Monthly Archives: March 2014

They want that oil FULLY hydrogenated….

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Ffolkes,

Thanks to the Word Press bot monkeys, who blithely collect and display all of our site stats, posting them where we can see them, if we are brave enough, I know that there were a total of four views of my blog yesterday…. That’s pathetic, even though the people who DID come by are not …. I know them both… the other two visits were from me, as I checked the site during the day…..

People, not even folks, much less ffolkes, but, people at large, are, as I’ve heard said so elegantly, “staying away in droves”, and I’m pretty sure I know why…. It’s the subject matter, and the ranting, that is making it hard for people to get into my writing, I think…. I tend to rant a lot, and my subject matter, while sometimes of interest to all, more often probably just gets old…..

Since it’s been around forever, I can’t see the poetry I include as the most likely cause for the absence of readers…. and, the old-school pearls, while perhaps obscure at times, generally have enough good quotes in them to make them worthwhile to read…. as well as more often containing a modicum of humor…. Levity always plays better than angst…. They’re shorter, too, as a rule…

That leaves the ranting as the major reason people might avoid reading this material…. It’s generally longer than most folks want to read, and I do tend to get a bit vitriolic, I know, in describing some of the public figures that many people admire…. This may tend to cause some ire, as well, because, as I’m aware of, people don’t like to have their icons attacked, especially in ways that show them to be less than admirable people, thus taking away some of the shine that goes with being one of their admirers…..

To this handicap, add also that I tend to repeat my subject matter frequently, according to whatever articles in the news have arisen to stimulate one of my outbursts of outrage…. Considering these factors, one can see why many people might get tired of reading about the same old stuff, even if the insults are fresh, and my complaints are, at minimum, justifiable only in my own eyes… In addition, the mere fact of the truth of what I may say doesn’t seem to matter to some folks, as they don’t want to hear it anyway…. Them, I don’t really give much of a shit about, since they’re already dead, in regards their ability to reason….

But, the people who do come by who NEED to see what I write aren’t going to stay long, once they’ve been exposed to my style of expressing my outrage, as I tend to be rather forceful in my insults of a number of conservative, and liberal, iconic heroes, who, to me, are all the more villainous for their apparent harmlessness…. Their image as smart, caring individuals, with the interests of the common man at the forefront of their concerns, (which is what they WANT folks to believe about them….), gets punctured rather quickly around here, and their avaricious, self-serving, dishonest NASTINESS is exposed, by unassailable evidence (often out of their own mouths….), to show them as the selfish assholes they really are, behind the smarmy smiles, and mouths full of lies….

Ah well…. As I’ve said before, I write this mostly for my own benefit…. If I leave all this angst-filled frustration inside my head, it rots, or percolates into a mishmash of thoughts and ideas that would make anyone ill….. Instead, I write, & get all of it off my chest, into the public marketplace of ideas, the human cloud of common experience, if you will, where there is at least a small chance that someone will see it, & be thereby inspired to think…. It’s a bit frustrating at times, to know that so few are seeing it, especially since I KNOW FOR A FACT there are MILLIONS of ignorant fools out there who NEED to see the information I share every day….

But, I can live with the frustration, because I know that getting this OUT of my head is doing me more good than I could ever get from psychotherapy, or from trying to live the lie so many people fall for…. I know THAT for a FACT….. So, if folks want to keep ignoring what I write, that’s okay…. Maybe a few more of the over 440 ffolkes who signed up to follow my blog will stop in to read, be inspired, and share it around the web…. If even a few people see my words, it could conceivably make a small difference…. and, in the final analysis, isn’t that what we all want?….

Shall we Pearl?

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” — Max Planck, 1858-1947

“And waste their music on the savage race.” — Edward Young (1684-1765) — Love of Fame, Satire v, Line 228
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As is often the case, you’ll need to at least skim these articles to get the full effect of the following material…. Don’t worry, I’ll wait….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/medical/article/Arkansas-court-tosses-1-2B-judgment-against-J-J-5334330.php

http://www.sfgate.com/raiders/article/Feds-end-Raiderette-wage-probe-with-no-action-5332287.php

P. What riches give us let us then inquire: Meat, fire, and clothes.
B. What more?
P. Meat, fine clothes, and fire.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Moral Essays, Epistle iii, Line 79

Is there any doubt left, in anyone’s mind, that in this country, if not the entire world, the courts, and the federal government in general, are completely under the control and influence of corporate entities? There is none left in mine, let me assure you, not a dram, nor even a drop….. The links above lead to articles of note on the subject, both of which are merely the reports of two more instances of corporate influence on legislation, just a small piece of a long list of occasions throughout history, where the corporate interests of a large company were protected by a court decision, or, as in the second case, by federal lawyers (?….!!!) from the Attorney General’s office of investigation…. What a crock!

In the case of the Raiders cheerleaders vs. the NFL bullies, what do you want to wager that the law, regarding “seasonal” businesses being “exempt” from the laws the rest of us must follow, was already very familiar to the company before drawing up the contracts for anyone they might hire, such as the cheerleaders, thus saving themselves, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars in operating expenses, from not having to pay for such operational items as oh, say, a living wage for the people who work for the company? (By a living wage, I refer to an amount of money earned that one could actually LIVE on, not what some shark of a CEO thinks is “reasonable”, an amount that is generally minuscule, compared to even the minimum wage now in place; thus, it becomes a figure which protects the bottom line….)

Not only was the company probably aware of the law, I would also wager serious money the lobbyists for the NFL in Congress were instrumental in setting the regulations that are part of the law, when the law was first written…. There is no safer way to protect one’s interests than to be able to say what goes into a law that one’s company will have to obey…. Why not write the law the way they want it in the first place?…. It’s a simple matter of paying ONE, or perhaps a few corrupt politicians in the present, thus saving millions of dollars of future costs….. This, of course, enables the corporation to pocket those millions, since all that money won’t be going to the cheerleaders, or back to the consumers…

As for the J&J decision, well, I guess that one got fixed way back in the mid-eighteen hundreds, when corporations were awarded their “personhood”…. In this case, that protects them from being confused with a “medical facility”, you see, thus making them, once again, “exempt” from any of the laws pertaining to what they actually do as a business…. They are free to do pretty much whatever they want, as long as they remember to set aside enough of what they’ve stolen to pay their lawyers, and the occasional congress person, or judge…. Easy money, from where they’re sitting, wouldn’t you say?…..

(Note: after finishing, a thought…. How many of the lawyers involved in all of the cases in the two articles went to the same law school? Bet it’s more than just a couple…. Between the judges, & their lackeys, lawyers on both sides of the issues, and the politicians, who are what lawyers become after they leave the larval stage, I’d bet one could find a LOT of collusive interactions from past involvements by the players…. but, who’s going to notice, or question that sort of thing, besides ffolkes like me?….)

I began this rant yesterday, when I first read the two articles…. Actually, it only took the first one to piss me off; the second article just made the rant imperative, while adding more fuel to my outrage…. The NFL corporation(s) (along with other massive conglomerates of assholes who exploit games theory, such as the NCAA, the NBA, the NHL, the NTA, and MLB, WBF, WWF, just to name some of those in THIS country…. In the rest of the world, think Rugby, Cricket, Soccer/Futbol, tennis, etc…. Oh, right, and some for the richest gamesmen, sailing races…. Think, literally (look it up…. I did….) billions upon billions of dollars of income from EACH sport, for EACH of those corporations, EACH year….. not counting TV income….) has to be one of the most egregious examples in modern society of how corrupt our government has become, and how that corruption extends into all reaches of Society At Large….

Here is a corporation whose sole purpose is to provide the public with a whole range of time- and money-consuming activities/pastimes that involve the participation and, more importantly, the focus, attention, and MONEY, of literally hundreds of millions of fools, who are thus kept from using a large part of their brain for thinking…. Of course, these are the brains occupying the middle and lower end of the human bell curve of intelligence, but, hey, there are a LOT of these people out there, who provide the massive inertia that makes society so hard to change…. Why? Because everyone is busy watching a GAME, or betting on a game, or waiting for a game to start…..

In addition, and perhaps more significantly, it encourages those millions of people to spend a large part of their income (and thus, the time and energy spent to obtain that money….) in paying for the ‘privilege’ of watching these GAMES, and to buy any number of otherwise USELESS articles that show how engaged they are in supporting their vicarious heroic icons…. Add to this all the other sports leagues in the world, each one controlled by some VERY RICH assholes with no concern for anyone who can’t do something for them, and we see just one of the numerous ways in which the shadowy corporate masters of society have asserted their control over the ignorant, and the greedy….

Billions and billions of dollars are spent each year by the public, to watch their icons bang into each other, or toss around a ball, or in some way compete in such a way as to arouse the same vicarious feelings in the watchers that they felt when personally engaging in those activities, when they were young…. In short, it’s a drug, which soothes the public mind by allowing them to repeat good feelings as many times as they wish, thereby giving up all their individuality, their time, their money, and all of their self-respect (in my mind….), just so they can be part of a crowd of others, all with the same goal of wasting precious time watching other people PLAY A FUCKING GAME!….

I think, if I was asked to do so, I could come up with at least a dozen other ways to spend all that time and money, any one of which would help the world find its way to a better place than we are in now…. and so could you. Almost anyone could…. But, it will never happen, because the Powers That Be like things just as they are, where they have the control over society to do exactly as they wish, and the major portion of humanity will never even know they are being enslaved…. not as long as the Forty-Niners play on Sunday, or the Giants are in the World Series….

Basta…. Everything I’ve said here is true…. y’all KNOW it is…. All the evidence for all these assertions I’ve made is right there in the headlines of the news, every day, if one is alert enough, and clever enough to see it…. The masters of society have enslaved mankind for over five thousand years now, from shortly after the time they convinced everyone else that money was a better thing to use than barter, (It’s not, for a number of reasons, but, that’s a talk for another time….), while the rest of us have the choice to ignore our enslavement, go along with it, with or without ill-grace, or, to know about it, hate it, & complain, loudly, even eloquently, but, to little or no effect (I’m doubtless guilty of the latter….) (…. guilty of complaining to little effect, not of doing so with eloquence….)

At this point, unless there are enough concerned people to band together to expose this issue, which would doubtlessly prompt everyone else to DO something to stop them (they WON’T stop on their own, count on that…), then, by golly, ffolkes, we’re all going to pay the price for THEIR ignorance, when the planet steps in to cleanse itself of all the crap we’ve thrown around during our short tenancy….. Won’t THAT be fun?…. Well, you’re probably right, it won’t be….

“The truth cannot be tidied up.” — Hugh Prather
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It’s a long rant today, I know…. Sorry, but, that had all been building up a while, & needed to be lanced before it got infected, or festered, as we like to say on colloquial side of the street…. Besides, it’s all true, and needs to be told, so, I’m not going to apologize for doing what I consider to be my duty as a citizen of this country, one who is free, educated, and patriotic, without being blinded by sentiment, or faith-based nonsense.

That being said, I would normally use one of my own poems here, so all of this doesn’t sully the name of some other poet by people’s unfortunate tendency to form associations that aren’t real, merely due to circumstantial presence, rather than any similarity of thought…. But, I decided that I wasn’t going to give in to that sort of ignorance today, because I WANT something good here, and my own stuff can’t necessarily be judged so, not without giving up all objectivity….

So, in order to indulge myself, I’m going with a classic poet, whose reputation is such that mere association with MY work could never adversely affect HIS reputation…. It’s been too long in place, and is too accurate, to ever change…. Society will always admire this man, in spite of himself…. In a race of creatures whose one major claim to fame is that each is a unique individual, this man stands out, and always has…. Enjoy! I intend to do so….

My Voice

Within this restless, hurried, modern world
We took our hearts’ full pleasure–You and I,
And now the white sails of our ship are furled,
And spent the lading of our argosy.

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow hath paled my lip’s vermilion,
And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

But all this crowded life has been to thee
No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

~~ Oscar Wilde ~~

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Oh boy…. I can relax now, and have a bit of fun…. I’ve been so focused this morning, on getting the rant just right, as well as, I admit, making a complete mess of the intro, that I lost track of the fun button, so my blood level is running a bit low….. Since I’m so sober, I’ll try to bring a bit of balance to the Metaphorse, and use a simple, single parameter for the following pearl, to wit: the following quotes have all been determined to display the essence of bozoid tendencies in some fashion, to be determined at the time of consumption…. Enjoy them, please…. if you don’t, I’ve failed, again….

😳

“I think a good gift for the president would be a chocolate revolver.  And since  he’s so busy, you’d probably have to run up to him and hand it to him.” — Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey

“Ignorance is never out of style.  It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.” — Franklin K. Dane

Born Again Christian = “I guess I myth’d again.” — Smart Bee

“Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing, right in your ear.” — Dave Barry

— How many Canadians does it take to change a light bulb?  Twelve. Four to form a Parliamentary study committee to decide how to solve the problem, one Francophone to complain that I didn’t translate this joke into French, one Native Canadian to protest that the interests of Native Canadians have been overlooked, one woman from the National Action Committee On the Status Of Women to say that women have been underrepresented in the process, one to go over the border to the Niagara Falls Factory Outlet Mall and buy a new bulb and not pay duty on it on the way back, one to actually screw it in, one to collect taxes on the whole procedure so the government can afford it, one to buy a case of Molson for everybody to drink, and one to drop the puck.” — Smart Bee, eh?

