by my thoughts, which, in that period, constituted the larval stage of the politirants and religirants you see in today’s version of P’sOVW…. Here are two entries from that date, one of each…. (Minor changes made to reflect the passage of time, blended “so’s you’d never know’t”…. I hope….)

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From 3/12/2012:

“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” — Will Rogers

I was going to use this as a springboard for another rant on our beloved ruling class….. But, the more I thought about it, the longer it percolated in my brain, the sadder I grew….

I used to feel a lot of love for my country, if for nothing else, because of the dream of liberty and human empowerment that our system of government was envisioned, and intended, to create, and maintain. The founding fathers had a vision, of a country where every man and woman had the same opportunities, to live their lives as they chose, as every other person, without censure, and without the fear of being persecuted for their beliefs, no matter how different they were from everyone else’s.

A dream of a place where children could grow up without the fear of hunger, or abuse, or death from the skies. A place where a man, or a woman, was respected for just being human, without having to prove their worth to some ignorant asshole who is afraid of any color skin but their own.

Instead, we live in a society whose diverse segments have an extreme, and sadly justified, mistrust of each other, where the rich and powerful, instead of uplifting their fellow man, use their influence and wealth to divide and discriminate, always with the intention of keeping the less fortunate in a powerless state, too downtrodden to even hope for better.

We live in a society that ignores its elderly, and abuses its children; a society where people are starving amidst mountains of food. We have a produced a culture that glorifies war, and sees peaceful coexistence as weakness; a culture where it is a crime for a man to kill another for honor, but is praised for being part of an army of professional killers.

This country has reached the sad point in its history where the twin concepts of honor and duty have been supplanted as the basis of our national character, replaced by the glaring presence of avarice, false entitlement, and expediency.

Yes, I am saddened by Will’s joke, because it cuts far too close to reality, and home…..

From today, 3/28/2014:

“They scream into my ears,
But what they say will only make me deaf.”

— Claus Larsen
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.” — Calvin, Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes

Jimmy Swaggert, and the other 5 or 6 televangelists who regularly get caught literally with their pants down come immediately to mind for a list of potential recipients of divine extermination intervention…….

Newt Gingrich, along with a large number of his cohorts in Congress, obviously, for congenital lying, and excessive sliminess….

Rick Santorum, because I can’t imagine an entity as smart as God is reputed to be to let this ….. person…. (I believe using the word “person” is being kind, but, we’ll give the benefit of doubt for the time being, for expedience… See, even I fall prey to that failure of ethics…), well, I don’t think He will let him speak in his Name for long, not without exacting some price….. (I’ve heard that divine price-tag can be a bit heavy….)….

Twitt Romney, that elitist asshole…..

…. and, finally, as Yul Brynner stated so beautifully in his only attempt to sing on film: “Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…..” to which I would add, “and a cast of thousands, ad nauseam infinitum…..”

I suppose it also says something less than admirable about the media to note that much, or even MOST of the crap to which we are exposed, by the members of the (supposed) fifth column, consists, in the main, of reports on the activities of the LEAST admirable examples of our species, who, unfortunately, are the ones who make for salable news…. These newsworthy individuals provide the material that will pay for the advertising costs, so the shadowy corporate masters are satisfied that we will hear about the latest, greatest new products, each of which fills some previously unknown manufactured need.

The most lucrative subject matter, the stories that sell the most papers, or which comprise the material for the most successful TV shows is, as it turns out, an endless variety of dramatic fantasies, describing in minute, intimate detail, all of the stupidest, most egregious examples of the (verifiably…) insane antics of a (seemingly) limitless number of the WORST of humanity….

Loud, perverted, fanatic religious zealots (aka. preachers….), unprosecuted criminals wearing power suits and ties, (aka, politicians….), and a parade of sports and entertainment figures with an average IQ of 77 (actors, actresses, ball players, and police/military myrmidons)…. These are the current examples of “famous celebrities” we are supposed to fawn over, to use as our idols, for emulation…. at least, if we are to believe what we see on the TV (total vacuum)….

I often feel a sense of despair after reading the news…. fortunately, I have WordPress to alleviate any dangerous build-up of bile….. but, all too often, it sure makes me wish for a few well-placed bolts of lightning to provide some comic relief, at least…..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From today, 3/28/2014:

“Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.” — Plato (428-348? B.C.)

Well, that was certainly confusing, eh? Maybe, just maybe, evolution is a good thing…. ya think?….
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Today’s poetry section is the last to be completed before finishing; I don’t know if that means anything, or not, nor do I particularly care, at this point…. I’m getting tired…. I’ve written fresh, I’ve ranted a bit, I’ve edited a lot, and I’ve tried to maintain an even keel, all of which can be exhausting, given my standards for myself….

Since so much of this post comes from my tortured mind, I’m thinking I should include a poem of my own, and in fact, will do so, twice, if only to save the energy of looking on the web for someone else’s work…. First, a haiku about poetry, which I wrote on 3/12/2012, finding it only yesterday… followed by another by yours truly, from whenever…. sometime last year, I think….

POETRY

Flashing, bright words create
inevitable images;
truth consumes.

~~ gigoid ~~

Here is a poem from last year, with many of the same protagonists under discussion as in the rants below, and above…. Enjoy….

Accentuated Lessons

Bold statements of calculated intent
Become common rule of the malcontent.
Avarice assumes such attractive wear
Beguiling deception, illusory and fair.

Grasping and pulling with ghostly hands
Legally proper in all the signatory lands.
Seeking and finding each vulnerable soul
Anguish as payment for exacting the toll.

Wraiths of commerce’s invisible dead guards
Still haunt the dreams left in sad empty yards.
While absentee nobles sit in stiffly elegant splendor
Served by sad-faced detainees in abject surrender.

Escape from reality is illusory at best
Often we falter and fail its daily test.
Only when focused on inner strength
Does peace stay with us for any length.

Peace lies within, always…..

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

WARNING: Fresh rant ahead…..

Say first, of God above or man below,
What can we reason but from what we know?

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Essay on Man, Epistle i, Line 17

At this point, I am still unsure whether or not I have a rant in me this morning…. However, I read these two articles yesterday, whereupon I set them aside to form the basis for discussion today….. so I guess I’ll discuss them…. The first is another fine treatise from the pen of Jon Carroll, on the responsibility and failure of the mainstream media in today’s complex world, written by a card-carrying, professional member of that media, written with excellent insight, and brave honesty…. not unusual for Jon, who has a long-standing habit of doing just that in his semi-daily column…. Please read this, then we’ll go on….

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/What-is-the-legacy-of-legacy-media-5352083.php

The next article gives a perfect example of the problem related above, as the media perfectly parrots some(any)thing told to one of them by the administration…. Read this one, too, please, and we’ll go on with our examination of the issues involved….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Obama-End-collection-of-Americans-phone-records-5353850.php

You may recall two or three days ago, when I made some predictions following another announcement by the White House, regarding, in general, the public outrage over Eric Snowden’s revelations of the ILLEGAL and UNWELCOME actions of the NSA, wherein it was proven, by their own documentation, they had been spying on the American people, right along with their spying on the rest of the world….

Barry got the picture, that folks were more than just a little pissed off about what they’d been caught doing, so he decided to do the dance, the “diddling the truth dance”, to distract the public from the real issues, thereby setting the stage to remove this subject from the public eye….. as is their common technique for dealing with unwanted publicity….

Keep that in mind, ffolkes, in looking at ANY of the statements from the pundits…. Their purpose, in whatever they say, is to soothe the outrage, and get the subject off the table…. They have absolutely no interest in, nor any intention of actually ceasing their illegal acts, but, they don’t want the public watching them over the shoulder, as they continue to illegally gather information that is none of their fucking business, ostensibly as part of their insane, paranoid efforts to remove the threat of terrorism…. which, one can see with the most cursory examination, is not an issue subject to dismissal quite so simply….

In their chaotic bumbling around in fear, they are willing to forgo any and all morality in the name of security…. Nor is it their ONLY purpose in collecting all the information they can on private citizens…. In today’s world, control of information is control of perception, and they’re well aware of this….

This attempt to remove terrorism from possibility is, of course, at best a silly notion, without any real chance of happening in today’s world; it merely provides further strong evidence of their own insanity…. Acting as they do, aggressively and antagonistically, as a way to achieve security is, not even arguably, but, most certainly, completely counter-productive for that purpose….. Actually, if looked at logically, such behavior is far less secure than learning to live with one’s neighbors without arguing…. But, in order to be able to follow THAT path, they would first have to give up their false sense of entitlement, their bigotry, and their fear of the “other”, defined as anyone different than themselves, by THEIR definition….

As I said yesterday, I hate being right about this kind of stuff…. but, I am right, so, that’s the way it is…. (If you disagree, feel free to join in the discussion… I’d LOVE to hear the justifications anyone might have for this type of insanity….) The administration has, thus far, come out with exactly what I expected, and what I’ve predicted they would do, by publicly shuffling the responsibility off to Congress, knowing that will waste tons of time, while Congress postures, spews BS, produces paper, and generally blunders about like a blind bull, without ever coming to any conclusive decisions…. This has the long term effect of sending the entire issue to the back halls, and back burners, to be forgotten, because this Congress cannot agree on bathroom breaks, much less any cogent legislation….

Any more bets? Boy, if they keep this up, and I can keep finding suckers to take my odds, I could get rich, well before any legislation on this is ever passed, and certainly before the White House condescends to act at all…. It’s almost too easy…. but, I suppose, that’s what all of our beloved leaders say, every day, when they see how easy it is to lie to the public…. It’s important, in today’s world, to remember the following piece of REAL wisdom….

“Cheese food is not cheese.” — Mom’s Hint #052
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Well…. contrary to popular belief, and despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m speechless…. I’ve been up, and typing, almost continuously since arising, with only the breaks needed to keep from getting into a worse-case pain configuration….

(Side note: A pain configuration is my own term for a postural setting for my body… When I can manage to find a position, sitting, standing, or lying down, that is reasonably comfortable…. defined as “the least painful” position…. I try to remember it for future use, and to stay in it for as long as I can…. Then, of course, I have to move, and find another setting…. with a new postural configuration, and new time limits to explore…. SIGH…. It’s a silly way to have to live, but, it’s better than the alternative…)

Now that I’ve come this far, only to fall right back into an intimate TMI episode, I’ve probably bored you senseless, enough so…. Shit, you can’t even bring this into focus, can you…. WHOA!!!…. Wait, I’ll catch them with the auto-hammock…. Whew!…. Okay, that was close…. I’m glad it worked…

C’mon, wake up…. There you are….. Okay, breathe, in, out, in, out….

Alright now? Sorry, I’ll try to keep it moving along enough keep you from seizing up again…… Well, no, I won’t, because, hey, we’re done here, aren’t we?…. Yep, I’m sure of it…. So, see ya…. Y’all look a bit pale, you might want to get some water, and lie down for a while when you get home…. Ta then…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

Cops & donuts– Match made in heaven, or evil twins? Film at 11…

Posted on March 27, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Today we are happy to welcome the advent of a heretofore long-standing non-existent state of being, which, given its long absence, may or may not be entirely welcome…. There, is that obscure enough for you? I think it’s a cool bit of literature, myself, sort of teasingly compelling, but, then, that’s to be expected from me, as the author. Regardless of that, though, it’s still a real-time, official announcement, though not fully sanctioned by the PTB, due to my not telling them about it…. You see, I just found out a short bit ago, so, I didn’t have time to register… I’ll get around to it one of these days, if it ever happens again…. Can’t tell right now how long it’ll last…

Okay, so now that we’ve gotten to the second paragraph, I’ll clue y’all in to just WHAT THE HELL I’M TALKING ABOUT….. Basically, this is it… we, or rather I, am in an entirely unaccustomed, and completely unfamiliar state of mind, induced by the application of NINE straight hours of sleep…. Yep, nine…. I was not just amazed, but completely flabbergasted, one of the language’s finest words, if not our favorite condition to encounter in ourselves. Nonetheless, paranoia aside, I awoke, looked at the clock, & laughed out loud in joy…. once I’d cleared my head enough to calculate how long I’d been asleep….

It’s an astounding feeling, one I vaguely recall from those halcyon days of my youth, to actually arise feeling as if one has had enough sleep, fully able to throw off the perfectly natural impulse to go back to bed, with ease…. Though I don’t find myself any more clear-headed than I achieved when calculating my downtime (obviously, if this introductory section is any clue…), I FEEL wonderful, physically speaking, at least for the moment…. I’m sure gravity will have its usual effect on me over time, but, for now, I’m happy with how it feels to get this far into the day without suffering too much pain….

Okay, enough crowing… boasting becomes ugly quite quickly…. It would be easy to go overboard in my joy at having done what the rest of the world gets to do on a regular basis, so, I’ll cut this off right here…. Instead, I’ll try to figure out a way to get from here to the first section, without making too big of a mess, or disrupting the flight holding patterns of all the other pilots in the air… I know it makes the controllers nervous when I change course over the airport, but, on a day like today, they’ll never catch me anyway, so we can pretty much do as we like…. at least, until they catch us, which they haven’t been able to do yet…. Our chances are good…

Shall we Pearl?….

“Clear the laundromat!! This whirl-o-matic just had a nuclear meltdown!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Yow!…..
_____________________________

“It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.” — Galileo Galilei

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Officials-Senate-considered-phone-company-option-5349450.php

As predicted in yesterday’s rant, the pundits in the House and Senate are now showing us the expected waffling and discord around the subject of data storage, all of which assures me I was right to say they will accomplish nothing other than producing a lot of hot air and paper, all without actually changing ANYTHING…. Any bets?…. I’m willing to wager just about every penny I can scrape together on this one….

In truth, I hate to be right in instances such as this…. What I related yesterday in my politirant can now be seen to be a perfectly accurate assessment of how the tactics of the White House would play out on this stage, according to the script they are trying to establish, as the one they want us to believe as the truth…. I mentioned how Congress would take up the challenge of reforming the NSA regulations on phone tapping and data collection, whereupon the bickering would begin, and nothing would actually get done… Read the article above, then tell me I was wrong…. Can’t do it, can you?….

Nope, they’re fulfilling my prophecy perfectly, which means, the next event to be staged will involve some sort of faux crisis, or as close to one as can be managed on short notice, to pull the attention of the media, and thus, the public, away from the spying issue altogether…. I’d rather not say I expect to see another school shooting, or some random college nut case who goes wonky during exams and takes a rifle up to a tower, where he starts picking off his co-sufferers…… but, that sort of event is usually what happens to draw our focus away from where the administration doesn’t want it to be….

SIGH, as I said, I hate being right like this, because it all seems so damn SORDID and CHEAP…. The American public is so fucking EASY to FOOL, it’s like taking candy from a baby, which politicians have been known to do. It is, to my mind, simply disgusting, and makes me want to puke when they feed us this sort of bullshite, expecting us not only to believe what they say, but support them in what they do…. the assholes. They haven’t the slightest clue that there are a great many of us out here who DON’T BELIEVE A FUCKING WORD of what comes out of their mouths….. In fact, it is my not-so-humble opinion there is a sure way to tell when they lie to us, by simply watching their mouths… if it’s open, and words are coming out, they are lying…. Be sure of it….

On that note, I am done ranting, for now…. I’m too angry to write well, or, for that matter, to think objectively, both of which are preferable in ranting mode… So, the rest of this section will be an old-school pearl, with the guiding parameters set to take shots at the BRC, or the Asininnies, whomever comes first into the cross hairs….

Honest politician — Oxymoron

“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.” — Lao Tzu

(This is included to show the 180º, completely opposite philosophy of the one held by ALL our elected officials…. To a politician, enough is never enough…. it is in the nature of the beast….)

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences.” — Robert Ingersoll

(I can only wish more of our pundits knew this….or, at minimum, acted as if they suspected it to be true…..)

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

“If someone tells you he’s going to make a “realistic decision, you immediately understand that he’s resolved to do something bad.” — Mary McCarthy

“Oft hath even a whole city reaped the evil fruit of a bad man.” — Hesiod (c. 700 BC) — Works and Days, Line 240

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

All things considered, not a bad set of charges…. I think any reasonable grand jury would vote for indictment….
_____________________________

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Sometimes, prose can almost feel like poetry…. such as the above line from Mr. V…. Words are powerful, aren’t they? Other times, it almost seems as if a poem is a discussion, more prose than poem, yet, fills the mind with more than just the meaning of the words used…. I love language, it’s just so…. so… so COOL!….. Here is an example of the phenomenon of which I speak…. Enjoy!….

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

~~ Robert Frost ~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just for fun, here is an excerpt from an old Pearl, on the subject of poetry, that I think will make a nice bonus to today’s poetry section…. It might also be a surprise, for those of my Gentle Readers who know my opinion of Will S…… It fits well with my comments above, regarding how I feel about words…..