“If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.” — Wittgenstein

“Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, iv, 50

Oops! Sorry…. it took a kind of radical turn at the end there, didn’t it? Oh well, it kind of works, and I have a special contract with Marcus Aurelius…. his quotes ALWAYS stay, no matter what the parameters, just because, for being over 1800 years old, they are consistently the most correct, insightful, and relevant statements that can be found…. Seriously, he never seemed to miss, not if it got written down…. and, if you do stop to think about it a little, it even fits into the group it is part of, as a sort of closing, summarization sort of thing…. sort of…. Hey, even if not, it’s still a brilliant thought, right? How can you lose?…. Right…. you can’t…. Even the darkest cloud can have a silver lining…..
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Well, that took forever, it seems….. a feeling the clock confirms, as I’m two entire hours later than usual getting this done…. That might have something to do with not getting up until almost 0500, which has to do with consuming massive quantities of sleep aids in various manifestations, so it isn’t necessarily surprising, or alarming….. just different, I suppose one could say, and be correct….

There, a quick hundred words or so to say a bit more NOTHING, and we can bring this mess to a close….. I tried several new techniques today, behind the scenes, & I’ll let y’all know how they worked another time…. For now, I suppose I’ve held you captive to my whim long enough, and should let y’all be on your way into the day…. SIGH…. Okay, but, this power over others stuff is addictive, y’know….. See ya tomorrow….

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

dozer3

Would chartreuse fill the bill?…

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Ffolkes,

I remember fire, and fear, and the smell of blood. Blurred, confused images pass behind my eyes, unheeded, as I try to separate all the conflicting perceptions clamoring for my attention from all directions…. Panicked, I open my eyes, only to close them immediately, as the smoke and heat fly into my awareness, and into my lungs. Coughing madly, I start to run, anywhere….

Crashing into walls, screaming in abject, unreasoning fear, I run blindly down the hallway, with flames and smoke pulling at me, reaching out to caress with seductive, lethal fingers, as I flee past the open doors, all with more flames and smoke pouring out…. As I near the window at the end of the hallway, the glass bursts, sending millions of glittering sharp needles raining down at my face….

So, I ducked, grabbed a fire extinguisher, & put out the fire….. Actually, what I actually did is stop writing, because I couldn’t decide whether to kill him off, or save him, & it was getting close to the point where I’d have to do one or the other…. Rather than make up my mind, I decided to just give up, and bring y’all into this paragraph, where a taste of real-time will bring us right into line with our agenda for today. Well, that’s the plan, anyway. Given the general state of affairs around these parts, there’s really no telling what will ACTUALLY occur…. That’s just fine, though, we like it that way….

That’s what we keep telling ourselves, anyway…. that’s our story, and we’re sticking with it. (As you can see, we are also using the royal “we” today….) Besides, what with the way that Reality generally treats ALL of us, I’ve found it’s best to go along with whatever happens, without argument. Trying to make things work the way I want is not what I’d call a lucrative occupation, not for a person who claims to be a realist…. Reality seldom asks us for our opinions about how things should go; it just lets the shit fly, with no worries about what it sticks to…. No nose, y’know?…. the smell doesn’t affect ’em….

I’d claim it had one, (a nose, that is….), but, the anthropomorphizing of inanimate forces of Nature seldom results in anything other than a black eye, or a bloody nose, with the ubiquitous Murphy being  both the obvious exception that proves the rule, and, the perpetrator of Reality’s sardonic attentions…. Besides, y’all are probably aware by now of what is going on here…..

No doubt, the regulars among you have tumbled to what I’ve been doing for the past five paragraphs, as they’ve seen this sort of trickery before…. Yes, we’re deep into the depths of another of my famous meanders, and it’s too late now to say we’re not…. Not only is it too late for that, but, we’ve also lost our way to the end….

But, we have the means to deal with that, no worries…. I’ll just open up this little cupboard right here, and pull out this little package, containing all the denial I’ll need to deal with the reporters later, while I surreptitiously apply Emergency Method #4….. otherwise known as the sudden complete stop…..

Shall we Pearl?

“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. ” (Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.) — William of Occam, Occam’s Razor

Aha! I KNEW there was SOMETHING I was doing wrong!….. Ah well, it DOES add more to the arguments explaining why using EM #4 is a good idea on mornings like this one…
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I’m in a strange place today…. I suppose, coming from me, that isn’t saying anything particularly unusual, but, it still holds true; even for me, I’m feeling weird…. I read the two articles below yesterday, during the short period of time I was able to sit and read news-type stuff….

The first was added to the evidence in my mind regarding the imminent world-wide environmental crisis that Mankind has to face in the coming years, while the second offers at least a small bit of philosophy that could be of help to us in our struggle… by which I mean, the article by Mark M. has some very rational points to bring out, points which, if heeded, can’t help but make things better for a lot of people…. But, who listens to a smart-ass, semi-millennial, faux hippie with a big vocabulary, except ffolkes like me?….

I could conceivably, and quite easily, I’m sure, rant on the first article, about society’s pending demise, thus proving it fits into the prevailing theory of civilization to which the article refers, a theory which delineates how cultures age over time, until their predictable, eventual, inevitable collapse, destroyed from within by corruption, and the weight of its own folly. Our society is a perfect fit for this theory, for which there exists a LOT of evidence, all provided from our own history. But, I’m still a bit tired, and not able to sit long enough to do justice to such a critical, complex subject….

Instead, read the two articles, to get a good idea of where we are today in the World at Large… For your reading and cogitative pleasure, I’ve followed these with a religirant from the archives, just for fun….. Enjoy, ffolkes, as much as you can, considering the subject matter….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/NASA-funded-report-says-society-is-trending-5328327.php

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2014/03/18/is-work-life-balance-a-lie/

The following rant is one of my best, all in all, as it didn’t start out with the intent to rant, but just grew naturally….. Abondanza!….

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From 11/24/13:

The following religirant is from June of 2012; in my opinion, it remains as cogent as the day it was first written….. Thank goodness, as it gives me a reason to use it now. (Note from 2014: It’s as valid today as it was last November…)  My advice is to take it with the usual grain or two of your favorite flavored salt….. Myself, I like a mixture of onion and garlic salts, with some cracked black pepper, and a touch of chili powder, for interest, and balance…. Metaphorically speaking, you could think of that as Reason, Doubt, and Imagination…. apply them to any subject, and they’ll come out a lot better than merely using Faith and/or Fearful Denial….

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

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

There are many folks out there who, when reading my material for the first time, might get the impression that I am an atheist, and an anarchist. The stuff I write would tend to give that impression, I have no doubt. But, it really isn’t the case, and just goes to show that not everything is always as it seems….

I’m not an atheist, at least not in a classical sense. I would more accurately be described as agnostic, as I believe strongly in a spiritual component in the universe. But, the very concept of omnipotence, and omniscience, implies that one cannot define God, or whatever entity one considers to be the ultimate authority. A finite mind cannot comprehend an infinite mind; anything we can imagine cannot, by definition, be accurate or complete, as our minds are not infinite in scope.

It could be said that our imagination IS infinite. We can, at the very least, comprehend the concept of infinity, even if we cannot touch it, or see it, or count that high. But, to actually think that what we imagine about God is the same as reality is not only arrogant, it is foolish. Yet a large percentage of the human race not only believes they know what God looks like (ironically, God always looks suspiciously like the folks who are claiming Him as their deity….), but, also have the temerity to say that they know what He wants. To my way of thinking, this is sheer self-aggrandizement, and unjustifiably arrogant….

I suppose it helps them in dealing with the everyday stresses of life to think that they are special. It must be comforting to think they are beloved of God, and what they do is important to Him. This sense of belonging is important to a lot of folks, in reaction, I think, to their own fears about their ability, or, in their eyes, their inability, to deal with reality as it exists. It gives them a sense of entitlement, and justifies their actions, no matter how immoral or unethical they may be. It allows them to act upon their impulses without restraint, to lie, to cheat, to steal, all in the name of the Lord. And, if they should happen to feel a tiny shred of guilt about what they are doing to other folks, why, they just confess their sins to Jesus, and all is forgiven!….

Sorry, ffolkes, but I could never buy into the whole scenario, from my earliest days on this planet…. All of my experience, and all of my reasoning has led me to a different view of reality than what is described by any religion. I have observed the behavior of most people of a religious bent to be, as a rule, hypocritical, cruel, bigoted, racist, and, for the most part, unrelated to any moral or ethical system of any depth. Those who claim to be the MOST religious in society go so far as to threaten violence toward anyone who disagrees with their beliefs, justified by their own self-proclaimed right to spew their hatred on anyone who differs.

I believe in compassion and kindness. I believe in love. I believe in protecting the vulnerable, and helping the less fortunate. I believe in beauty. And, I believe in reality, whatever that may be; it’s purely subjective for the most part. I DON’T believe in the divinity of Jesus, or Buddha, or Lao Tzu, or Mohammad, or any other religious prophet. I don’t believe there is some white haired, bearded old guy sitting on a throne of gold up in the sky somewhere, looking down and getting his shorts in a bunch because I didn’t salute his graven image first thing after I got up.

That whole graven image thing, and the idea that God wants, or needs, our worship has always been a thorn in my side. I mean, can’t these zealots understand the irony of worshiping an image of Christ on the cross? Don’t they know that the cross is a graven image? And, most importantly to me, why would an omnipotent being NEED to have MY worship? It makes no sense. None. I cannot imagine of ANY reason for a God to care at all about such petty bullshit; I don’t care to be worshiped, why should He? Having someone act that way toward me makes me uncomfortable, so I can’t see why a God would even want to go there. What purpose does it serve? In my opinion, it debases the worshiper, AND the one worshiped.

One of my computer alarms just went off, and made me realize I was ranting, which I had not started out to do. I think y’all can get the gist of my arguments by this time, and, since those who are in disagreement with what I’ve written aren’t going to be persuaded away from their long-held delusions by my words, further soliloquy would be futile.

I’ll just finish by saying this…. until Mankind grows up enough to be able to put aside the crutch of religion, until the species as a whole learns to stand up to reality as it exists, without the delusional imaginary friend to intercede on their behalf with the universe, then our path to extinction will remain clear…. It’s too bad, really, because we do show a lot of promise, at times, and under the right conditions…. It’s too bad we will never be allowed to explore our limits as an adult species, because we will have killed ourselves off before we ever got out of childhood….

“There ain’t no devil, there’s just God when he’s drunk.” — Tom Waits, Heartattack and Vine
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There you go…. Now, I COULD continue ranting on this theme; it’s one I can pick up in a heartbeat. But, I’ll be nice, and get on with the rest of today’s effort…. See, I CAN be disciplined…. and compassionate, as well…. it just takes a while sometimes……

“It is in changing that things find repose” — Heraclitus
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On days such as this one is turning out to be, I try to NOT let any of what takes place here splash onto other people…. In that vein, here is one of my older poems, just to fill up this space with something that rhymes….

A Dubiously Soft Morning

Idiosyncratic images, clamoring for regard,
fill up the white, bright, empty screen on which I view
my life, never seeing, nor invited to sup
ambrosial remnants of anything new.

Still, but almost in motion, allegory sails away
bobbing gently, quick and easy to find,
signs of one happy child, seriously at play,
blissfully immersed, focused joy in mind.

Formidable cries of outraged simple justice
echo plaintive relevance, in half the time.
Maladaptive infants, destined for hospice
salvage an only child, daring to sing in rhyme.

Creativity equals unquestioning farce,
often reaching for absurdity, brazenly afire.
Instead, a blow is felt that no joy will soften,
accepting the price, added to the cost of desire.

~~ gigoid ~~

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Fiddle de dee, fiddle de dum….. I smell the blood of an English mun…. I always hated that rhyme; it isn’t QUITE right, and, thus, hurts my obsessive sense of order…. But, it’s a nice little phrase to indicate the passage of time, with the added attraction of being thoroughly nonsensical…. As such, it’s handy for those of us who rely on literary tricks to get by…. Patently, it’s useful, if only to get us where we needed to go, which, oddly enough, is right here….. Fancy that!…..

I COULD get really silly, and go for Monty Python style in this next section, but, I’m not terribly expert in the Silly Walk. I CAN do a decent “Ni ni ni….”, but, how many times can one fall back on that? Not too many, I can assure you…. No, we’ll stay with what we know best, which just happens to be an old-school pearl, with parameters unset, to give it that random, harlequin look… It works for me, as it will for you, if you give it half a chance…. that’s all we’re asking for, ffolkes, just half a chance….

“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” — Albert Schweitzer

“Regrets and complaints about relations are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but for someone with the opposite deposition, youth and old age are equally a burden.” — Plato,_The Republic_, Book 1

“And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the bible  were used to beat plowshares into swords…” — Alan Watts

“Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man,–yesterday in embryo, to-morrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hair’s-breadth of time assigned to thee live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, iv, 48

“Nature does nothing uselessly.’ — Aristotle

“Extinct is forever.” — Smart Bee

“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you please unless it causes others harm. With it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.” — P.J. O’Rourke
_____________________________

I seem to be incapable of reaching any sort of conclusive resolution regarding the nature, and/or disposition of this Pearl; some time during the creation of today’s piece, my mind took a hike, and hasn’t returned all the way…. Something out there in my subconscious is drawing a good portion of its focus, so, I guess I’ll have to finish this without benefit of being 100% present…. and if anyone makes a comment as to that being a normal state, I WILL be hurt…. 

Not really, cuz it’s perfectly true, and I try not to let true stuff hurt me…. (see the last pearl in section three to see why….)…. Actually, I’m all here, I’m just not ALL here, if you catch my drift….

Now that I’ve gotten to the point of deliberate obscurity, I’d better bring this to a close…. It’s true, though, I don’t know what to think about today’s Pearl; it felt strange while putting it together, and still defies my complete comprehension…. I’m a little worried about how that will affect others, but, hey, we all take a risk, every time we try to use whatever it is we keep between our ears, so, like me, and everyone else, y’all are on your own in that respect…. I don’t think any of it will actually HARM you, unless, of course, you try to use it as REAL wisdom….