From 12/10/2011:

Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Romeo and Juliet — Act ii, Sc. 2

First, let me say that I’m not Willie’s biggest fan. Oh, I give him his props; he is arguably the best author of his, or any other age, as well as one of the most prolific. But, being somewhat lacking in expertise, in the area of Middle English slang, reading his work takes on a more forbidding aspect….. I get bogged down trying to struggle through the admittedly beautiful, but barely transparent language he used. I have a hard time reading it, as I have to stop frequently to puzzle out his meaning before I can go on with the story. It must, however, be admitted… he was, indeed, most incredibly talented at painting wonderful pictures of his time’s culture, using an incredibly extravagant number of words, strung together with great beauty. He did it a lot, too….

I’ve included this couplet from Romeo and Juliet, mostly because it is what I consider to be a ‘perfect’ example of the art of poetry. Perfect rhyme, perfect cadence, perfect illumination. “Sweet sorrow”. What a wonderful pair of words to have found each other in his play! Everyone alive has felt just that, no explanation necessary. These are words of such power that they still carry the same sense of rightness today, the same emotional content, as they did when they were written.

He wrote these lines so well, that the couplet has been preserved through over four hundred years by word of mouth, not by being transcribed to paper; even people who are completely illiterate have heard these lines; even as non-readers, they know who wrote them, and most even know the play it is from. Now THAT is is some powerful poetry……
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Here we are, finally, in section three; naturally, since it has gone so smoothly, I haven’t a bloody clue as to what to put here…. I’ve already ranted, complete with an old-school pearl… The poetry section had a bonus, so this Pearl is already fat with material…. Anything more would be gilding the lily, to be sure…. But, what the hell, I’ve always enjoyed that procedure…. Futile as it may be, in the most real of senses, it sure does make some nice looking lilies, you know?

So, without further ado (or any more crap….), here is a seven-star, randomly chosen, harlequin pearl, with duly-executed side-comments, for your enjoyment, elucidation, delectation, and/or disbursement to the farthest reaches of your recycling bin….

“A proverb is the wisdom of many and the wit of one.” — Lord John Russell

“There are so many ways that we sabotage our own divinity, our own possibilities. and the mythologies of race and gender may well head the list.” — Callan Williams

(Oops…. How did that get in there? Oh well, it’s quite true, so, it can stay…. just don’t try to make it fit in with the others, okay?…. I wouldn’t want anyone to hurt themselves…. Just file it for later perusal, and you’ll be fine….)

“Is it clean in other dimensions?” — Zippy the Pinhead

(THAT’s more like it…. Okay, we’ll finish strong….)

“If a person offend you and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures. Simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick.” — Mark Twain, Advice to Youth Speech, 1882

“Although most cowboys are not politicians and most politicians are not cowboys, they share the common experience of being able to do a fairly decent job of throwing the bull.” — Smart Bee

“I believe everybody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn’t trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string.” — Scott Adams

And here I wait so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all of these things twice

— Bob Dylan, “Memphis Blues Again”
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As I thought, this one kind of got away from me a little bit…. It doesn’t seem to have caused itself much harm, though, and I don’t see any particularly large fields of debris on our back trail, so, my guess is, we’ve go a winner here… It’s good enough to float, and fly, so, I’m launching it just as if it mattered….. As for y’all, well, I’ll see y’all tomorrow, yes? Yes…. See ya…

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

Softer explosions seem to be our only option….

Posted on March 26, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

It’s odd, getting enough sleep….. It is, sadly, an event that has been mostly absent from my life for years, and I thought I’d learned to do without it…. which is what we humans do when we give up fighting against our fate, becoming resigned to whatever it is we have in life that brings us our own brand of pain and/or misery….. We reach a point where the effort to mitigate our lot, becomes more painful than simply enduring, whatever it may be that troubles us…. It isn’t particularly the most logical, or most effective method we have of dealing with life, but, it certainly can be described as typically human….

Since my humanity is no longer in question, I suppose I’d best turn my hand to putting some pizazz into this introduction…. Yesterday, as you know if you stopped by, I went with a fictional opening comprised of a series of nonsense statements tenuously connected to each other by dubious associations and/or completely oppositional connective linguistic methodology…. You know…. gibberish, as it used to be called back in the day, on the streets…. You know me, I’m not afraid to stuff conventional English in the dumpster, and set off into the wilds of illogic and/or irreverence…. As long as what I’m saying comes across with the correct message, I’m good with however it looks, or sounds, for that matter….

That being said, it still doesn’t get this one done…. Of course, I’ve now blathered for going on three paragraphs, which is NEARLY enough to call complete, but, I don’t believe that’s going to quite fill the bill, even with the prior dispensation certificate I managed to score from the last Inspector who came by….. The whole lobby was torn apart, and we had to operate all day without any bladder-relief facilities closer than two blocks away, at the neighborhood gas station/mini-mart, so I think he felt sorry for us…. I don’t care, I’ve got the certificate in hand, and I think we might have to use it today, if I can’t think of anything else to do….

Oh, wait, I don’t have to do that…. I can use Emergency Technique #4, I forgot…. Okay, we’ll go with that for now…. I know, it’s not my favorite either, but, it ALWAYS works to get the intro section done in a timely fashion…. Therefore….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.” — Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’s “Time Enough For Love”
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“If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is WITH representation.” — Smart Bee

http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Obama-to-propose-ending-NSA-s-phone-call-sweep-5345715.php

So…. I’m feeling GOOD! (Odd, but true….) Shall we rant?…..

If I’m to believe this article’s headline, Barry says he wants the NSA to stop being bad boys, and play nice with the rest of us….. I believe I’ll wait to see if any of this really happens before I break out the champagne…. This president, I’m sorry to say, has developed a particularly nasty habit, over the course of his time in office, of playing fast and loose with the truth, a tendency which, when observed in the past, in EVERY other psychopathic resident of his position, only becomes worse the longer the perpetrators believe they’re getting away with it…. When action is overdue, talk is cheap…

Due to my intense disappointment in his actions thus far during his administration, I’ll save my trust for later, when… no, IF I see ANY of his statements come to pass, in truth…. If, as I suspect, all goes according to historical example, we’ll see some superficial posturing by the White House pundits, that might eventually get around to SUGGESTING some changes that should be made….. But, none will actually occur in reality, and any real discussion will get bogged down in committee…. Meantime, the media will find some other outrageous issue to distract them from ever following up to see if anything happens along the lines of actual reform…

Now I’ll finish reading the article, & see how my prediction fared…. Ah, I see now…. Upon reading it through to the end, I came across the key phrase, the one indicating the real strategy behind the White House announcement…. to wit: “The president’s plan, however, relies on Congress to pass legislation — something that has so far seemed unlikely.”

Immediately upon reading this, my crap detector went off, with a loud “AHA!”, (inadvertently sending the cat flying across the room to hide in the plants, thinking I was about to come after her for something she did, no doubt…. she has a guilty conscience, I’m sure…. Right….. I’d believe that…. if I believed she had one at all….), when I realized I knew, now, just WHY Barry is adopting this stance, at least, if you believe what he says here…. which, understandably, I’m now having a hard time doing….

If he just leaves it up to Congress, it’s a foregone conclusion nothing will be done ….. Not by THIS one…. The current Congress has been, for the last three years, at least, the absolute worst one, EVER, for getting anything actually DONE…. This includes ALL of the past elections of congress we’ve seen in our history… I shit you not, this Congress has passed fewer laws, and had fewer bills presented at all, than ANY previous sitting of that august body, by a factor of about 8….. They’re determined to be known as the newest holder of the title of “Do-Nothing Congress”, formerly held by one in the early, or late, 20th century, I believe….

(Side note: This, of course, can be attributed to the Republican majority in the House of Representatives…. The party’s pundits, all older, white, Christian conservatives, determined, and stated in public, soon after Obama was elected, that their entire focus for the time he is in office would be to ensure that NONE of his legislative reforms ever took place, or made it into law…. It didn’t matter to them whether or not any of his programs would actually HELP the citizenry they represent; they were determined to undermine every reform he attempted….

For the most part, they’ve been successful in allowing NOTHING, or, nothing much, anyway, to get done…. all because of their unstated, but obvious, bigoted fear of the black man in the White House, an affront to their sense of Caucasian entitlement, not to mention the severe blow to their sense of reality…. They hadn’t even noticed when they ceased to be the majority in the real world….)

After reading the entire article, I find my prediction confirmed…. This announcement is just another stall tactic, one designed to give the impression to the public that something is happening, when nothing actually IS happening, or GOING to happen, other than business as usual for the spy agencies, who have continued ALL of the activities of espionage they are accused of carrying out…. The government has absolutely no intention of giving up their new toys, and they will continue to lie their little faces off to keep that from becoming public knowledge….

The NSA is STILL spying on the citizens of every nation of the whole world, including their own citizens, without ever having actually slowed down, or ceased ANY of the programs they’ve begun…. If you actually believe it when they tell you they have, well, then, you deserve to have them in your face…. Sorry, ffolkes, but, it’s just plain STUPID to believe these people are going to tell us ANYTHING they don’t WANT us to know….