See ya tomorrow, when things will be different…. None of us has much of a choice about THAT, do we?…..

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

dozer3

May I see your license to glean, sir?….

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Ffolkes,

I know it’s going to be a tough morning when I get up….. That’s it…. When I get up…. THAT is the point in time when I know I’m about to make a mistake, again…. Yet, each day, I drag my sorry ass out of my nice, warm, comfy bed to come out here and go through all this, just to clear out the excess of corrupted files in my head.

I mean, it’s not as if anyone is paying me some huge amount of money to do this, nor am I, apparently, taking the blog world by storm, as my site traffic still isn’t what I’d call heavy, or even moderate…. In fact, I’d say it was pathetic, but, the few ffolkes who DO make it by each day are anything BUT pathetic, so that wouldn’t be appropriate, by any means….

Nor, it seems, is yet another attempt at a chatty, intimate, conversational opening going to cut it for long; I can feel this going wonky at me as I type…. Too many assumptions of real-time connection, without any actual control modules being hooked in, thus preventing many of the really neat things we COULD be doing if they were….. like graphics, and many other artistic flourishes, that often go missing in what we see happening around here….. I suppose it would help if I possessed even a smidgen of real artistic talent, but, the best I’ve ever come up with is a stick figure and stick trees under a pale blue sky…. and that was using Photo Shop!

Now, I know y’all can tell when I’m being facetious…. the lights automatically dim three times before each planned occurrence (when it happens inadvertently, we’re all on our own….). But, even with that, I don’t think we’re going to be able to salvage much from the wreckage of this opening. It’s gone pretty well off the rails already, and we’re only three paragraphs in….  I’m fairly certain, if I try to continue to beat it much longer, this dead horse is going to rise up and turn zombie on me…. Y’all KNOW how much I dislike having to deal with zombies…. It reminds me too much of watching televised Congressional hearings…. sheer torture….

Before I get any weirder, or become even less comprehensible, I’m going to abandon this mess. I don’t know exactly what happened, nor do I care much….. It’s over, which, as far as I’m concerned, is all I need to know right now…. We’ll go on, just as if we’ve had a regular, chatty little opening conversation, just like we do every day, thus putting the lie to our insistence on having reality match our description; today, it ain’t gonna happen, so we may as well get used to that…. However, we do have one saving grace remaining to us….

Shall we Pearl?…..

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

A school board member, it should be noted, is the larval stage of a politician…. It’s the lowest, most local level of elected official in this country, and, as such, Mr. Twain’s description, labeling them as idiots, was far more accurate than he knew; to be an elected official, one must be, at minimum, a proven psychotic, so, as idiots, they fit right in….
_____________________________

My ranting skills, while not ‘faded and gone away’ for good, are most definitely not in evidence today; I’m actually pretty fatigued in my head, all in all, from the events of the past two days, during which I waged a moderately tough battle with pain, with a large portion of my time spent in a happily-drugged stupor…..

Now that the pain is receding a bit, I’m still feeling the aftereffects of the battle, which can be more extensive than might be surmised….. It’s a tough row to hoe getting past such episodes; they require some rather strong applications of will power to ignore the pain at times, until the drugs can take full effect, and fatigue builds up rapidly, after a certain amount of time spent exercising that will….

Thus, I’m using another rant from the archives today, just because I can… This is from the period AFTER the last presidential election, in 2012…. It was beginning to become clear that though we had chosen the LESSER of two evils at the polls, our choice was still evil, as more and more evidence of cover-ups and lies began to emerge, lies that decried Barry’s promises of “transparency” in his administration. That lack of transparency has now been confirmed as a huge lie, so, this becomes even more accurate in its generally non-specific accusations of chicanery among the ruling classes…. Enjoy!….

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

From 12/30/12:

“History is a lie commonly agreed upon.” — Nietzsche

I often wonder how people in the future, (if we have one…), will view these times, it being a given that the fabric of our society is based primarily on lies and/or delusions.* Which ones will stand the test of time, and end up in the books as being the one everyone agrees upon? It has also been said that history is always  written by the winners, and that seems to me to be fairly close to the real truth of the matter. It would be a bit more acceptable to me if it weren’t so bloody predictable, and that there was at least a small chance that the events we experience would be reported truthfully. Alas, I am not hopeful that will ever be the case…..

* (Note the use of the technique of the positively stated assertion, using the assumption of its truth as PROVEN, the very same technique of verbal argument used by ALL religious doctrines as the basis for their truth and relativity…. Just thought I’d make it clear at the outset, this is real, serious stuff, just like their stuff is….)

In all honesty, I’m not convinced that we, as a species, will HAVE much of a future. Given the current state of the environment, I can’t see us lasting more than a couple hundred years more, without some major changes to society, changes that are neither imminent, nor under consideration.

When I first started this blog, over a year ago, I posted a link, to what is called a World Clock, at Poodwaddle.com ( I love the human imagination!…..What a great word, eh? Poodwaddle…. I like to say it out loud; it’s even more exciting that way…..). You can find that clock here:  http://www.poodwaddlecom/clocks/worldclock/   

The clock has a number of faces, one of which shows exactly how much carbon-monoxide (CO), and carbon dioxide (CO2), along with unnatural amounts of other toxic substances, are being pumped into the atmosphere every second, by industrial and manufacturing facilities, and by cars and other vehicles. Other faces give real time statistics on other subjects common to the theme of the site, to wit: environmental activism…

I am a scientist, first. I chose the path of the scientist in my youth, before my tenth birthday, even before setting my feet upon the warrior’s path I chose to include as part of my later life.  In essence, scientists ARE warriors, and vice versa; battling the universe requires study in order for one to be effective in coping with whatever happens….

In addition, the acquisition of knowledge requires the curiosity and courage of a warrior, in order to find, and face, the Truth, in all its many guises. Each path complements the other, and, in my time, have combined to lead me on a journey of great beauty and wonder. My journey, though, is in danger of being ended before its time, by the mundane asininity of the human race….

There are some scientists who believe that humans do not have the power to harm the planet; nor do they believe the danger is as great as the evidence might indicate. In one respect, they are right…. I don’t think the planet ITSELF is in danger from what we are doing, though I’m sure it is suffering pain from the symptoms we’ve managed to saddle it with in our time. (Why WOULDN’T a planet have consciousness?… It’s large enough, and complex enough, and we don’t know, or perceive, all there is to know about the universe, or consciousness, for that matter…. Answer that first, before asking me why it would suffer pain….)

No, our activities, such as polluting the air and water, wasting resources, and indiscriminately killing the other creatures with whom we live, only endanger US, and the other life forms on the planet. Once we are gone, the planet will easily clean itself of the trash we deposited everywhere, and move on to the next evolutionary step in the parade of Time.

“Where man walks the earth hurts.” — Smart Bee

Many years ago, I used to believe in the ingenuity of scientists, to overcome the technological difficulties we’ve created, and find a way to keep us alive, perhaps by colonizing other planets in space, leaving the Earth behind. But, the figures don’t lie, and the figures say we don’t have the time to fool around waiting for space travel to solve the problems we have. By the time we could achieve any kind of significant progress there, we would be forced to live in domes, to wear protective gear to go outside, just to walk on the surface of our own world. That is, IF there are enough remaining resources to build the domes, and to power them sufficiently to survive.

Another, though less likely possible solution is for the ruling classes of our species to come to their senses, to reverse their moral compass, such that they start acting in the best interests of everyone, instead of just themselves. The entire problem with pollution we have today exists solely because the ruling classes, the people who control all the resources, don’t have any moral compass, or, choose to deliberately ignore its influence.

They choose, instead, to structure society in their own favor, so that they, and ONLY they, have the power, and the control over what society produces, while the rest of us try to survive on their leavings. It is the same picture that history has seen portrayed for all the millenia since we came out of the caves to live in cities; the 1% of mankind who are in control are not interested in helping anyone else, unless and until they have fulfilled their own desires….

Even the lies upon which we all agree, in all of our written history, show this to be true, so I don’t think there is a huge chance that we will see any significant changes before it is too late for them to matter. I just don’t see those in the beloved ruling class, all of a sudden, suffering a change of heart, reversing the entire course of the history they’ve chosen to write in their name; it is not in their nature to be altruistic to even a small degree. We are either going to have to rise up and throw them out on their asses, or suffer an ignominious death, when the air we can no longer breathe begins to choke us, as we walk down the street toward our destiny….. a destiny which, at this point, leads us straight to a coffin…..

“I can’t decide which WRONG TURN to make first!! I wonder if BOB GUCCIONE has these problems!” — Zippy the Pinhead
_____________________________

What often amazes me when I read poetry by one of the classical Chinese poets, such as Li Po, is how beautifully the translations were written…. It takes a high degree of insight to be able to not only create a poem in translation from one language to another, but to make the translation as beautiful to read, or to hear if read aloud, as was the original piece…. It makes me want to learn to speak Chinese, if only to gain some understanding of the process involved, in creating such beauty in either language…. Enjoy!….

Amidst The Flowers A Jug Of Wine

Amidst the flowers a jug of wine,
I pour alone lacking companionship.
So raising the cup I invite the Moon,
Then turn to my shadow which makes three of us.
Because the Moon does not know how to drink,
My shadow merely follows the movement of my body.
The moon has brought the shadow to keep me company a while,
The practice of mirth should keep pace with spring.
I start a song and the moon begins to reel,
I rise and dance and the shadow moves grotesquely.
While I’m still conscious let’s rejoice with one another,
After I’m drunk let each one go his way.
Let us bind ourselves for ever for passionless journeyings.
Let us swear to meet again far in the Milky Way.

~~ Li Po ~~

_____________________________

Oh, yay…. I am filled with enthusiasm and excitement…. NOT…..  I am, however, mildly pleased (about as strong an emotion as I’m capable of just now, I think…) to have reached this final section, where I can lay down my insane need to appear normal, at least for long enough to put together an old-school pearl to finish off today’s effort…. which has, indeed, been an effort…. I’ll keep the parameters simple, as well as hidden, so the point of all of this may, or may not, be immediately obvious… So, what else is new?….

“Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) — The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, i

“Invincibility depends on one’s self; The enemy’s vulnerability on him.” — Sun Tzu

“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

“You speak truth,” said Themistocles; “I should never have been famous if I had been of Seriphus;” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Life of Themistocles

“What we do is as American as lynch mobs. America has always been a complex place.” — Jerry Garcia (1942-1995), Musician, the Grateful Dead — Rolling Stone magazine, (November 30, 1989).

“Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.” — Muad ‘Dib

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

I make no apologies, nor do I make excuses, even though the process of making them up can be a lot of fun…. (My dog pooped on my homework after he ate the cat…. you know, like that….). But, when one has taken on the creation of a daily Pearl of Virtual Wisdom as a personal Duty, in spite of all the advice and counseling, in spite of all the urgings of his family and friends, in spite of the obvious humiliation and embarrassment he causes to others, as well as himself, well…. there isn’t a lot of wiggle-room for getting out of it, so making either apology or excuse becomes undignified, as well as counter-productive in the sense of maintaining one’s self-esteem…. whatever THAT might be!….

In spite of the tone and tenor of the intro section, I’m a bit disappointed this is already done; I’ve had more fun than I thought would be possible when I began…. About half-way through getting this completed, my brain woke up for real; as a happy result, the latter half of this process has been much smoother than the first half could possibly have been, given the handicap with which I started the day…. I was pretty mushy-minded at first today…. Truthfully, I’m kind of pleased with myself for showing the grit to get this done the way I did…. Now that I’ve strained my shoulder, patting myself on the back, I’ll go put on some of my magic cream, so I can make breakfast…. 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

dozer3

Balderdash! A jury won’t convict without that mango….

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Ffolkes,

Now that I’ve been sitting here for more than 45 minutes, with nothing that comes close to resembling a coherent thought having passed through my brain, it might be time to start to panic…. First, I was sleepy, so I sat and dozed…. Then I stared at the screen a while, just letting my mind wander, which it did, far enough I had to spend the money for a bus to go find it….. When I got back, I was still sitting there, staring….

At that point, I came to the realization that I might just be having a bit of a problem here this morning…. In order to avoid the sort of issues that can arise on such occasions, I closed off the partition between the cockpit and the cabin, which will at least keep the stewards, stewardesses, and the rest of the flight crew from catching on to what is happening….

Of course, for them to clue in to what’s happening, it’s a point of fact that I need to know first, and, I don’t believe the odds on that are very good, not today….. I’ve always found that keeping them ignorant for as long as I can works better than letting them in on any part of the pre-take-off routine, anyway, so that plays right in to what I planned. I suppose all of this will have to come out at the next board meeting, when the newly-minted policy manual is to be revealed….  I think I’ll just mark it all down on the tally sheets, and get on with whatever else we’ll be allowed to do….

Your guess about that would, patently, be as good as any I could make today…. In fact, I’m pretty sure that, so far, I’ve been almost completely  impenetrable, in terms of meaning…. I ask you… have I said ANYTHING rational, or, even anything coherent, yet today? If you said yes, may your God have mercy upon your soul, because your brain has died ahead of your body…. Nothing, as far as I can tell, of what I’ve produced thus far today even APPROACHES coherency, and, I think we can safely assume that rationality is equally out of the question… unless drastic changes in Reality take place very soon, anyway….