Oh, every once in a while, we’ll see in the news they’ve sent one of their lackeys chiefs to Congress to discuss issues, or make statements, none of which actually address anything relevant…. they’re just making more smoke….. In the process, nothing is actually being done to stop them at all, not by Congress, not by the Courts, and certainly not by the White House…. No, it’s all just smoke, ffolkes, sent up to get in your eyes, trying to make you think they’re listening to your concerns…..

Right…. sure they are….. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but, to these myrmidons of the shadowy corporate masters, your concerns are something to be used against you, to fan your fears of the “unknown other”, while simultaneously listening to your every spoken word over the airwaves…. Whatever they tell you they aren’t doing, or can’t do…. well, ffolkes, the smart money says they are not only capable of everything we suspect of them, but are already beyond that level, and are capable of far worse…. Count on it…. Not only are they lying about what they are doing, they are lying about what they CAN do…. which we will ONLY find out when we find the police at our door…..

Think about it, ffolkes!….. When you break down the walls between yourself and the truth, and really THINK about their purpose, the bottom line concept of their given task as spies, LYING, especially about what they are doing in the dark, away from the public eye, is an important part of their JOB!…. And, guess what? They’re good at it….

I hate to be such a curmudgeon about all of this, but, the evidence just keeps pushing me back into that mode, pissed off and ready to start picking off real targets, instead of merely suggesting them…. If you couldn’t tell, I think I pissed myself off…. I’d better go now, before I get REALLY worked up, and can’t find my way out of this rant…..

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” — Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address January 20, 1953

“I don’t mind being in touch with reality, as long as I don’t have to live there.” — Smart Bee, channeling gigoid again
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This poem is a new one to me, though I’ve heard of this poet…. I like it, if for no other reason than it rhymes well…. Since my pleasure is the only real requirement necessary for inclusion…. Enjoy!…..

A Grain Of Sand

If starry space no limit knows
And sun succeeds to sun,
There is no reason to suppose
Our earth the only one.
‘Mid countless constellations cast
A million worlds may be,
With each a God to bless or blast
And steer to destiny.

Just think! A million gods or so
To guide each vital stream,
With over all to boss the show
A Deity supreme.
Such magnitudes oppress my mind;
From cosmic space it swings;
So ultimately glad to find
Relief in little things.

For look! Within my hollow hand,
While round the earth careens,
I hold a single grain of sand
And wonder what it means.
Ah! If I had the eyes to see,
And brain to understand,
I think Life’s mystery might be
Solved in this grain of sand.

~~ Robert William Service ~~

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Many mornings around here I try to vary our usual routine, as much as possible, lest it become stale, or begin to decay, thus becoming difficult to use due to the smell…. Today, I’ve stuck to the norm, so far as there is one, so it becomes obvious that here will be an old-school pearl, because that’s the way we do it…. No other reason would do as well, so it’s fortunate we have it, now, isn’t it? You bet….

I can’t yet say that I know what the parameters might be…. I’ve managed to get this far into this Pearl without really waking up fully, or achieving anything resembling a normal train of thought…. Much of the above rant was composed yesterday, when I first found the article; this morning all I had to do was punch it up, and add my newer thoughts and comments…. Of course, we NEVER DO board any train of thought without first having gone well beyond the boundaries of decency, so, what the hell…. I’m going for it….. Wish me luck, I think I might need it more than I’d hoped….

“I’m a GENIUS! I want to dispute sentence structure with SUSAN SONTAG!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

“The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant.” — Epictetus (c. 60 AD) — How Nobleness of Mind may be consistent with Prudence, — Discourses, Book ii, Chap. v

“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.” — Segall’s Law

“The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.” — Charles Eliot Norton, True Patriotism, 1898

” When two tigers fight, one is certain to be maimed, and one to die.” — Master Funakoshi

“The wise man learns more from his enemies than a fool does from his friends.” — Chinese Proverb

“He that plants thorns must never expect to gather roses.” — Pilpay (or Bidpai) — The Ignorant Physician, Chap. iii, Fable viii

Hmm…. parameters or not, this came out rather well, I think…. Time will tell, I suppose, as it always does….
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Having thus disposed of another day’s worth of built up mental dross, thus lending strength to the street definition of “mental”, I shall bring this to a graceful, elegant close, with the sincere hope that nobody received any injuries that need treatment, or undue, excessive blotches on their clothing…. sarcasm can be hard to wash out….

I trust anyone who DOES have a complaint will take it up with the local authorities…. Tell them, this time, send a bigger constable…. my garden needs fertilizer…. See ya tomorrow, ffolkes, provided I haven’t offended anyone official….

In my defense, I do try to stick to the verifiable truth, so, if they wish to see themselves in what I write, well…. so be it… gigoid has spoken, again… Ta then….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

Sifting through arbitrarily discarded feathers……

Posted on March 25, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

While attending the unveiling of the newest polynomial bathysphere, I noticed a very fine example of meritoriously painted perfluffle, which I took as an indication of the ever-expanding influence of the Veil of Langerhans, prior to manifestation of any attendant mystery. Why that should have prevented us from getting to the Governor’s palace for tea will always be a bone of contention for the participants, even though several gratuitously engendered therapy sessions were severely instrumental in ensuring there would be no effluence before its time. All such diploid expenditures in the arena create insidiously small ripples in the futures market, otherwise the Minister of Ducks is required to intervene, lest there be any breakout of empathy ordered erroneously, or, for that matter, secular bread balls in aspic….

Whew! I feel better now….. So would you, if you had to get THAT sort of thing out of your head, prior to any real work getting accomplished. Since the alternative has been known to cause seriously dangerous wobbles in space/time, it’s just as well I got it out, don’t you agree? Well, whether you do, or not, is immaterial in the final analysis, because, hey, it’s a done deal…. We’re already here, in the SECOND paragraph, where we are legally free to make any and all assertions, evidenced or not, without any fear of retribution from any legal sources…. Of course, it doesn’t preclude a reaction from illegal sources, but the 12-gauge Winchester over & under we keep under the table always comes in real handy in those cases….

In case it isn’t clear yet, I’m sitting a bit on the odd side of my chair, having been unceremoniously awakened at 0144 by the resident furry asshole, who proceeded to get me up, & then disappear altogether, leaving me weeping in my chair…. I have no idea why the weeping is taking place; a leftover gift from my PTSD, no doubt…. But, sitting in one’s chair, weeping without reason, at 2 AM is NOT my idea of a restful night, especially when I stayed up as late as I could, so I could sleep in a bit….. I should know better than to make plans, shouldn’t I?…..

Anger, frustration, and emotional lability thus conspire to cause me intentional harm, thus miserablizing my morning (Wait…. is that a word? Spell Check doesn’t like it, but, I do…. I think it’s a great new word…. If people can make a verb out of the noun, such as when the word “impact” became “impacted” (which always puts a picture of a really constipated guy in my head….), why should it be wrong for me to make one out of an adjective? All this, of course, thus pushed my attitude, and the day, beyond any hope of redemption, save that which comes from fulfilling a duty…. Hence, paragraph one….

I know, it’s probably more than just a little bit odd, to require such a complicated method for relieving angst that occurs naturally; I could, no doubt, find a simpler, more effective way to get this stuff out of my head, without feeling the need to subject the rest of the world to my weirdness. But, what fun would THAT be? None at all…. So, I do what I do, and to hell with the consequences…. To hell, as well, with anyone’s ill will for doing so…. We have this great idea here in America, called “choice”…. and they can always choose to read somewhere else, if they can’t take the heat around here….

As long as we are all allowed to make our own choices in such matters, without undue influence from our beloved ruling class, we have a chance at being fairly happy on this old ball of mud…. Of course, they’re never going to allow that, not OUR BRC….. They’ve much too long of a history of never doing so, to ever think they’ll change…..But, hey, we have hopes…. Unreasonable, and with poor odds in favor of ever coming to fruition, but, we do have them…. Which is, in and of itself, an encouraging note, I suppose…. On that note….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.” — Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) — Natural History, Book vii, Sect. 4
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Since I’m up so early, I’m going to fool around a bit before getting serious (if that ever DOES happen today, be sure to make a note of it, in case I need the evidence later, for the lawsuits that are no doubt being researched as I write….)….. Rather than either an old-school pearl, or a rant, here is a short discussion of a concept few people think about as a rule…. which makes it fine grist for my mill….. Comes out tasty, too….

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From 12/10/2011:

“A map of the world without Utopia is not worth glancing at.” — Oscar Wilde (1854-1900

A lot of people will tell you that there is no such thing as perfection, that it only exists as a concept, but has no physical reality. These folks will challenge you to point out something that is perfect, and delight in pointing out the flaws of anything you might come up with. But there is an answer that will shut them up, one always available for pointing. Just lift your hand, put a smile on your face, & point right at their heart….. then, say to them, “There you are. A perfect example of imperfection…..” Then duck, and run quickly out of weapon range, because the reaction can be somewhat explosive. People who act superior, especially when due to a sense of false entitlement, don’t much like it when you make them look and feel ridiculous…. but it’s their own fault, for exhibiting their stupidity in public, eh?

There is a Utopia. Perfection exists. If it doesn’t, where did the concept come from? We don’t just make up words for stuff that doesn’t concern us; the words we use have a meaning. The meaning may change over time, but the concept it describes does not cease to exist because the meaning changes a bit to reflect the passage of time, or the changes in society and/or culture, both of which cause languages to evolve. Every person alive has a picture in their mind of what Perfect looks like, based on their own perceptions, colored by the meanings they have learned to attach to those perceptions.

In fact, the word ‘perfect’ has a meaning that is clear in everyone’s mind; I can’t think of anyone over the age of oh, five or six, who couldn’t supply an accurate, or at least adequate, definition of perfection when asked. So if they know what it is, how can it not exist? The mere fact that we DO have such a concept in our mind, like with life itself, implies, and proves, its existence….. Don’t worry, it really does…..there are just a lot of folks who don’t like to use their brain long enough to realize that. This reluctance to accept reality won’t hurt them too badly, it just keeps them from growing, and is mildly annoying to the rest of us…….who are busy trying to find our own version of Perfection…..

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In order to justify, to myself, if no one else, the above departure from routine, I’ll include here a relatively short, five-star pearl to augment and enhance the discussion above, with some comments from history that seem of a similar bent…. Well, I hope that’s how it works out…. we’ll have to trust SB to give us what we need…. Shall we see what we can find?…..

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” — Buddha

“To sit silently, and look wise, is not to be compared to drinking sake and making a riotous shouting.” — Ono No Tabitu

“As a person grows older and wiser, they talk less and say more.” — Smart Bee

“All the problems of the world could be settled if people were only willing to think. The trouble is that people very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.” — Thomas J. Watson

“It is asserted that the dogs keep running when they drink at the Nile, for fear of becoming a prey to the voracity of the crocodile.” — Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) — Natural History, Book viii, Sect. 148
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At first, I was going to go with one of Emily’s poems today…. Then, I was struck by a strong wave of egotism, followed by a wave of empathy for the Devil, all topped of with some rather painful denial of reality…. In the end, I decided to once again spare anyone else the shame, and go with one of my own…. Here’s one from 2012, obviously written while heavily under the influence of The Metaphorse….. or some sort of form of literary epilepsy, causing an outbreak of euphemism….

Fatal Supplication

But what becomes of our deepest dangerous dreams?
Does fantasy rescue any part of life’s imperiled favor?
Reality becomes but silvery pairs of mismatched teams,
Dining with affable elegance, such diffident waste to savor.

Who decides what sorrows to carry bravely to term?
Will fragrant moments of sanity make hasty manifestation?
Only Time’s patient mutability sends messages so firm,
Yet salient impersonal vexation lends credence to ripe imagination.

Can folly bring out sadness and rampant visions of beauty?
What kindness can be found in distant open relations?
With countless faces the dead disturb with dire impunity,
From separate caches of wisdom come simple stylish privations.

Shall shallow emotion serve to provide such explanations?
When does avaricious intensity assume primary focus?
Plain answers slide softly through with multiple mitigations,
While conceptually indignant concepts engage a fatally personal locus.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

Over the last couple of days, I’ve managed to find, and collect, several excellent pearls, all directing one’s attention to the same general area of contemplation, that of the ongoing, life-long quest to discover how to live our lives well, according to our own desires and dreams…. Each of the pearls included in this pearl is one whose truth and relevance has withstood the test of time, and/or my own examination; you can regard them as the rules I use myself to guide my steps toward the place I wish to be, to become the man I wish to become…..

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures has not been to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.” — George Bernard Shaw, _The Devil’s Disciple_ [1901]

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” — H.H. the Dalai Lama

“A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.” — Buddha

“It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven and the redeeming drops of blood: but even these sweet and dismal poisons they took from the body and the earth!” — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885).

‘I have seen soldiers panic at the first sight of battle, and a wounded squire pulling arrows out from his wound to fight and save his dying horse. Nobility is not a birth right but is defined by one’s action.” — Kevin Costner, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, 1994

“A wise man first determines what is within his control; all else is then irrelevant.” — Epictetus

“Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.” — Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense (1946)
_____________________________

I KNEW this would happen…. It is now just 4:20 in the AM, and this Pearl, except for a couple of minor items, is done…. This means I have to figure out what to do about this f___ing cat that is still demanding attention, until my lady gets up, when I’m hoping she’ll agree to give me a break from this hostage situation…. It’s tough to be held captive, cat-sitting to prevent chaos, when all you really want to do is go back to sleep….

Ah well, at least the Pearl for today is done…. such as it is…See you mañana, ffolkes…. Well, I’ll see you then, as long as Time continues to pass, beckoning us ever onward toward our destiny, in a random state of confusion, unless and until we realize, we always make our own…. Which, you ask? Both…. We make our own state of mind, and our own destiny….

So be it… gigoid has spoken….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

1000? 1000? You let him get to 1000? Oh, DAMN!….

Posted on March 24, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Provided I can manage to complete this Pearl of Virtual Wisdom today, including the act of posting, I will have reached a significant milestone, for a project that has long since achieved its original goals, ultimately growing past all suspected intent…. That is, it’s significant to me, in my life, having been the focus of my existence every morning now since August of 2011…. This will be my 1000th post on WordPress….. I know, I said that before, but, I checked this time, twice already…. I specifically noted yesterday’s post, #999, when the editing page uploaded it to my domain, before closing the sidebar summary… Last time I looked, 999 + 1 = 1000…..

Oh, yay….. I’m so proud and happy, I could just bust a button…. Sort of….. I mean, other than the way I’m busting them now, from having gained too much weight on those parts of my corpus where my buttons serve some purpose…. If I weren’t so excited and discombobulated by the emotions that aren’t reverberating through my soul, I’d probably think about letting out a really loud cheer, but, since I don’t want to scare Patricia, or the cat, I’ll pass on that, too….. Y’all will just have to take my word for it…. I’m jazzed….

I thought about fireworks, but, you can’t see them, so there’s little point in that…. I suppose, if I were a true geek, I’d spend the time to figure out how to show some fireworks on the site today, such as with an animated .GIF file, or a short video, You Tube style…. Or, maybe in the background, like a few sites I’ve seen…. Unfortunately for you, though not for me, I have yet to take the time to learn how to do any of those things, so I’m safe from that, and so are you. Besides, all the neighborhood dogs hate it when I set off fireworks….

I also thought about some other sort of celebratory activity to offer the Gentle Reader today, but, how much interaction can one stimulate on a once-a-day blog? A chess game in the comments? Boring. Some sort of contest? I suppose, but, Bitcoins are dead, and I’m not funded well enough to have very many winners show up. I COULD announce the QUIZ, and, since it would be coming AFTER posting the 1000th Pearl here on WP, nobody could say they hadn’t been provided with enough material with which to work, or time to study up on the archived material, with or without healthy, delicious snack foods…. But, if I do that, what will I threaten anyone with from now on?…. Graduation won’t be for another 9,000 posts, so it’s way too early to think about the final….

Wait a minute…. Stop typing, damn it….. Okay, shut down, I hear something……. Cheese it, it’s the cops!….

“Here pigs will fly, lightning will strike twice, hell will freeze over, and eventually, things will get really interesting…”– Smart Bee

Maybe not, but, that’s probably how it will feel to anyone silly enough to be here when we hit the ground…. You see, all the above, everything above this line, was written yesterday…. Well, actually, so was this line, but, hey, I’m TRYING to get back to real-time…. give me a moment, okay? I had to go get the correct tool for this…. Okay, success…. one last turn, and…. okay. There…. THAT won’t be happening again…..

Sorry about the hijack, there, ffolkes….. My evil twin, Judas, the Faithful, tried to fool y’all into thinking he was me…. To look at what he wrote, he seemed to have been doing pretty well at it, too…. But, it’s over now, and it really IS my 1000th post on WP, so, we have some good stuff lined up for you today…. What that might be, I haven’t a clue, but, we’re hoping anyway….