The reason for my cranial fog is easy…. I overdosed…. Well, as far as it is possible to do so on cannabinoids, I overdosed, which is not the same issue as with other drugs…. By this I mean that I just ate one too many of my chocolates, and it’s making it hard to wake up…. my mind would prefer to be asleep, thank you very much, and is rebelling with great stubbornness to the idea of waking up all the way…. Droopy eye lids, foggy mind, lethargic, stiff body, all the typical symptoms of an old, tired crank are present, and no matter how hard I try to cudgel my mind into working, it doesn’t want to cooperate….

Oh, look at that…. In spite of all this, I’ve again managed to spew out five paragraphs of pure twaddle…. In light of how things are progressing up to this point, I’m going to have to settle for that, and get on with the rest of this…. I can’t say I’m particularly hopeful that things will get straightened out in time to salvage today’s Pearl, but, with the world in the state it’s in, I don’t think it will notice much anyway…. Plus, the traffic here at ECR has dropped off again to the point where I feel lucky to see five visits a day, not counting my own checks to see if anyone has left a comment… SIGH…

It doesn’t matter, though, any more than it ever has…. This stuff HAS to come out of my head, before it becomes toxic, or explosive, so bear with me, while I empty out the crap that built up overnight….

Shall we Pearl?…..

Years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb,
And life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

— Lord Byron (1788-1824) — Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iii, Stanza 8
_____________________________

Ranting, of course, is out of the question today…. I’d probably end up frothing at the mouth over something I did myself, thus adding weight to the evidence being gathered to have me committed….. So, I’ll stick to old-school pearls, which can only hurt me if I let them…. Let’s see what Smart Bee has for us today…. How about we use the word, “honor” as a parameter? Let’s see what comes up, shall we?….

“Badness, look you, you may choose easily in a heap: level is the path, and right near it dwells. But before Virtue the immortal gods have put the sweat of man’s brow; and long and steep is the way to it, and rugged at the first.” — Hesiod (c. 700 BC) — Works and Days, Line 287

“That which is incapable of proof itself is not proof of anything else.” — Shelley

“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” — Paul Simon

“There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.” — Edmund Burke (1729-1797) — Observations on Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation,
— Vol. i, p. 273

“As some say, Solon was the author of the apothegm, “Nothing in excess.”  — Diogenes Laertius (c. 200 AD) — Solon, xvi

“Forget about likes and dislikes.  They are of no consequence.  Just do what must be done.  This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.” — George Bernard Shaw

“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the falsehood. One word of truth outweighs the world.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Wow…. sometimes, this process just works really well…. All good stuff, ffolkes, and a damn fine way to spend a few moments of your allotted reading time today….
_____________________________

Resorting to the use of Emily’s poetry, for me, is an indulgence…. today, I need that indulgence, so, Shawna will just have to deal….    🙂

I reason, Earth is short

I reason, Earth is short—
And Anguish—absolute—
And many hurt,
But, what of that?

I reason, we could die—
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven—
Somehow, it will be even—
Some new Equation, given—
But, what of that?

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

_____________________________

Since I don’t possess the wherewithal to produce a fresh rant, here is one from the time prior to the election in 2012…. This is one of my favorite rants, because it doesn’t pull any punches, or make any excuses…. It’s mini, but it’s mighty…. Enjoy….. Oh, if vulgarity offends you, you might want to skip this…. it’s pretty fucking vulgar in spots…. It uses words like “lawyer”, “priest”, and “politician” frequently, all of which offend me….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From 6/20/12:

“If a lawyer and an IRS agent were both drowning, and you could only save one of them, would you go to lunch or read the paper?” — Smart Bee

Now, THAT’S funny! Some folks think that making fun of lawyers and those of the same ilk, (self-serving, avaricious, completely without compassion….) isn’t nice. They believe that lawyers and IRS agents are sincerely trying to help people with their problems. These are the same ignorant fools who go to church on Sunday, listen to a sermon about the starving children in third world countries, then go home to a table full of food, with no feelings of guilt, much less irony. The same people who rant and complain about illegal immigrants, but won’t deign to work in the fields to harvest the food they eat, or pay their immigrant nanny a minimum wage.

I say FUCK THEM!!! Fuck the lawyers who use the misery of others to line their own pockets. Fuck the IRS agent who sweats some poor slob for thousands of penalty dollars because he made an inappropriate exemption claim on his form, so he could maybe get a dollar or two back on his return, instead of paying twice as much, percentage-wise, as any millionaire.

FUCK the ignorant fools who blindly accept what they’re told, by anyone on TV, or wearing a suit and a flag pin, or in a pulpit…. FUCK all those who refuse to use their own brain for more than carrying their fat ass from table to toilet, and back, or learning to use the remote control…

FUCK the preacher/priest, who doesn’t pay any fucking taxes at all, and counsels obedience to worldly authority.  FUCK the fucking politicians, who have set up, and continue to take advantage of, a system that keeps the honest, hard-working citizen on his knees, and rewards lying, cheating, bullying, and stealing from the public treasury….. FUCK the “corporate persons” who control ALL the fucking money and resources, at the expense of everyone else on the planet….

FUCK them ALL, really hard, in the place it will hurt the worst….

Sorry about the vulgarity; all of a sudden, the anger I feel at the world’s situation these days built up beyond my ability to contain, and it needed to come out somewhere….. this was handy. Anger, I know, is often counter-productive, but in this case its underlying cause, the denial of my desire for mankind, can be laid directly at the feet of those I mentioned above.

What I want is for everyone to have a fair chance to be happy. That is what our Constitution was supposed to provide, but those perverted assholes who actually run things have done all they could to see that purpose is not fulfilled. The average Joe today doesn’t have a chance, unless he is willing to give up all of his humanity in the search for wealth and power. IT FUCKING MAKES ME CRAZY!

Okay, that’s enough on that for one day. I could easily write another five or six paragraphs, complete with endless examples of the egregious lying, cheating, and stealing going on in front of us, but that would no doubt end up boring us both. Instead I’ll ask you to go register to vote, to make sure that, for this election at least, there is a chance to push back the forces of ignorance that once again threaten our way of life…..Register, and make sure to vote……
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There you go…. I suppose, at this point, so long AFTER the election, my only remaining hope is that in the NEXT election, we are given something more than we generally end up with, and can actually cast a vote that doesn’t feel as if we are being forced to choose the lesser of two evils…. Fat chance, eh?…. I, like everyone else, apparently, consistently choose to forget that anyone who WANTS to be president is, by that desire, marked as someone who should never be allowed to have it….

It takes a very sick mind to WANT to possess that much power over others…. Alternately, it is also insanely egotistical of ANYONE to think they are capable of handling such power, while still maintaining their own integrity…. History has proven beyond all shadow of doubt that just isn’t ever going to happen; it never has before, and there is no reason to think that anyone alive today is MORE virtuous, or more capable, than ALL of the examples in history that prove it to be impossible.

Now, if y’all have an example, in history, or in imagination, that proves me wrong in this, I’d be happy to hear it…. But, having looked at most of what has happened in Man’s relatively short time on this planet, I feel pretty confident that won’t be happening, even if anyone WAS stopping in to read this….

Enough for one day…. Fuck ’em, they’re assholes, and they’re going to kill us all if we don’t make some radical changes in society…. Too bad it might already be too late….
_____________________________

For such an ordeal, this came out pretty well… Well enough I can let it fly without feeling overly anxious about it…. In fact, I’m going to tell myself a lie, and believe it is SO good, it will garner the most traffic of any Pearl, ever….. Right….. Like THAT’s gonna happen….. Oh well, c’est la vie, as they say in Paris…. They DO say that there, don’t they? I hope 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

dozer3

Perhaps not, but his spatula was meticulous….

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Ffolkes,

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~


I’ve previously used this poem; it may be one of Emily’s most famous, so it’s probably familiar to many people…. I don’t know if Emily had pain herself, of a physical nature, beyond what everyone else feels, when they bark their shins, for example…. If she didn’t, her depth of insight was even greater than I had previously imagined….. This is an assertion I believe implicitly; Emily was, without doubt, the most advanced human EVER in that respect, in my opinion, and by all the evidence at hand…. Her poetry must be considered as proof of that, proof that leaves no room for doubt as to the accuracy of the claim..

This particular poem explores a couple different sides of the nature of the beast, again displaying that incredibly elegant, towering talent only she possessed, by cramming so much feeling, so much meaning, and so many ideas into eight short lines of verse, it almost explodes into one’s consciousness, growing there like a flower in spring…. She wrote at least one other poem on the subject, a bit different in scope, but nonetheless powerful for that…. It went like this….

There is a pain—so utter—
It swallows substance up—
Then covers the Abyss with Trance—
So Memory can step
Around—across—upon it—
As one within a Swoon—
Goes safely—where an open eye—
Would drop Him—Bone by Bone.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~


As lovely and powerful as her poetry may be, I’ll bet you’re wondering why we’ve begun today with a discussion of American English poetry of the Nineteenth Century…. Some of y’all, who have been around ECR a while, will guess why I’m writing about it; they’re already aware of how much my pain can distract me from Life at Large…. and would guess that today’s words are in response to a bout with it of major proportions…. They’d be right to think that, too….

Yesterday, as part of a personal quest to get into better shape, if only for the purpose of being able to walk around in those places to which I travel, such as on shore excursions during a cruise, I went for a short walk… The day before, I had tried a new technique, of taking a pain pill, applying some of my magic ointment to my back and hips, then going for a walk…

I was rewarded by a relatively pain-free stroll all the way downtown, with a few sit-down breaks to blow, and let the numbness recede from my thighs; all told, I walked about two miles, and a bit more…. This is much further than I’ve been able to walk for a couple years now, so I was encouraged enough to try again the day after, i.e. yesterday…

This time, I applied my cream, took my pill, and enthusiastically left, to try to cover the same ground…. After a couple of blocks, I stepped off a curb, onto a small twig, which proceeded to roll about two inches, taking my foot, and my balance, with it…. Using my walking stick, a quick shuffle, and a hard, rapid twist, I was able to keep from falling down…. BUT….

The quick movement, with the accompanying twist, gave the injured ligament in my lower back a good, hard yank…. This, naturally, caused me to experience the customary sharp, intense burst of excruciating pain in my lower back, just as if a large knife had been thrust about two inches into the hip, followed instantly by the total freeze-up and pain of my entire back entering full spasming mode…. This also aggravates the hip joints, so I was barely able to keep upright, and mobile enough to walk…. Hell, it was ALL I could do not to start screaming and beating on the nearest object, animate or inanimate, with my stick….

Turning around, I made it back home without getting arrested for assault, took an extra pill, ate some magic chocolate, put on more ointment, and went straight to bed, where I’ve been for much of the last eighteen hours or so…. I’m up now, and still in full spasm mode, though quiet right now, thanks to about a ton of Norco and all the cannabis I could eat…. Since the pain has been my constant companion for most of the last day, I thought I’d try to share some of that, though I’m not sure why…. I guess I thought it would make a little different start to the day….

I guess it’s also because it’s really hard to deal with this unless, and until, the experience is purged, at least verbally, in order for me to process it in a timely fashion…. I’ll stop here, as y’all have no doubt had enough of my near-whiny neurotic need to share….

Sorry, but, getting the concepts, and the feel of the experience, outside the mind helps to deal with what is still there, which currently requires a good large piece of my consciousness to keep me from running down the street, screaming in pain, HOPING that someone will tell me to stop, so I can BITE THEM REALLY, REALLY HARD!!!!!!

Now that I have further indicated the depth of my insanity (Six exclamation points makes that fairly obvious…. A mere four of them has been shown by research to be proof of clinical psychosis….), I suppose it’s time to go for a dive, to find some pearls…. Hopefully, I can sit long enough, and keep at this long enough between breaks, to finish…. If not, well, we may just be here all day, so, if I were you, I’d check to make sure I had my box lunch, and a supply of water on hand….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry, and other bad habits.” — Edward Abbey

Such as blogging….
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As might be guessed on a day such as this, I won’t be ranting, any more than I already have…. I’m going to go for old-school pearls for both prose sections today, to avoid going back to the archives again…. I COULD go back there, but, even the research involved in that seems like more work than I’ll be able to do…. So, I’m going for a dive, where being surrounded and supported by the waters of reason, I can maneuver almost normally…. You’ll see what I find…. Oh, yeah…. no parameters at all today, just random weird nudges toward virtue and/or dignity (if such is possible during the creation of a Pearl….)…..

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

— Theodore Roethke

“And what is a good citizen?  Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual.  Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point.  A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.” — H.L. Mencken

“Everything, saith Epictetus, hath two handles,–the one to be held by, the other not.” — Robert Burton (1577-1640) — The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part ii, Sect. 2, Memb. 3

“Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power, and consequently should not be any part of your concern.” — Epictetus

“Psychedelic drugs cause paranoia, confusion, and total loss of reality in politicians that have never taken them.” — Timothy Leary

“Addison, what are we going to do?”  “Me, I’m examining the major Western religions. I’m looking for something that’s soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a short initiation period.” — Dave and Maddie on Moonlighting

“There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, “Either is both, and Both is neither.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Philip

And there you have it…. Madness incarnate, right there on your screen….. Well, it WOULD be, if it weren’t all so damn true….
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After a relatively short break of twenty minutes, spent in a frantic search for my glasses, (which, it turns out, were stolen and hidden by Jo Jo, the Psycho-Cat From Hell…. I found them in one of her cat caves, where she had stashed them after taking them off my desk….), I’m back… I’ve already used Emily today, so we’ll go with another classic favorite of mine, one of the most influential Romantic poets from the eighteenth century…. There are those who say he was THE driving force for the entire Romantic poetry genre that burgeoned during his lifetime, an assessment with which I have to agree…

The Human Seasons

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness–to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

~~ John Keats ~~

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I can see the light at the end of this tunnel I’ve entered; I’m pretty sure I can make it that far….. Again, an old-school, unguided (and, please, no comments about misguided….)** pearl, ripped fresh from the oyster beds of my mind….. and Smart Bee’s nearly endless database of excellent cookies….

** (Without, of course, a reasoned justifying argument to explain the assertion….)


“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, iv, 43

“Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.” — Oscar Wilde

“Liberty don’t work as good in practice as it does in speeches.” — Will Rogers

“Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are different lies.” — Smart Bee

“- if it GLISTENS, gobble it!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

“If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.” — Albert Einstein

Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~
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Well, I made it, and about time, too…. I’ve again consumed a massive amount of drugs, all with the purpose of smothering my nervous system to the point of insensibility….. After a seemingly endless amount of time spent in agony, trying to keep occupied in my mind, I am now starting to enjoy the results, and will soon be free (True freedom is the release from pain….) Since it won’t be long before all coherence flees screaming into the night (well, early morning, anyway…. it’s still dark here at 0530, now that we’ve begun daylight savings for the year….), I’ll bring this to a grateful close (the gratitude is on YOUR end, I’m sure….)

I can’t do this anymore…. See you tomorrow…. Hopefully, by then, I’ll be feeling more like a human being than a pharmaceutical test subject…..

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

dozer3

Look, Amelia, it’s a flock of abusive platitudes….

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Ffolkes,

Hardly a day goes by I don’t think about that old man…. I don’t know, exactly, why it still bothers me; I didn’t even know him. But, ever since that day we first saw him, standing there on the corner by the market downtown, waving around that silly old broken pistol, threatening to start shooting if people didn’t listen to him…. Of course, nobody ever did, and he never started shooting; he was just another crazy old coot with a decrepit war souvenir and too many memories…. Who wants to listen to some old guy rambling on about honor and duty and stuff, anyway?

I was only six the first we saw him there, outside the neighborhood store on 114th & Linden, when we came out from the weekly shopping…. I recall him standing up on that old wooden box, shouting and yelling at whoever walked by….. I remember, even then, in the middle of a New York winter, he didn’t have a coat….

I think that’s what bothered me about it for a long time…. At six, I still worried about people, and how they lived, so it bothered me to see this old man out in the cold with no coat…. I asked my mother why he didn’t have one, and she told me he refused to wear one, that he was too broken in his mind to understand it could hurt him; at six, this idea made him an irresistible bone for my mind to chew on….

REALITY BREAK: This is a message from normal space/time…. Well, make that, as normal as ever, I suppose…. I’m bored with that opening…. Okay, that’s a lie; I’m not bored, but I don’t like it, and it’s expedient to use boredom as an excuse …..Sometimes I forget, like everyone, that one MUST BE an example of what one preaches in re: honor and truth…. or, it’s just another bunch of BS…. Mama don’t allow no BS around here, so, the truth it must be, for this boyo….

I do get tired of being accused of being a miserable sinner, but, hey, all those hard-ass tightwads (or is that tightass hardwads?…) need to have somebody to pick on, and they don’t bother me much, so let ’em talk…. Now, where was I, before I so rudely interrupted myself?….

Ah, here we are…. Me apologia, but, I’m cutting this off here because I don’t like it much, and none of the faux introductions are biting at me to get turned into a full story, though, it may happen some day…. You’ll have to be patient, because it will be a while before I do get any of them completed…. It’s just not high on my list of stuff to get done right now…. Currently, I’m not sure what IS on the list, but, I know I’ve got one around here somewhere…. Maybe it’s in…. nope…. Ah well, I’ll look for that later…. I’m thinking right now I should either throw out another distraction, start over, or just get on with today’s dive for pearls….

As you might guess, I’m leaning toward the latter, as it’s the only one that fits in with the plan I have going…. a plan you didn’t even know was there, did you?…. C’mon, now, ‘fess up…. I managed to keep you from seeing this coming, didn’t I?…. Yep, I know I did, so there’s no point in denying….

Well, if you’re going to be THAT way about it, I suppose I’ll just have to assume control of the ship again, and take us out of here, before I lose track of how much fuel we have…. There’s probably enough, but, we don’t want to have to bail out on the way back because we ran out, now, do we? No, I didn’t think that would go over too well….

Ah, the hell with it…. Screw the Mr. Nice Guy routine…. Fuck it, ffolkes…. hang on, we’re goin’ for a dive!…..

Shall we Pearl?…..

“It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world.  It is great good health to want to understand one’s dreams.  It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical.  It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality.  There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant.” — Clive Barker
_____________________________

“…when all government… in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1821

Before we begin, please read the article attached to the link below; it contains information that will be necessary to a full appreciation/understanding of the discussion to follow…..

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/FDIC-sues-16-big-banks-that-set-key-rate-5318301.php

After reading this article all the way through, I came perilously close to puking, only resisting the urge, strong as it was, because I wasn’t in a place where it would have been convenient….. However, I WAS able to determine, immediately upon completion of the article, that I would definitely be ranting on this one, for sure and for certain…. This CRIES out to discussed, and, who am I to destroy the wishes of such a plaintive, compelling cry for social justice?

Did you catch the key points in the report on these asshole bankers and their naked avarice? To me, one of the key points in the article, which shows just how ridiculous the whole thing becomes when examined in ANY light, is the sentence imposed on the banks for admitting their guilt…. Essentially, the decision says this: a) the banks were guilty of defrauding their customers (again)…. they admitted it without a qualm; b) they only have to pay back PART of what they stole by doing so, and c) they don’t have to go to jail, they get to stay in business, and keep ALL of the profits they made by this theft.

You know, it makes me wonder…. I’d wager serious money (if I could cover the bet…. I’m not a bank, and I bet with honor….)….. very serious money, that the banks, when they planned out their campaign of theft in this instance, included in their plans a certain amount of money to be set aside to pay the legal fees involved in defending themselves, once they were found out, and sued for the fraud….

I BET they knew before they started that, eventually, the SEC and their counterparts (i.e., government thieves….) in the BRC would catch them in their thievery, and take them to court, so they set aside a percentage of the profits to be made to cover that, and proceeded with the plan to steal from their customers, (i.e. US, you and me, and all the other little investors whose money they steal on a regular basis….), knowing ahead of time that they’d never do any time in jail, and could count on a certain amount of profit on the deal…

I don’t think anyone would take that bet, unless they’re stupider than they look….. Ffolkes, how much more proof is necessary? How many times do we have to let these assholes fuck everyone else in the world, and let them get away with it, before we do something about stopping it?

Personally, I’ve about had it up to here (makes motion at neck…) with their sheer gall, to carry out a scheme like this, in full view of the public, knowing they’ll be able to not only get away with it without ever spending any time in jail for their crimes, but will make a decent profit by doing so…. a profit they, of course, feel is their RIGHT to make, just because they want it…..

It’s not the money…. though, of course, it would help a lot of people if it wasn’t stolen…. No, it’s the sheer effrontery, the gall, the entitlement that gives these assholes the idea they can do this with impunity that bothers me the most…. It’s the kind of thing calculated to piss me off thoroughly enough to take action in a very real sense, even if that action isn’t necessarily the one that will help the most….

No, I’m tempted, almost beyond control, to go buy a gun, and a LOT of bullets that go with the gun, so I could start picking off the greedy bankers, inept and/or dishonest politicians, corrupt judges, aggressive, entitled, police bullies officers, pedophiliac, smarmy, manipulative priests & preachers, and all the other assholes who dump their loads of BS all over everyone else in the pursuit of their own agendas, never caring at all how many others they harm in the process…

Yep, ffolkes, the time is drawing nigh when my patience will be at an end, and I’ll actually DO something that will, if nothing else, make me feel as if I’d helped in a small way to put a stop to the bullshit going on all around us…. It may not change society, but I’ll damn sure feel a lot better, you betcha….

Bah, humbug! Writing about this has gotten me as worked up as reading the article did originally; I’m sitting here vibrating with anger at the corporate assholes who are constantly degrading life for the rest of us, and wishing there were some way to speed up the time until I can afford to buy a decent weapon (by “decent” I mean, of course, that it will do all I want it to do….)…. I have a feeling it won’t be terribly long now until that day actually arrives…. and I can’t wait, to tell the truth….

I’m too worked up to rant further about this, though I can feel a lot more inside me that needs to be released…. So, I’ll finish off with a little five-star pearl, using as a parameter the same subject upon which we’ve been gnawing…. Hey, it’s a quick, legitimate way to bring this to a dignified, if choppy, ending….. Enjoy….

— How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb? Four, one to change it and the other three to deny it. — Smart Bee

“Dealing with the government is like kicking a 300-pound sponge.” — Finagle’s Law of Government Contracting

“We are hypnotized into believing that two TV sets will make us twice as happy as one TV set.” — Laura Huxley (wife of Aldous)

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.” — John E.E. Dalberg, Lord Acton (1834-1902), — “The History of Freedom in Antiquity”

“I don’t want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.” — Spanish Proverb
_____________________________

Yesterday’s poem reminded me why I love Emily Dickinson’s work….. and….. since I’m already in a mood from writing the above, I’m going back to the same well for more sustenance….

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~


Well, I feel better….. and that’s enough. I hope you enjoyed it as well (except for Shawna…. she doesn’t have to, if she doesn’t want to….That is, if she’s still out there, reading this….) (If she is, it would be nice to know…. hint, hint…)
_____________________________

You know as well as I do what is coming now, so don’t tell me you weren’t expecting it….. Since we’re assuming prior knowledge here, I’m going to also assume y’all know how this works, so I’ll merely say this…. When picking these pearls, I had only one thought in mind, to use as a guide about what should, or shouldn’t, be included…. It’s really too bad the thought I had was so strange, so very odd, almost to the point of perversion, I had to throw it out, and find another one…. Unfortunately, on such short notice, I have no frigging clue as to what that one might be, so we’ll just have to deal with whatever shows itself, ‘kay?….. ‘Kay!….

BRAHMA, n.  He who created the Hindoos, who are preserved by Vishnu and destroyed by Siva — a rather neater division of labor than is found among the deities of some other nations.  The Abracadabranese, for example, are created by Sin, maintained by Theft and destroyed by Folly. The priests of Brahma, like those of Abracadabranese, are holy and learned men who are never naughty.

O Brahma, thou rare old Divinity,
First Person of the Hindoo Trinity,
You sit there so calm and securely,
With feet folded up so demurely —
You’re the First Person Singular, surely.
Polydore Smith

— Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“I’m not sure I want popular opinion on my side — I’ve noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts.” — Bethania McKenstry

“Forget about World Peace…Visualize using your turn signal.” — Bumper Sticker

(Irresistible side comment: I’d like to see this tattooed on the forehead of every police officer in America…. gigoid….)

But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) — A Good Time going

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

“Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“YOW!!  I’m in a very clever and adorable INSANE ASYLUM!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Okay, so it’s a strange one, even for around here…. deal, ffolkes, deal…. anything that starts with Ambrose Bierce, and ends with Zippy, is guaranteed to make some kind of logical, and/or illogical, sense…. It’s mathematically impossible for it to NOT make sense, so, believe me, it’s in there…. It may take a broken pencil or two, and possibly a month’s supply of erasers, but, it’s there…. Trust me…. It’s okay, I’m not a politician, so it’s really alright to do that….
_____________________________

Whatever I had in mind when I sat down today to begin, this isn’t it. What it is, is, though, and, as we all know, Popeye is never wrong about stuff like this…. So, this means we’ll all just have to deal with that…. To reinforce that concept, and, I suppose, to enforce it as well, I’ll now go post this, entrusting the gods of email with the task of delivering these random musings to the Pearl Drops group, and, having faith the gods of html:protocol will enable their presence on the World Wide Web, even if hidden in my domain…. See you 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

dozer3

We’re inspecting hot beef sandwiches…

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Ffolkes,

Howdy… Come on in, & look closely at this paragraph…. Please note the obligatory placement, here at the front of this article, where one expects to find it, in all its introductory glory. If it were another kind of paragraph, we wouldn’t be able to abuse it like we do here at ECR…. The others are all too vocal in their complaints. This one seems to just lie there and take whatever I throw its way, never complaining. Of course, it never does much to help, either…. it just sits there, allowing me to force practically ANYTHING down its gullet, to see if we can come up with something new and fresh for ffolkes to enjoy. I suppose it would be nice if it had a bit more pizazz, but, hey, what do you want in an actual intro?…. Style? Hah! Interest? Bah!…. A bold faced LIE! That’s what we need!…. It always works for Barack….

Sorry, couldn’t help myself….. I get carried away by my enthusiasm at times, as you may have noted…. or not. Regardless, I do tend to go a bit overboard in certain literary instances; it’s habitual, you see, from my misspent youth, the major portion of which I spent as a captive journalist in an unnamed Third World country….

I was on safari with my family when I was very young, when I was taken by slave hunters, and sold to a business man in China…. He forced me to slave away my tender years in his newspaper office, chained to a desk in the Features section, writing fluff pieces for the insert magazines in the weekend edition…. It was a torturous way to grow up, and I don’t miss it, except, occasionally, I’ll feel a pang of nostalgia for the fond memories I have of removing my master’s head from his shoulders with a nice, sharp katana….