You probably won’t believe me, but, this line is the first one I’ve actually typed today, on Monday, the 24th of March….. Yep, we are now officially, and actually, back in real time, ffolkes…. and today will be the 1000th time I’ve had to complete one of these silly introductory sections….. I have to say, it’s been a long road to here, with a lot of poorly written stuff before getting to this, which may, or may not, be any better. In any case, we’re finally up (it’s actually 5 AM already….) and we’re good to go for our celebration today…… whatever form that might take….

You see, I deliberately didn’t think about anything like that, to keep from breaking tradition; we’ve gotten this far without showing any real intelligence, I don’t see why I should start today…. Not that acting intelligently would help, or anything, it just might make it SEEM more worthwhile to anyone viewing it from the outside world…. Since that’s out of the question, we’ll just trust to luck, like always….

Shall we Pearl?…. I think we should, this has gone on far too long already, don’t you think?….

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorred shears
And slits the thin-spun life.

— John Milton (1608-1674) — Lycidas, Line 70
_____________________________

I’m going to switch things around a little today, & put the old-school pearl first; most days I put the rant here, to get it out of the way so ffolkes can get to the rest, which is often lighter, and mostly, less hard to chew, either figuratively, or metaphorically. Putting the rants here seems to be a habit, though not one ever examined, or thought out, so, I don’t think we’ll be trampling on a time-honored tradition or anything like that. No, we’re just randomly screwing with things, just to see what happens….. Hopefully, once I take this all apart, I’ll be able to get it back together again…. If not, well, here are some thoughts on Love, & so on & so forth….

“He is not a lover who does not love forever.” — Euripides

(I like that one….It happens to mirror my own feelings on the matter….)

“Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense” — E. E. Cummings (1894-1963)

“A person should take a bath once in the summer, not so often in the winter.” — from Kids Say the Darndest Things

“Communications are the lifeblood of a relationship, carrying the nutrients.” — Smart Bee

“God help the man who won’t marry until he finds a perfect woman, and God help him still more if he finds her.” — Benjamin Tillett

“We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

“Be not careless in deeds, nor confused in words, nor rambling in thought.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, viii, 51

Hmm…. It seems the pearl’s contents settled during shipping, causing some alterations in direction…. this appears now to be more of a set of rules, or advice, for married men, or men in a long-term committed relationship, anyway….. Same thing from this end…. Believe me, I know….

In light of that, it’s probably just as well I found this last pearl, as it is the perfect ending for any man who is considering the ancient traditional method of destroying a perfectly good relationship, to wit: marrying their lover…. Having been there, done that, a number of times, I can say with complete confidence that it isn’t a particularly good decision in today’s world…. Better to maintain a healthy cynicism, and keep the following in mind….

“From stupidity there is always something to be learned, but it’s always the same thing: don’t be stupid.” — Robert M. Adams

Bitter? No, not at all, why do you ask?….

😆
_____________________________

Since today’s Pearl is a milestone, it will probably be best to include a poem of my own…. I COULD try to bleed out a fresh one, but, I’m not sure it would meet my standards today, so, we’ll just go with one of my older poems, and let it go at that…. At least you can’t blame anyone else for any of this, right?….. Since the first section dealt with an aspect of Love, here is my take on the emotion that, perhaps, defines us as a human being….

Beyond Agapé

Passion burns and shines like iridescent paint
yet solitude stands mocking such mundane complaint.
Schemes and dreams promise to tempt attraction
never ending effort spends wit in perverse reaction.

Hale and hearty reports of honor and love
draft recruits to collect manna from above,
while searching each soul for that which will serve
to bring pure sensation to each expectant nerve.

How simple to fall into complete helpless hope
of two hearts bound in tradition, with cultural rope,
living a simple life, shared, in joy and in grief
promises consummated, in consensual belief.

Reality dictates our degree of control over its state
insisting on changing whether or not we can wait.
Love will be present when we are completely at peace,
allowing ourselves, to give of ourselves, without cease.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

I had hoped to be able to produce a fresh rant today, but, the political arena is currently quiet, as the professional pundits prepare their next set of egregious lies, in their ongoing campaign to maintain the level of societal fear they require to control the populace. Since they won’t give me anything solid to chew on today, we’ll go with an old-school pearl, with parameters that SHOULD produce a set of pearls that will poke fun and/or ridicule at our Beloved Ruling (Cl)Asses, essentially the same effect my ranting would create in the audience…. Well, we’re hoping…. It’ll be fun, if nothing else….

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency… Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.” — General Douglas MacArthur, 1957

(Note: this seems to be a corollary, or, perhaps, a codicil, to the opinion of Hermann Goering, the WWII German Reich Marshall, who just “happened to be” the counterpart of General MacArthur, on the opposite side of the war….. However, the quote by General Mac shows how the theory was applied in our country, AFTER WWII, by our own elected officials, right here in the good old USA….. see below….)

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY.” –Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

hardcore signature virus: “As a juror in a Trial by Jury, you have the right, power and duty to acquit the defendant if you judge the law itself to be unjust.” — John McPherson, mcpherso@macvax.ucsd.edu

(Mr. McPherson is quoting, I believe, Alexander Hamilton, if not Thomas Jefferson….. Y’all know him, right?…. He was our first Treasury Secretary, the one our Founding Fathers trusted with the money?….) (This quote may not fit EXACTLY, but, I find it is always a good idea to remind people of this concept, as it is patently one of our most important rights as a citizen….. especially if we must consider our law MAKERS to be corrupt…. If you’ve been paying attention lately, you’ll know whereof I speak….)

“America!! I saw it all!! Vomiting! Waving! JERRY FALWELLING into your void tube of UHF oblivion!! SAFEWAY of the mind –” — Zippy the Pinhead

“Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action.” — Robert Hugh Moore (1912-1984), given as advice to his sons

Please note the name of the author of the last pearl…. It is the name of my father; his words are a piece of advice he gave me, and my brothers, on more than one occasion, before my tenth birthday…. I’ve included his words to me and my brothers (don’t know if he gave it to my sisters, but, it was part of OUR lessons from him, for sure….) because the words he gave us are the perfect ending to this indictment of the BRC.

Actually, in my mind, the last two pearls are perhaps the most powerful of the group, in terms of the proper viewpoint to maintain when thinking about our beloved leaders (yes, “beloved” is VERY sarcastic in this instance…. 5 points for Gryffindor….)

In fact, the whole pearl is one I would classify as a very powerful faux-rant, addressing how little we can afford to trust the elected officials in our government…. In fact, it cries out for one final pearl, to advise us exactly how closely we should be paying attention to what they are up to, especially since they claim to be doing it in our name, and for our benefit….

“This is a wise maxim, “to take warning from others of what may be to your own advantage.” — Terence (185-159 BC) — Heautontimoroumenos, Act i, Sc. 2, 36, (210.)
_____________________________

I was up a bit late this morning, but, since I slept for eight straight hours without any significant breaks to deal with pain, or cat, I don’t much care….. Plus, this is one Pearl I want to be RIGHT, so I’m taking some time to try to make it so…. Having done so as well as I can at this point in the day, I’m going to trust my instincts, and let if fly…. See you tomorrow, provided ennui doesn’t set in so badly I fade away….. I’ve managed to avoid it so far, so, I’ll be positive, & just say…. See ya…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

Your majesty’s attire smacks of deliberate irrelevance….

Posted on March 23, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

There are times when a good round of really gross, anatomically incorrect, yet innovative, viciously antagonistic cursing does one more good than anything less vulgar can possibly accomplish, partially because of that selfsame vulgarity….. And, of course, when one breaks down completely, morals-training-wise, stooping to the forceful, heartfelt use of that crowd favorite, the time-tested, universally applicable Anglo-Saxon euphemism for the act of physical love, otherwise known as the F-word, is our only viable recourse…. We all know how much better the mere voicing of this honorable incantation can make us feel, don’t we? Well, those among us who refuse to be hypocrites do, anyway….

So, what happened today that prompted such a long-winded way to say I feel like saying “FUCK”, at the top of my lungs? Well, let me tell you…. Here on Earth, some of us have agreed to live with other species, domiciling together in a form of mutual support and honorable relationship, for no other reason than our own compatibility and liking for each other’s company….

There are several species with whom we have made such an agreement over time, a group that includes some rather exotic creatures, such as snakes, rodents, spiders, and fish of all varieties, including dangerous ones, such as sharks and/or piranha, along with the more mundane mammalian choices such as dogs, horses, etc….. Myself, I’m not sure how I’d enjoy cuddling with a piranha, or petting a python, but, to each his own..