Now that we’ve had our little sojourn into the land of fantasy, and a short break or two, (I’m a bit stiff this morning…. and not in a good way….), I think I’ve figured out how to extricate myself from this intro section with a bit less pain than usually is the case…. we’ll use some WD-40!…. It’s amazing how many things can be unstuck by a little bit of this technological magic…. Just a bit of it, right on the keyboard, and there’s no typing on it for hours, until it has all ‘penetrated’ to its required depth….. I know, it SOUNDS perverted, but it really isn’t any big deal, and for all its a tool, AND a household tip, it’s actually pretty clean in its habits…. Doesn’t whine much, either…

Of course, now that we’ve adopted this somewhat odd method of introductory shenanigans, there is a distinct possibility of becoming hidebound, or, alternately, completely deranged….. Both have been seen in clinical trials of this product, so, we’ll have to wait and see on those…. In the meantime, I’m looking back over what’s been done so far, and it’s not bad…. I don’t see any blood anywhere, and nobody has asked for any bandages; this makes for a nice, quiet morning, don’t you think? I do, sort of…. think, that is…

Shall we Pearl?…..

“It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man’s deeper nature is soon found out.” — Oscar Wilde
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This pearl will be what I call an odd duck…. well, I guess one could say it already is, and I’m just pot/kettling, or, prognosticating without a license…. Any who, in the normal course of events in our mornings around here, a rant would be the order of the day for this point in time…. A rant, however, requires from me a certain state of mind, fueled by outrage, supported by angst-filled emotional turmoil left over from my days as a certified, full-on crazy dude, before I tore up my certificate, and went natural….

As is patently obvious by this time, that state of mind is in a different state, probably Minnesota by this time. (I don’t KNOW why it would, or should be Minnesota…. that’s just what was in the note…), so a rant won’t be forthcoming, despite having beau coups material to choose from out in the BBR…..

What I DO have for you is a very, very good article by one of my favorite columnists, on one of the subjects about which I tend to rant, to wit: recent events in the central arena of the political circus, wherein we have DiFi (Her Gargantuan Majesty, Senator Dianne Feinstein….), and her current feud with the CIA, over the continuing cover-up of their involvement in torture during the Shrub’s reign, a cover-up they have been (clumsily) trying to extend to include her precious Senate Committee on Intelligence, by refusing to show documents, or hacking into Congressional computers to try to steal back documents they didn’t want seen…. She is now pissed off at them, big time, and the following article discusses that issue with great clarity and insight….

After you read the article, like a good little Gentle Reader,  I have included a nice little seven-star pearl for your reading pleasure, and, hopefully, your eventual enlightenment…..

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/DiFi-bites-the-hand-that-fed-her-5315594.php

(The parameter for this pearl is: “Politics, schmolitics…. Back off! We’re talkin’ business here!”…. Joe Lobbyist…)

CUI BONO?  [Latin]  What good would that do _me_? — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary

(You will find this engraved over the doorway to every law school in America….though, in many cases, the translation reads, “What’s in it for ME?”)

“Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, iv, 17

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.” — Gaiman and Pratchett, Good Omens

“There’s no problem so awful that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.” — Calvin and Hobbes

“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” — Joseph Joubert

“All the world’s a Schrödinger Box, and we are merely kitties.” — Smart Bee

“We read of a certain Roman emperor who built a magnificent palace. In digging the foundation, the workmen discovered a golden sarcophagus ornamented with three circlets, on which were inscribed, “I have expended; I have given; I have kept; I have possessed; I do possess; I have lost; I am punished. What I formerly expended, I have; what I gave away, I have.” — Gesta Romanorum — Tale xvi

No, I don’t know, so, please, stop asking me why it turned like that…. It just did, and wouldn’t let me turn it back…. Oh well, there must be a lesson in there we need to learn…. I’ve found that to often be the case when I don’t get a pearl’s subconscious point at first look… It can take a few readings, and some percolation of ideas before it becomes clear just what my inner sage was trying to get us to see…. I think, though, given the pearls I see here, you can trust that this lesson is one worth meeting the challenge to figure it out….
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There are days when finding the right poem becomes problematic…. Usually, it’s because I can’t make up my mind, not for any esoteric, intelligent reason, so there’s no need for sympathy…. I’m just telling it like it is…. Any who, in many of those cases, as in today’s instance, I turn to the person whom I most admire as a poet…. If you asked me “why”, my only response would be “because”…. because of poems like this….

Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly

To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With “This was last her fingers did,”
Industrious until

The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then ‘t was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.

A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,–
At rest his fingers are.

Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

_____________________________

I don’t know if it is obvious to y’all, but I’m suffering today from  severe burn-out; my creative juices are dried up, to the point of choking me on dust when I try to compose anything more complex than whining, as is patently the case today. Rather than subject y’all to any more of my less-than-dignified complaining, we’ll go for another old-school pearl, with the only parameter being that the each included pearl should say something “nice”…. Let’s see how realistic THAT is….

“For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.” — David H. Lawrence

(It took me four readings of this before I finally figured out what other name David H. Lawrence is known by…. think, “D.H…”) (Yeah, me too…. Doh!)

“There is no difference between a wise man and a fool when they fall in love.” — Murphy’s laws on sex

“It sometimes happens, even in the best of families, that a baby is born. This is not necessarily cause for alarm. The important thing is to keep your wits about you and borrow some money.” — Elinor Goulding Smith

“Sir?  She’s giving “Reality” as a *previous* address!” — Smart Bee

“Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.” — George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), Maxims for — Revolutionists: The Golden Rule

“I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?” — The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Consider the daffodil.  And while you’re doing that, I’ll be over here, looking through your stuff.” — Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey

I don’t care what anyone says…. I like it. Since it, surprisingly, measures 8 on a scale of 10 for whimsy, it may be one of the better pearls we’ve found in some time…. I hope reading it is as much fun for you, as putting it together was for me….
_____________________________

Having thus completed the required number of sections, without calculating the cost, or the consequences, I shall now proceed to perform the last act of defiance…. meaning I’ll go post it, regardless of how insane that may seem to anyone else…. I stopped worrying about that a long time ago, thank goodness…. Fair warning: see you tomorrow….

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

dozer3

Dreaming in Calliope’s house….

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3

Ffolkes,


In the near distance, sharp echoes of gunfire erupted, shattering the peaceful quiet covering the wide, debris-littered street, reluctantly revealed in the dim light of the struggling morning sun. In the bitter cold, icy clouds of vapor bled slowly from the mouth of the man standing in a doorway, as he gazed with intense concentration to his left, down the street toward the sound of guns in the distance. Nothing else moved, nothing made a sound….

Then that damn cat jumped on the back of the chair, again, breaking my concentration into tiny little pieces, and I gave up…. Sorry, ffolkes…. I HAD wanted to write a brilliant fictional opening this morning, but, my “muse” (as my blogger-friend Lou suggests) doesn’t particularly care for what I came up with, apparently, because she keeps doing stuff to distract me from trying to write it. Who knew that a 5 lb. black cat could be a literary critic? Actually, it’s a bit lowering, thinking about how I COULD have been a rock star….

Not really, it just sounded good, and gave a good finish to a weak paragraph…. SIGH…. How frightfully depressing! I’m reduced to critiquing my work paragraph by paragraph, just so I can monitor the quality of what I’m creating….. How sad can one get? I suppose I could ring up one of those support groups for struggling authors, but, that would mean I’d have to actually SPEAK to another person…. Today, that’s probably not a good idea….

Last time I felt like this, I experienced a deep fugue state, which apparently lasted three days, or so, by all evidence…. When I woke up, seven local politicians had gone missing, and were never seen again…. That’s not to imply that I had anything to do with it, but, such events have happened before, in other towns, at other times, and, well….. Hell, I don’t actually KNOW for sure that I did it…. I DID send some nice flowers to the families…. But, I think I’ll just stay in today, and not go looking for trouble…. it always manages to find me anyway….

I wonder, do other bloggers have this sort of difficulty? Or is it just me? Homicidal urges notwithstanding, I don’t believe I’ve been overly troublesome for society to have to deal with; I’ve managed to stay out of jail thus far in my life (I’m not counting that one time in Guatemala…. we broke out the same day they put us in there, and we didn’t actually KILL anyone, so, I don’t think it counts….) I suppose I should just use all my experiences as material, and write the story I’ve lived…. and then I realize, A) nobody would believe it, and B) not even I could be so egotistical as to think my own life would be of interest to enough ffolkes to warrant such indulgence….

Oh well, at least I have this time each day to pull this crap out of my head, where it (obviously) would fester, and put it onto the screen, where the only possible trouble comes only if others take it seriously…. which I know MY Gentle Readers would NEVER do…. They’d know better….. On that note….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.” — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
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“Rdio drops Echo Nest after Spotify move” — SFGATE news headline, financial section

What does that MEAN? Unless one knows it comes to us from a financial page, this sentence would be nearly impossible to decipher…. unless, of course, it were a coded message…. In that case, I’m sure the NSA, (or any other of our fine public institutions that deals in encryption-breaking, such as the FBI, CIA, and, no doubt, a number of others), wouldn’t have any difficulty at all in drawing every last iota of meaning out it….

As it is, one need only speak the technical language of business-speak, whereupon it becomes clear we’re talking about some companies going through merger & acquisition contortions, jockeying for a bigger piece of whatever pie they’re consuming…. But, hey! It COULD have been a terrorist plot… sure it could…..

I took today’s inspiration for this short period of ranting from Reality…. I ripped it out of the headlines. just like Reality rips poems out of my soul, with no mercy, and a lot of bloodshed, metaphorically speaking…. In this particular case, the metaphorical blood will show up as I rend the flesh and limbs of whatever poor member of our Beloved Ruling Class who draws my ire, and my attention today….. Oh god… I just realized, this means I’m going to have to actually READ that article, so I’m not talking through my ass…. Hmm… or maybe…. yeah, that’s better….

Rather than take the chance of becoming incapacitated by the sheer tedium of that business report, I’ll find an appropriate pearl on the same concept, and use THAT as my springboard, saving Rdio and Spotify for my coups de gras, nearer the end, where the blood loss won’t have such a deleterious effect on anyone’s sensibilities…. Yeah, that’s the ticket…. be right back with that…. Okay, so it took a little longer than I’d surmised it might…. you never noticed, anyway, did you?…. Nope… so, to try to keep the BS at a minimum, (oops, too late…. ), here ’tis…..

“I know everything, I just can’t remember it all at the same time.” — Sara Kate Robinson

Oops…. sorry, wrong one…. Ah, here we go…. check this out….

“Since it is Reason which shapes and regulates all other things, it ought not itself to be left in disorder.” — Epictetus (c. 60 AD) — Discourses, Chap. xvii

Damn, that’s good, but it’s not the one I wanted, either…. Where’d I put that damn thing?….

“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” — Oscar Wilde

Ah, the hell with it…. I can’t find it, so, I’ll just finish off what is now an old-school pearl, with a more general theme than the intended rant…. I’ll see what I can do about the rant later…. for now, I’d best let Smart Bee get this out of its system, by letting it give me four more pearls, to make this one of the seven-star variety….

“The earth hath skin, and the skin hath diseases.  One of these…is called man.” — Nietzsche

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” — James Joyce, “Ulysses”

“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” — Albert Einstein

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don’t try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

— Tao Te Ching

So be it….. gigoid has spoken…. he didn’t say much, but, he spoke, so there….

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/10695841/In-pictures-Artist-Saint-Hoax-transforms-world-leaders-into-drag-queens.html

After I finished the above section,  and had uttered the final “so there”…. I went for a cruise on the internet, to the UK Telegraph news site, where I came across this WONDERFUL set of pictures, all of which you can see by following the link…. One of them is below this, to give you a taste of them…. they’re all brilliant, and hilarious…. Enjoy!


drag-kim-jong_2851191k    (I couldn’t figure out anywhere else to put this, so you get it here, in this weirdest of pearls, which resembles nothing I’ve ever produced before…. and don’t ask me to tell you what THAT means!…. Or, for that matter, what any of this means…. I’m done worryin’ ’bout tryin’ to figure it out…..)
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“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” — Emily Dickinson

A Man’s a Man for A’ That

Is there for honesty poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave – we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a’ that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that,
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that,
The man o’ independent mind
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.

A price can mak a belted knight,
A marquise, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that,
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
That man to man, the world o’er,
Shall brithers be for a’ that.

~~Robert Burns ~~

_____________________________

Apparently, Smart Bee has rebelled, as it did in the first section, on previous occasions…. I found this old-school pearl seemingly comprised of the same sort of unintended collection that occurred above…. It’s pretty good, all things considered, so, I’m being lazy again, and putting it in here, even though I haven’t ranted today…. I know, breaks your heart, don’t it?…. (I may be an egotist, but, I’m NOT stupid, you know…) Any who, enjoy this blast from the past, ffolkes…. it’s your last chance today to do so….

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From 12/4/2012:

So, I’m diving around, looking for oysters, and these random quotes on various aspects of religion kept popping up. Since I’m not particularly bursting with material, or angst, sufficient to either rant, or write much of interest, I thought I’d string them together for an old school pearl…. my default position in these instances. There is no real point to be made here, though it is entirely possible that there is one…. I just like these because they made me think…. Hopefully, they’ll do the same for you…. enjoy!….

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.   He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” — C. S. Lewis

“A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.” — James Feibleman, “Understanding Philosophy”, 1973

“While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession, conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge, we must ask how one differentiates “real transcendence” from neuropathies that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense of cosmic unity.  When accounts of sudden religious conversions in TLEs [temporal-lobe epileptics] are laid alongside the epiphanous revelations of the religious tradition, the parallels are striking.  The same is true of the recent spate of alleged UFO abductees. Parsimony alone argues against invoking spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice.” — Barry L. Beyerstein, “Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual Possession”,   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255

We are arguing like a man who should say “If there were an invisible cat in that chair, the chair would look empty; but the chair does look empty; therefore there is an invisible cat in it.” — C.S. Lewis

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.” — Michael de Montaigne (1533-1592) — Essays, Book ii, Chap. xii, Apology for Raimond Sebond

“…there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth.” — George Jacob Holyoake

No, it isn’t a trick…. The last one was, indeed, added on purpose, and actually brings all the rest into focus, making what I said above about this pearl having no point a lie…. or perhaps, premature ejaculation would be more appropriate….. Whatever it is, or might have been, or isn’t, it is what it is, so there…. And, believe it or not, it actually makes some sense, on a very basic level…. Any who, it was a few moments of exercising a muscle we all need to keep strong, so, all is well that ends well, yes?….. And, at the very least, you may comfort yourself with knowing it is ended….

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Or is it?….. cue Twilight Zone theme music….  dedo dedo dedo dedo…. dedo dode dahhhhhh!   Ha ha ha ha ha….. It will NEVER be over…… except in your dreams, all of which have turned to nightmares….. You may go now, if you dare….
_____________________________

I’m fairly certain the events that have transpired here this morning would fall under the heading of Results of Unintended Consequence. The only fresh portions today are at the beginning, and at the very end…. Everything in between those two points was created yesterday, or much further in the past….

Looking back over it all not only convinces me of the truth of my categorization, but also establishes a new, if all-too-achingly-familiar, pattern of insanity and self-indulgent egoism. As such, it may not be exactly the most enlightening thing you’ll read today, but, it will most certainly be the most challenging, in re: it can alter, or at least affect, your own level of insanity…. That being said, I think it’s probably best if we go now, before the authorities arrive…. See ya tomorrow, if I’m not in jail, or on the run….

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

dozer3

Dead ducks found on subway–fowl play suspected…

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7

Ffolkes,

I apologize most heartily for the title today; I couldn’t resist the pun, or the fun…. Since I don’t recall hearing it before, (This is probably a lie, but, we’ll let it lay, or lie…. Oh, hell, we’ll let it alone…), to me,  it’s a new pun, which justifies any and all attempts to share it…. or, as some states call such self-indulgent behavior, a misdemeanor hate crime….

It isn’t that I don’t understand those states’ objection to punning, but, I think a minimum sentence of five years at hard labor is a bit harsh, don’t you?….. I suppose I should feel lucky I live in a state where it is still considered a social faux pas, without entering the realm of criminality….

Now that the fantasy portion of our program (pogrom?) is completed, or, at least, neglected due to disinterest, we can go on to bigger and hopefully better things…. I’m up, in theory, at a time I’m having a hard time believing, given my habits of late…. It’s almost 5 AM, and I just finished sleeping for a solid eight hours…. so long, I had time to pass through the point where the body is rested, to the point where it is becoming MORE stiff and sore from laying down too long…. I got up to a bit of stiffness, but, thanks to my new magic cream, it won’t last long….

I found a new product at the medical cannabis store I’ve been going to; it’s a topical pain relieving cream that gets spread on the skin over any part of the body that is hurting, such as shoulder joints, lower back, hips, etc…. It is extremely effective for almost all the different pains I’ve tested it on….

It relieves pain and stiffness in the back muscles… it makes the hips stop singing…. and it works wonders on sore joints like the wrist or thumb, at those times when arthritic pain strikes…. It acts almost instantly; I have milady apply it to my entire back, and within a moment or two, it feels as normal as it ever gets, giving a feeling of release you would not believe….

As I said, it’s pretty magical stuff, especially for those of us who know the accuracy of the old adage that says,  “True freedom is release from pain.” The release I feel when my back stops hurting is phenomenal, almost to the point of giddiness, and makes me understand why the pharmaceutical companies are so worried about these products hitting the market….

This cream alone could completely destroy the market for products such as Ben-Gay and Tiger Balm, as well as threatening the entire line of pain killers like Aleve or Tylenol, that are designed for arthritis pain…. They’re all unnecessary in the extreme if one possesses this magic cream, which the Big Pharm companies don’t have in their formularies…. In other words, it would eat into their bottom line profits, thus making them nervous to know the products are out there, not under their control or influence… They’re asininnies, they can’t help being assholes….

So, now that we’ve explored further into the details of my life more than is either necessary, warranted, or even desired, we can at least go on to bigger and better things, as I’ve again managed to go completely overboard with this sharing of TMI, or TMOI (Too Much Obscure Information)…. At any rate, we’re done here, so we can go for a nice, quiet dive for pearls, to soothe the savage breast…. Oh wait, that’s music… Hmm, okay, well, just put on your earphones, plug in the jack, and you’ll have music…. even if it IS just public radio, and it’s time for their Gardening Hour….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Change is the essential process of all existence.” — Spock, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” stardate 5730.2.

(FYI, today, the stardate is, officially: [-27} 00060.0  The -27 means it is now twenty seven years prior to mankind’s first foray into interstellar space, using the Cochran ftl (faster-than-light) engine, as noted in the History of the Galaxy, Star Trek universe…..)
_____________________________

As noted, I’ve started a bit late, and want to get done in jig time today…. This means some cheating, if only by making this first section the old-school pearl for today, rather than ranting right away…. which is another cheat that will come later…. In the interval, let’s enjoy a random, harlequin pearl, followed by one of my favorite poets, and one of my favorite of his poems…. Abondanza!….

“As a man can drink water from any side of a full tank, so the skilled theologian can wrest from any scripture that which will serve his purpose.” — Bhagavad Gita

“A lot of what I say comes off as political satire. In that, I have a lot in common with Congress.” — Solomon Short

“It is better to have a little than nothing.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 484

“Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.” — Voltaire

“If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.” — James Thurber

“Everybody thinks himself so well supplied with common sense that even those most difficult to please. . . never desire more of it than they already have.” — Rene Descartes

“Ah, tell them they are men!” — Thomas Gray (1716-1771) — On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, Stanza 6

Damn!…. Sometimes, this process just amazes me, at how it can produce such depth of meaning when none is sought after during the search…. This, ffolkes, is one DEEP pearl…. I hope you enjoy it, and find the point to which I refer…. If not, no worries, as this one, due to its not being listed on the curriculum listings, will NOT be on the Quiz….
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As noted above, a classic poem from an acknowledged Master….

A Draught Of Sunshine

Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port,
Away with old Hock and madeira,
Too earthly ye are for my sport;
There’s a beverage brighter and clearer.
Instead of a pitiful rummer,
My wine overbrims a whole summer;
My bowl is the sky,
And I drink at my eye,
Till I feel in the brain
A Delphian pain –
Then follow, my Caius! then follow:
On the green of the hill
We will drink our fill
Of golden sunshine,
Till our brains intertwine
With the glory and grace of Apollo!
God of the Meridian,
And of the East and West,
To thee my soul is flown,
And my body is earthward press’d. –
It is an awful mission,
A terrible division;
And leaves a gulph austere
To be fill’d with worldly fear.
Aye, when the soul is fled
To high above our head,
Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze,
As doth a mother wild,
When her young infant child
Is in an eagle’s claws –
And is not this the cause
Of madness? – God of Song,
Thou bearest me along
Through sights I scarce can bear:
O let me, let me share
With the hot lyre and thee,
The staid Philosophy.
Temper my lonely hours,
And let me see thy bowers
More unalarm’d!

~~ John Keats ~~

_____________________________

The last three or six Pearls have all been either over 3000 words, or very close to breaking over that limit; one of them came in at a whopping 3900+….. It hasn’t been deliberate, in the sense I don’t start with a number of words in mind… I just like to keep writing until done…. But, that’s a lot, so, I’ll try to keep this a bit shorter today, to keep from driving too many ffolkes away, chased there because they’re tired out from fighting the fatigue factor that is often found when reading my blog…. Occupational hazard, I suppose.

I only say this because I COULD rant further about this subject today; I’ve got plenty of angst biding its time inside me, especially for the corporate members of the Asininnies, the ones I consider to be the absolute WORST of those who prey on mankind…. Well, okay, but, wait…. I only put them there on those days I DON’T put the men, and, sadly women, who enable, and profit from, the abuse of women in the sex trafficking trade into that primary position on my list, the list of those the world would be better off doing without….

Both of these groups, as far as I’m concerned, are only worthy of becoming the target of any right thinking person with a gun in their hands, no trial needed…. I think, in those two cases, I wouldn’t mind playing God, making up my own mind as to who is guilty…. Nope, no trouble at all, not when the crimes are as egregiously inhuman as those perpetrated by these two groups….

As you can see, it wouldn’t take much to get me going, so, I’ll leave it there, and let you enjoy this piece, from a couple years ago, addressing a subject near and dear to my heart…. or, at least, to my head….

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

From 12/4/2012:

“Free enterprise ended in the United States a good many years ago. Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and drive out the small entrepreneur. In their conglomerate forms, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the legitimacy of the state.” — Gore Vidal

In his book, “Friday”, Robert Heinlein details a society, in humanity’s possible future, one in which corporations have continued to grow beyond the boundaries of mere countries, until their interests become paramount even over that of the state, as observed by Mr. Vidal. We, of the society here on Earth in the early 21st century are witnessing that growth, as I write, and as you read…..

The small enterprise markets still exist, but only on the fringes of the economy, the major portion of which is busy manipulating the population into serving the economic trends that the corporations control, in the essential markets that cover everyone… In other words, the corporations monopolize most of the economy, allowing the fringe markets to exist to provide exotic, alternative toys and entertainments for the working classes, as a way to keep them fat, happy, and contentedly stupid.

Mr. Heinlein’s character, is a young woman with designer genes, & a genius IQ, giving her almost superhuman powers, as well as a strong portion of Heinlein’s innate sardonicism, as part of an assignment from her boss, is required to perform a research and analysis of how the major corporations in the world affected the political and economic scenes of their society, obliquely referring, of course, to the one we have now.

It’s a very interesting part of a very good book, and well worth a read, not only for its perspicacity in explaining the piracy we are seeing today, but because Heinlein was a master storyteller, who created fascinating characters in  fantastic situations, making it all seem perfectly normal and real.

“The phenomenality of organic, conscious existence should, could have made impossible the sadism, the unending hurt of our ways. The impotent fury, the guilt that master and surpass my identity carry with them the working hypothesis, the ‘working metaphor’, if you will, of ‘original sin’. To this expression, I am unable to attach any reasoned, let alone historical substance. On the pragmatic-narratological plane, stories of some initial crime and inherited culpability are universal fables  — uncannily profound and lasting. Nothing more. Yet in the presence of the beaten, raped child, of the horse or mule flogged across its eyes, I am possessed, as by a midnight clarity, by the intuition of the Fall.” — Rudolf Steiner, Errata: An examined life, Phoenix — (a division of Orion Books), London, 1998, p. 169

At first, this quote may not seem to be related to the first. However, it is this “original sin” of which he speaks that is the root cause of the problems with corporations in society. Those humans who reject commonality with the rest of humanity are the villains in this play that passes for modern culture, for they do not accept their debt to the rest of the species, and have determined that they will use whatever means they need to become ascendant over the rest of us. Greed is only the most obvious of the ills that this group has subjected our culture to, with cruelty, dishonesty, and lack of compassion as side attractions. Through the actions of their corporate entities, they work to maintain their power and control of others, all for the sake of their own aggrandizement….

These are the men who run the trade in human trafficking, abducting and abusing children and women, for sex and slavery. These are the men who run the brothels, and the underground casinos, and the money-lending, and the protection rackets, and the drug dealing rings. What many folks don’t realize is that they are also the men who run for political office, or become preachers/priests, and the bankers, and the CEO’s,  and other corporate officers, who make their decisions based on self-interest, never on altruism. They seem, and act like, they are the leaders of society, when, in fact, they, in my mind, the scum of our race, and are the very reason our society is headed for extinction….

Unfortunately, these men (and they are almost ALL men….) will not give up their power and control without a fight. They will not respond to reason, giving up all their wealth and perceived power, to benefit the rest of mankind. They will not suddenly see the light, and give it all back. They will have to be rooted out like weeds, tough, hardy weeds; ultimately, they MUST be destroyed, if we are to have any chance of survival….

It is unfortunate, but no other method will work, and it brings with it the danger of falling into the same kind of behavior by which they have always achieved their own ends. But, I can see no other way to solve the issue, since they will not cooperate with the rest of us for the benefit of all….

1. If you keep doing what you are doing, you will keep getting what you are getting.

2. What you settle for is what you end up with.

3. If you think that worrying about a problem is the same thing as solving it, then you must live in some other universe where different laws pertain.

–Smart Bee
_____________________________

I made it…. When I started, I had some doubts, but, all went well, and it’s done…. I think…. They don’t call me “the dubious” for nothing, you know…. Any who, I say it’s done, and, since I’m the final arbiter of all such questionable issues, it’s done…. Nyah, nyah, nyah…. Okay, I’m now done being three years old, and I’m outta here, before I get any sillier (That probably isn’t possible, from a reality-based viewpoint; nevertheless, it had to be said, for form’s sake….)…. See ya 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

dozer3

We’ll find some in the bargain basement….

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7

Ffolkes,

    Hello there… When I lay down last night to sleep, at 8:00 PM, or thereabouts, I had little idea I’d be up now, at 2:00 AM, asking myself why I ever thought I liked cats, or where I put the damn squirt bottle, so I could soak its evil little ass with sulfuric acid… or, with just the water in the bottle. The acid will have to wait until I catch it, preferably by the throat….

At approximately 1:45 AM, I was awakened by some hard-to-identify, weird scratching noises, coming from somewhere in the bedroom…. Investigation found the cat, underneath the laundry basket, digging at the carpet, just for fun, I guess…. I chased her out of the room, & decided to just get up, as I was now fully awake, thanks to the middle of the night search routine…..