Then, of course, we have cats….. I’m not at all certain that the relationship we have with them is completely agreeable to either party at times; there are too many instances where our purposes and/or desires come into conflict for us to ever be fully at ease in each other’s company…. I spend as much time chasing the damn cat with a squirt bottle of water as I do petting her, and that is mostly at HER insistence…. She seems to enjoy pissing me off & having me chase here around the house, spraying her with the water bottle…. Well, until I catch her anyway…. then, she tends to learn VERY quickly, whatever it was we were tussling about…. funny how that works….

So, this morning, this 4 lb. furry black menace decided that 2 AM was just the right time for me to be up….. the fucking asshole. She probably heard me making plans to go see my grandson today, & figured she could help out the most by making sure I was up in plenty of time….. Sure she did…. I mean, seven fucking hours should be enough for me to get ready, don’t you think? Apparently, she thinks that’s about right….. bloody nuisance is what she is….. Plus, she KNOWS I’m a softy at heart, and won’t actually HURT her, even if getting her wet isn’t one of her favorite things….. Like most of us do when dealing with our fuzzy companions, I bluster at her a lot, but she knows it’s all bark, and no real bite….

I suppose in her own way, she thought she was being nice, so it’s hard to get too upset…. especially given the weird hours I’ve been putting in of late. Three in the AM isn’t particularly unfamiliar to me these days, so two o’clock is hardly a handicap, or much of a change, for that matter….. So, I guess I’ll let her live…. She DID not only get me up, but provided the material for this intro, such as it is, so, I suppose I should thank her…..

I will…. after I finish being pissed off about being up at this hour, and having so much of the day to fill up, on so little rest…. At least I have good stuff to fill it with; a visit with Zack is always a bonus for me…. I only have the one grandson, so far, so I tend to savor our time together…. and, since I only get to see him a couple of times a year, they’re marked as special days on my calendar…. But, that’s not until way later, so…..

Shall we Pearl?

Cat: “A small, furry beast resembling a meatloaf…” — Smart Bee (honest, it wasn’t me!….)
_____________________________

“The gods too are fond of a joke.” — Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

One only need look at the platypus to understand this sentiment…. or look at our current crop of legislators…. If you’re anything like me, when you think of one of them, you automatically imagine them wearing their natural coats, which either consists of a big, loudly colored ruffed collar, a harlequin suit, and huge red shoes, or will closely resemble the fur of a polecat, aka, a skunk…. Oh, I know, those are both ancient, cheap shots, but, generally, I’m so direct and insulting, I thought I’d try to slip by y’all with a bit of style and elegance…. No such luck, eh?….

Actually, when I planned out the above paragraph in my mind, it seemed a lot more….. everything…. more funny, more relevant, more gripping….. just…… more. Having failed in that…. miserably, I might add…. we should go on to something more lucrative, or at least, potentially more interesting…. But, damn it, I don’t like to give up on a good pearl…. I know…. I’ll find some others, that match the tone and direction of this one from Ari…. Maybe, just maybe, if I can find enough of them, I can turn this into an adequate old-school pearl, thus saving this Pearl from an immediate disaster…..

Not that there is much that can save it, at this point, but, we’ve got to try, Mr. President!…. It’s too young and innocent to go down like this!…. Let’s see if SB has what it takes to save the day…. again….

“Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything.’ — Aesop (620-560 B.C.)

“True artists scorn nothing.” — Albert Camus (1913-1960) — Nobel Prize speech (1957)

“For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) — First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ — Voltaire

“A bare assertion is not necessarily the naked truth.” — George Prentice

“Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, viii, 22

I suppose this just goes to show that sometimes you just have to dig deeper to find the jewels…. or, in this case, dive deeper to find the pearls…. Here they are, and they’re all from the deepest part of the ocean….. which may explain their relative elusiveness, as well as their esotericism….. Nonetheless, it does have a point, even if that point isn’t exactly scalpel-grade….
_____________________________

I have a feeling today is one of those days I’d best use something of my own here, so as not to bring harm to the reputation of anyone else by negative association…. So, here you go, with the first poem of mine that caught my eye, and my fancy, when I went to look for it…. It’s also one of the first I wrote in 2012, when I started writing poetry again, after a forty-some year hiatus…. This was written on 9/10/2012…..

When life calls, ready or not….

Memories are all we have sometimes
to keep our sanity intact,
with learned phrases and subtle rhymes
lessening life’s vicious, vibrant impact.

Presently all seems composed and intent
in stark contrast to hollow day,
forlorn patchwork emotions of unheralded bent,
fill up night’s bower, leaving hell to pay.

Such vigorous and elevated temper
brings us rare moments to ponder,
filled with lessons all need to remember
lest base perception lose valued wonder.

Laugh loud when entropy sticks fast
leaving shameless anger in its wake.
Let bygones pass quietly into the past
reaping only what is left to take.

Final words of wise imagination
tell us living well’s the best revenge, it appears
ever eluding choirs and congregations
finally finding home, never buried in tears.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

“We ought never to do wrong when people are looking.” — Mark Twain

For a long time now, I’ve been immersed in the study of modern society, locking myself in to the close observation of what transpires in the public arena, using, for the most part, the same criteria to pick my subject matter as do the major news organizations…. Small wonder, they’re people, and so am I…. it only figures we’d do things in a similar way…. Unfortunately, as it turns out, this includes a strong preference for morbidity, seemingly, as 99% or more of what gets published in the major newspapers and online outlets is rather negative in terms of its subject matter….. Blood sells, as they say in the game….

When I have used articles from the news as the springboard for a rant, they generally fall into that same negative pattern; this, of course, is a natural hazard in ranting, and not entirely unexpected, or unwanted…. But, it does get old, as does any kind of negativity after a while, and it’s a good idea to occasionally give oneself a break from such anti-frivolity….

All of these contrary sort of thoughts occurred to me today as I went to look for something to rant about in the daily news…. I was pleasantly surprised to find the following article on what would be considered the front page of one of the news sites I frequent, SFGATE.com, run by the same folks who run the SF Chronicle newspaper…. It’s a charming little piece, not for its style or power of writing, but for the subject matter…. I cried, but, then, I’m a softy, with all my emotions right up near the surface, susceptible to babies, animals, & kids, and very partial to romantic interludes…. It’s such a heartwarming post, I defy anyone to read it and NOT feel at least a twinge of “Awwww”….

It also fits in with my own view on animals vs. humans as compassionate creatures….. I believe most animals on the planet to be far superior to any human, when it comes to essential morality…. Sure, they’ll obey their instinctual survival imperatives, to protect their territory, and to survive as either prey or predator, but, they’ll never do so out of of spite, or greed, or, ignorance, or sheer cussedness. (Okay, full disclosure… I HAVE known a couple of horses that were pretty fractious when it came to cooperating with people… but, they were anomalies for their species, I’m sure….I also knew this one blue jay that REALLY didn’t like people, too, but, hey, he probably had a reason…. We humans have a reputation for being assholes to other creatures….)

I have collected more than 2000 pictures from the internet over time, just for my own viewing pleasure…. A great many of them are examples of animals interacting between species, showing how the two, or more, species can get along with each other…. Also, I’ve observed animals all my life, and can state without hesitation that Man is the LEAST compassionate of ALL the mammalian species, and, really, hasn’t shown me any evidence that very many of them can be much much nicer than most reptiles, avians, or insects, in my experience (I THINK that covers the major phyla, doesn’t it?….) I haven’t studied the fish very deeply, in terms of interactive or relational skills, but, I know for sure and for certain that the sea-going mammals are ALL more intelligent, and more compassionate to other species, than is our own …..

So, I thought, for a change, I’d show a bit of compassion myself, and just give you the link to this uplifting post, then, follow it with some simple, easy-going pearls, with the only parameter being “nice”…. See? No rant, one of my poems, two old-schools, both light-hearted, and a “nice” link…. See how I can make nice when I try?…. At least as nice as a legislator, I think, and much more honest…. Plus, I don’t want anything from y’all, except your kind attention… Enjoy!…..

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Giraffe-licks-dying-zoo-worker-5340478.php

“Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

‘He was once asked what a friend is, and his answer was, “One soul abiding in two bodies.” — Diogenes Laertius (c. 200 AD) — Aristotle, xi

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.

— The Buddha

“By the accident of fortune a man may rule the world for a time, but by virtue of love he may rule the world forever.” — Lao Tzu

“At the touch of Love every one becomes a poet.” — Plato

‘How pleasant then to be insane.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

“…just when I had you wriggling in the crushing grip of reason, too…” — Calvin & Hobbes
_____________________________

I’m not sure how to feel about this one…. It has taken somewhat over three hours to complete all of the necessary operations to get this done, interspersed with frequent breaks, and it still, as far as I can tell, could use some work, or something….. more…. But, since it’s already longer than intended (which is NOT unusual, I assure you….), I’m going to continue to demonstrate my compassionate side, and let it go the way it is….. Lucky you, eh?….