This is fucking early, ffolkes, even for me…. I’ve been sitting here staring at this mostly empty screen  now for a good twenty-five minutes, with nothing but static running through my mind….. Great….

Now I’m stuck awake, without the boon of being able to write, or even thinking about writing, to help pass the time until the rest of the hemisphere gets going…. I’m smart enough to remember that the ffolkes on the other side of the world are already up…. as well as, obviously, too stupid to outwit a four-pound feline with a brain the size of a walnut….

I swear, though, this IS the cat from Hell you hear about so often….. She seems to have a direct line to Murphy’s office, where she gets advice on timing her acts of instigation to perfection…. I’ve never seen one better, as she seems to get us when we are least expecting it, every time….

She has her morning wake up routine down to a science, knowing she can get me up anytime at all, as long as it is AFTER my lady has gone to bed, so it will wake her up, too…. For some reason, the cat likes BOTH of us to be awake whenever she is, even if it is the middle of the night…. Neurotic little asshole…

Ah well, at least she’s stopped her old trick, of “accidentally” clawing one’s toes at night while stretching….. I declare, I really don’t miss that particular habit she used to display…. Waking up from sleep to excruciating pain in one’s toe is not what I’d call conducive to a restful night, and she used to get one or the other of us a couple times a week, before apparently giving it up….

I guess she must have gotten tired of flying out of the bedroom, as opposed to walking out under her own power…. I can be a bit irritable when awakened like that, and show a strong tendency to throw whatever comes to hand….. hard…. I know its cruel, but, hey, at that time of night, whatever comes to hand is gone before my mind registers what it might be…. living or inanimate, doesn’t matter at that point…. it’s going to fly….

Well, since there doesn’t seem to be much else to do at this time of the day, and, I’ve apparently blathered about nothing much for long enough to fulfill the local requirements for such documented insanity (too bad I can’t get a discount for how early I had to start….), I may as well get a head start on the dive for the day…. Of course, I won’t be diving right off, as today’s first section is set aside for a new-format pearl, but, I’ll get wet a bit later, for section three’s old-school pearl…. Whatever, right?….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Yow!  We’re going to a new disco!” — Zippy the Pinhead
_____________________________

So, today, we’re going to use the newest format for a pearl of virtual wisdom…. This is the one where I show you a link, to an article that, to me, demonstrates one (or more) facets of how bad, weird, strange, and/or screwed up the world has become, (or, as in one case today, how good things CAN be, if well-written), followed by a comment or two from yours truly, to highlight whatever point has been dug from the article’s subject matter for discussion…. Easy, right?….. Well, I like it, so let’s give it a whirl, okay?…..

Our first article is a discussion that shows, once again, just how low the butt heads in the cyber-security sector of our government will stoop to protect their asses from prosecution…. and just how far they’ll go to spy on whomever they can…. regardless of WHO it might be…

http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/S-F-judge-blocks-destruction-of-NSA-phone-records-5305045.php

I’m encouraged by this decision; it’s one of the first that indicates there might just be hope of putting a stop to their machinations, at least in this particular arena…. It’s getting harder for them to hide what they’re up to, thanks to our über-patriot, Eric Snowden, may he be forever blessed for his sacrifice…. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m just a little pissed off at the administration and the PTB** for their harassment of this man, and hope he is able to find some peace…. I also hope that, someday, he will be able to return home, to the hero’s welcome he deserves….

** To be clear, the “administration and the PTB”, along with their myrmidons, the NSA and other cyber-security agencies that steal data, or acquire and use the data gathered…. are the “their”, and the “they” of whom I speak above, (“their machinations” “to hide what they’re up to”), who are illegally spying, or manipulating data, or making false statements to attempt to deny or cover up their guilt….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Former-Christie-aides-to-judge-Quash-subpoenas-5305649.php

When I saw this, my first, immediate reaction to hearing these assholes say they don’t want to have to ‘fess up to what they’ve done was, “Oh, those POOR babies! They’re being SO persecuted…. and all they did was a) commit felonious activities while in a position of authority, for the purposes of political punishment, and b) act like the guiltiest bloody assholes they could when caught, attempting to cover up the incident, instead of just admitting to their foolishness…” As might be surmised, I’m not terribly sympathetic to their pain, as they are getting exactly what they deserve….

I can only hope that the shit they flung around in their mad attempts to hide their guilt gets all over that major asshole, Chris Christie’s, shoes and coattails, and is dirty enough that he will be forced to drop the insane idea that he is an appropriate candidate for a major office…. I don’t think the rest of this country is quite ready for a New Jerseyite in the White House…. That particular state has always had its own strange methods of political action, which is, quite simply, too frigging crazy for the mainstream….

Think about it…. it would be like “Goodfellas” in lock step with a Tea Party Congress…. Brrr…. the very thought makes me shudder….

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/Continents-roam-people-come-and-go-5304865.php

As usual, Jon Carroll applies his particularly acute vision and his very personal, companionable writing style to say a lot of the same stuff I’ve been ranting about over the last few months…. and says it more engagingly, and much more clearly than I…. I’m not ashamed to say he’s better at this than I am; I’m a realist, and I’ve always appreciated his intelligence, and his very balanced outlook on reality….. A good piece, well worth a read….

http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Feinstein-blasts-CIA-over-torture-probe-documents-5307500.php

I’m not sure how to take this article…. Dianne the Gargantuan has been one of the most vocal supporters of this administration’s policies on the subject of illegal surveillance, even going so far as to throw her support behind the potUS, making a number of supportive statements as part of the program (pogrom?) of persecution against Mr. Snowden….

Now, however, it seems the table has been turned, and she, along with her oh-so-powerful committee members on the  Combined House and Senate Intelligence Committee have been the targets of the outrageous spying being done, this time by the CIA, in conjunction with the NSA, the FBI, and all the other federal agencies who have a hand in the “War on Terrorism”…. They’ve been messing around with trying to hide documents that prove their complicity in torture during numerous interrogations, which occurred, naturally, under the Shrubs….

Now that this sacrosanct committee has suffered at the hands of these out-of-control dogs-off-their-leash, who aren’t afraid to steal from, and manipulate, whomever they see as an enemy, she’s all a-flutter, and very angry that this agency, an arm of our own government, has been spying on, and manipulating data at the expense of their own governing members!!   Me, I wonder why she is so surprised, even if I understand why she is so mad…. Welcome to the club, Di-Fi…..

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Jose-police-officer-charged-with-rape-5306907.php

I really don’t think I need to comment much on this…. It’s pretty clear that this is just one more example of how the police forces in this country attract the most aggressive, angry individuals, with the accompanying sense of undeserved entitlement, to work for them, refusing to consider that their recruiting tactics, and their own lack of ethical discipline, are the very reasons they continue to have these kinds of incidents take place….

It is my firm opinion that the job of police officer, military officer, fireman, or any other type of public service job that has people put into positions of authority over the public, should ONLY be filled by people who have passed certain psychological tests, to weed out those people who will, if given a chance, take advantage of their position….

I believe this should be the case now, and should have been the case for a at least 50 years, since our knowledge of psychology advanced to the point of being able to test for these attributes in people….. If we tested applicants for these kinds of public service jobs for the possibility of  aggressive patterns of behavior, it might just prevent some of the problems that NOT testing has created, to the point now where over half the police on the ground are what I would term as, if not insane, neurotic as hell, with issues of low self-esteem, aggressiveness as their first response to crisis, and a lack of ethical discipline….. As a point of evidence, I would submit this question…. When was the last time you saw a police car use a turn signal correctly?…. Think about that for a minute, and you’ll begin to understand whereof I speak….

I found myself having to stop gathering more articles, as I could have kept collecting them all day…. Then, we’d NEVER get out of this section…. As it is, I’ve taken it upon myself to end this here, with just the following as a closing thought for today….

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.” — George Carlin
_____________________________

I decided I wanted to put in a poem of my own today, one from further in the past than most of what you’ve seen lately…. I found these two, from a couple of years ago, and couldn’t make up my mind…. so, being the egotistical fool I am, you get them both…. I hope you enjoy them….

Dreaming, I wait….

In the most patient moments of rationality
kindness flows smoothly in a special milieu,
fallow thoughts speed first from equality
to give no anxious fever, anger to eschew.

Indignant mothers and step-sons in-law
shall fade simply from brilliant to grey,
intoning ritual dogma, fresh, avid, and raw,
falling, falling, in massive pastoral disarray.

Safety lives not, save brightly in ignorant bliss,
it follows us all, silent and infinitely frail,
foremost too often, soft as a virgin kiss,
alive, always eager, willing, and pale.

Intimate knowledge finds only the bold few
with courage and virtue to gift, unbidden.
No solemn royal version may pass in review,
true love for man, never to remain unhidden.

Sweet feathers of Emily’s hope uplift,
calm, drowsy episodes bursting with light,
With final glad cries we set ourselves adrift,
swimming in the oceans of natural delight.

When sorrow is banished, in ages yet to come,
roots solidly anchored, cold and remote,
Ample supplies of kindness sit silent and dumb,
and the old stranger shrugs on his faded coat.

Dreaming, then, I wait with shadows in the night
aspiring to inspire, a message from the muse’s heart
Never forgotten images, framed in color bright,
tempt me only, grieving, steeped in serenity’s arcane art….

~~ gigoid ~~

Random Visions/Coloring Between the Lines of Grief

Everywhere is dark, and shining,
    with points in dissonant pain.
Sharp, senses dull past divining,
   tears burn, a torrential rain.

Escape! Flee within to cower,
    find an unconscious cave.
Call on Morpheus’ power
    deny reality’s beckoning wave.

Light breaks, drawing the inner eye,
    leading to the slippery slope.
Risk is critical, we may only sigh,
   yet welcome, for bringing hope.

Sanity seems far out of reach
    Insanity’s a stronger friend.
Decisions made will merely teach
    our way toward Death to wend.

Lost, while still on familiar ground,
    the future yet undesigned.
Making way on paths unfound,
    to Now, as yet undefined.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

Now comes the fun part, for me…. I’ve written rant-like material, and poemed, so now it’s time for an old-school pearl, to loosen up the old mental muscles, for those among us who enjoy keeping those muscles in the same kind of condition that any world-class athlete enjoys…. To keep any muscle conditioned it takes regular, consistently challenging exercise, that pushes the muscle to its limits before slacking off, preferably for just a bit longer each time, to increase stamina… The mind, though not composed of the same kind of tissue, nevertheless responds to the same sort of challenges; they are simply of a different nature than those that work the muscles attached to our skeletons….

I only wish I could still use those other muscles, the big ones on my body, to stay in the physical shape I was in until my mid-forties, when my injuries began the progressive decline I’ve seen, in my strength, and stamina. Now, sadly, my mind is in much better shape than the rest of me, though I’m still pretty tough…. I just have no stamina, and trying to use my strength and/or skills as if I were younger, stronger, and still limber is more expensive than it is worth, in terms of the pain that comes after such use. As I’m fond of saying, I can still do anything I used to do, but now I pay a much higher price to do so…. So, mostly, I don’t do so…. Now, I’m more likely to say, “I spend my time avoiding pain…”….

I’m uncertain as to how this devolved into a short intimate discussion of my frailties, but, since it did, we’ll just have to ignore it the best we can, and go on to bigger and better things, if that is still possible…. I think if I can just shut myself up for a minute, I can jump in the water before any further incidents of sharing TMI can occur….. Like, right now… Just for the record, no known parameters were used in the collection or inclusion of any of the following pearls…. They’re all fresh from the oyster, just as Mother Nature intended them to be…

“Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.” — Albert Camus (1913-1960)

“Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Roman Apophthegms, Cato the Elder

“He is the best of men who dislikes power.” — Mohammed

And wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — The Odyssey of Homer, Book xiv, Line 520

“These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland.” — John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 – )

“The art of government consist in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens and giving it to another.” — Voltaire

“We have only two things to worry about:  That things will never get back to normal, and that they already have.” — Smart Bee

Well, in today’s case, parameters might have been a good idea…. But, since this one is done, and it’s fairly decent, all in all, I think we’ll let it fly…. I mean, they can’t all be immediately obvious, or for that matter, indelibly relevant…. All they have to do is make you think, and NOT make you feel bad about anything that doesn’t deserve it…. Which, I suppose is what Life is all about, yes?…. Hey, I’ll take whatever metaphor that presents itself, and turn it right into an assertion of consensual reality…. it’s what we do here….
_____________________________

Okay…. I’ve stretched this process until it screamed…. I’ve taken breaks… (in fact, I’m taking one now…. I’ll bet you didn’t even notice…)…. I’ve perused the news, I’ve searched SB for the best pearls I could find. I’ve pre-edited & pre-proofed, which means there will be, without doubt numerous errors in syntax and/or typos which will drive me batty when I find them after I’ve posted this… I’ve racked my brain to find something new, and funny, or compelling to write, which was obviously unsuccessful in the extreme…. I’ve subjected myself to reading a number of my own poems, along with several of Emily’s, and Keats’, before settling on subjecting y’all to a two-fer of my own…

All of that, and it is now 5:09 AM…. The wind here in Northern California is currently blowing at a good semi-typhoon speed, swinging our plant and wind-chime all over where they hang on the porch…. The cat continues to seek out whatever mischief she can find, and I am desperately wishing I could fall back asleep…. Alas, that isn’t to be, at least, not for a while yet…. I may as well post this, and get a bite to eat…. Then, having completed all the tasks involved in my day, I can begin another, while everyone else is up, too…. SIGH…. See ya 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

dozer3