See you tomorrow, and, yes, I know I threaten you like that every day…. Y’all should be used to it by now…. I know I’m getting pretty calloused in that respect, so, maybe I’ll think about doing something about it, some day…. Sure I will…. Well, as they are fond of saying downtown, so be it…. Ta, then….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

As with excellence, stupidity is its own reward….

Posted on March 22, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Regardless of how it may seem at times, no matter what it says on that commitment paper, I am NOT insane….. I also insist on making it clear that no matter WHAT the doctors may believe, it ISN’T insane to want to kill someone…. It is only when one carries out that sentiment, without having one of the several exemptions provided by custom, does society become all bent out of shape. Customary exemptions from this degree of upset over one’s actions are given when society itself wants the killing done, or, in other words, if it is done in the name of GOD or the State, (they’re often interchangeable, especially in some people’s minds….) then, it’s okay…. Go figure…

These exemptions, and the customs by which they are spawned, can be a bit complex to understand, based as they are on philosophies which are, in turn, based on a delusion…. But, most of us have the gist of it by the time we’re in our teens, even if we don’t necessarily agree with all of them….. To me, that’s the oddest part of all of this, that one’s agreement, or disagreement, with these principles, has not a single bit of influence over the idiocy they embrace…. And society doesn’t CARE whether or not any of the rules make sense; as I said, the rules are based on a delusion, and, thus, don’t require agreement, or understanding, much less any logical justification…. they only require compliance…

In my mind, the rules based on society’s view of killing another human being are completely immoral, founded, as they are, solely on the supremacy of the State over the individual, or the Church, using as its root structure the morality described by the priestly hierarchies….. This set of principles, as I see them, are so egregiously insane, I will never adopt them as my own , no matter how expedient, or how much grief it might save me…. I’ll gladly deal with whatever consequences my actions bring, as long as I have the right, and the wherewithal to make my own decisions about any of these issues…..

You might be wondering by now, just what the hell I’m talking about…. Well, damn, ffolkes, if I knew THAT, why would I be here at all? It’s not as if there is any law about whether or not what is written here has to make sense, or be logical, or even come close to what we’ll find in Reality, much as we like to claim it as our own…. No, the actual reason for all this is hidden, anyway, deep within the furthest reaches of my mind, in those dark corners where I put all the things I don’t want to see the light of day….. It’s not that I’m cruel, and wish to cause unnecessary discomfort to any poor, innocent reason…. I just don’t want to know…

You see, I DO want to kill somebody…. a lot of somebodies, now I think about it. I feel that urge several times a day, usually as I’m reading some news article about the latest shenanigans of some lying politician, or some entitled police officer, or some bigoted preacher who has managed to get their insanity covered by some reporter with no more sense they they have themselves.

Every time I see a report of a cop breaking the law instead of upholding it, or an article about some pimp beating up his women, or some corrupt judge making a decision favoring a corporation over a real person, or a politician making a speech telling us all how they’re going to help us, when all they’re doing is letting us see their latest method of stealing from the public treasury, or any number of other assininical societal trends…. well…. At those times, it takes every bit of will power I possess to keep myself from buying a gun, and a shit-load of ammunition….

Yes, I feel like killing someone regularly…. But, since I am NOT insane, I realize that before I can give in to my oh-so-justifiable urge to go kill myself an idiot, I’d better make some arrangements for making tracks afterward….. Hence, since I’ve procrastinated on that thus far, I am kill-free…. unless we’re counting mosquitoes…. How ’bout that, eh? Maybe I’ve got more will power than I thought, to be able to keep from giving in to this powerful urge for so long….

I’ll tell you, though, the way things are going these days, I’m not going to be able to get all the way through to the end of my life without first letting myself go, indulging myself in the fulfillment of my lifelong dream, of making a difference for good in the world, by the simple expedient of taking a few politicians down with me as I go….

On that pleasant note, (well, it’s pleasant to ME…. I LIKE the idea of going underground to go hunting pundits, talking heads, and assholes of all descriptions….), I think I’ll bring this already out of control introductory section to a crashing close, & head out to get started on the rest of today’s effort…. Or, as we’re fond of saying ’round here….

Shall we Pearl?…..

HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“For they starve the frightened little child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity’s machine.

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.”

— Oscar Wilde ~~

from “A Ballad of Reading Gaol”

“I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which these things would be by me unavoidable.” — Henry David Thoreau
_____________________________

1. No matter what they’re telling you, it’s not the truth.
2. No matter what they’re talking about, they’re talking about money.

— Todd’s Political Principles

Is this not the perfect beginning for a political rant of some sort? It would be hard to find anything better to start with, as this little aphorism delineates two of the truest, and most powerful pieces of information about politicians that anyone could discover. I’d say, if this were common knowledge, if there were a lot of people who knew this, and acted accordingly, we’d have a completely different set of people in office than we do currently….. In fact, we might have an entirely different system of governance altogether, as the inherent flaws in the one we are using now would become critically obvious in a society that knows the above, thus requiring changes to be made….

However, since I’m not up to ranting right now, I’m going to cheat a bit, and turn this into an old-school pearl, using the above Principles as the defining parameters for what is to be included….. It should be interesting, if not completely cool…. Myself, I think this should make for a great pearl, but, I AM the one who writes them, so it’s obvious, as well as perfectly justifiable, I’m a bit prejudiced…. At any rate, I hope you enjoy these little pieces of virtual wisdom….

“A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.” — J. Pierpoint Morgan

“Be careful what you vote for. You may get it.” — Smart Bee

“The American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it Capitalism, call it what you like, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.” — Al Capone (1899-1947)

“America’s one of the finest countries anyone ever stole.” — Bobcat Goldthwait

“If law school is so hard to get through, how come there are so many lawyers?” — Calvin Trillin

“Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down and out of breath; and so was he. But we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock.” — William Shakespeare (1564-1616), King Henry IV — Act v, Sc. 4

“The most useful tool for dealing with management types is, of course, an automatic weapon.: — Smart Bee
_____________________________

Today’s poem is from the senior of the two O.W. Holmes’s, both of whom wrote poetry, though, in my opinion, the junior example could have saved himself the effort…. He was a better jurist than poet, in my view…. His father, however, was an excellent poet; this one shows why I believe that….

Sun and Shadow

As I look from the isle, o’er its billows of green,
To the billows of foam-crested blue,
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun gleaming bright on her sail.

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,–
Of breakers that whiten and roar;
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun
They see him who gaze from the shore!
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
To the rock that is under his lee,
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
O’er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
Where life and its ventures are laid,
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves
May see us in sunshine or shade;
Yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark,
We’ll trim our broad sail as before,
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
Nor ask how we look from the shore!

~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes ~~

_____________________________

Today’s intro section was the closest I’ll be able to come to a true rant, I think…. I know, I’m breaking your heart, right?…. Nonetheless, I’m going to forgo any such vocal egotism today, & go with another old-school pearl, just because I can, and because I want to….. As a retired dilettante, I can do that, legally, so, back off…. Alternately, you may stick around, and enjoy the rest of today’s pearls, as best you may…. There will be no parameters for this one, so, watch your step…. sometimes, they squirt……

“I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!” — Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)

And in your dreams you can see yourself
As a prophet saving the world
The words from your lips
I just can’t believe you are such
A fool.

— Frank Zappa, “Oh No”.

“Invite the man that loves thee to a feast, but let alone thine enemy.” — Hesiod (c. 700 BC) — Works and Days, Line 342

“Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.” — Oscar Wilde

“You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.” — James Baldwin.

“Belief is not the beginning but the end of all knowledge.” — Goethe

1) Things will get worse before they get better.
2) Who said they get better?

— Ehrman’s Commentary
_____________________________

“I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than that they should say, “Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Of Superstition

Same goes for gigoid, ffolkes…. I don’t think, at this point, I can do anything more…. Positive or negative, I’m done…. not just done, but, finished, as well, which is a much more serious thing. To deal with the expected legal challenges, I’d better head out into the rest of the day….. See you tomorrow, should I figure out how to survive another day….. Odds are pretty good, I think, given my track record….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

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

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gigoid

Exploring Consensual Reality

Monthly Archives: March 2014

How to train predator birds with vertigo….

As dragons go, Smaug is a wuss…

Assaulted with logic by a Master of Balliol…..

Four coconut-periwinkle macaroon omelets, please, to go….

Cops & donuts– Match made in heaven, or evil twins? Film at 11…

Softer explosions seem to be our only option….

Sifting through arbitrarily discarded feathers……

1000? 1000? You let him get to 1000? Oh, DAMN!….

Your majesty’s attire smacks of deliberate irrelevance….

As with excellence, stupidity is its own reward….

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