Ffolkes,
Since there IS no routine, this section of today’s Pearl will be a struggle, even more than usual for around here…. I say there is no routine because there isn’t one, not anywhere in my life…. Sad, but, true…. This, I think, is a direct result of one of the aspects of reality about which we can do nothing; we can’t change some things, and, as Epictetus reminded us, knowing what those things are is valuable in making decisions…. All this really means is that, once more, I’m at a loss as to what should go here to start the day….
Much of today’s effort took place yesterday…. The rant in section one is a consequence of watching one of those little news videos that are always on the strip next to the articles being shown…. After watching it, my angst level shot through the roof, which added to the time it took to deal with it, as after ranting for a while, I had to make the repairs to the roof, before night fell, bringing with it the demons who infest the darkness…. One doesn’t wish one’s roof to be an open invitation for them to enter….
Was that fanciful enough? No? Ah, I see…. no set-up for it. Okay, I’ll remember that…. Any who, where was I? Oh, yeah, nowhere…. Here I am, yet again, deep into three relatively weird, uninformative paragraphs blathering about nothing in particular, with a bit of nonsense and fantasy woven through them indiscriminately as the only thing to show for the time spent…. which is just as pathetic as it usually is, to my eye…. Maybe it looks different from out there, but, to my jaundiced eye, it all seems tacky, if strangely compelling…
Compelling, however, doesn’t get the windows washed, nor does it get the baby rescued from the bath water. And, really, none of any of this matters a whit, a snit, or a tiny little bit, not to the iconic forces of nature who determine how our days progress; if Reality wants to take a dump in your vicinity, well, it’s too late to charge a dime to let them into the room with the porcelain throne….. You may as well just toss in your towel, and take your lumps… I know what it’s like to be on Reality’s bad side…. As Tommy Toilet has been known to say about rectal itch, it’s no picnic…
Speaking of picnics, I think now would be a good time to try to escape from this section; it’s getting a bit thick in here, and there’s no telling what might happen if I don’t at least make an attempt to regain control, even if I have to wrest it from Murphy’s cold, dead hands…. In hopes of receiving some encouragement along those lines from Mother Nature, I’m going to stop now, and get on with today’s creation of another fine mess…
Shall we Pearl?….
“YOW!! What should the entire human race DO?? Consume a fifth of CHIVAS REGAL, ski NUDE down MT. EVEREST, and have a wild SEX WEEKEND!” — Zippy the Pinhead
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In children’s circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What’s never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone’s unhurt, so the blind man sees best. ~~ Dylan Thomas ~~
Yesterday, I watched a video news report online, put there by a company called the Bloomberg news network… A reporter claimed to have uncovered evidence, using services and data supplied by a free online security utility site, called Ghostery (which I fully intend to check out….), which found that the NSA, (yes, our old friends at Homeland CyberSecurity…..) have not only known about the Heartbleed code flaw recently discovered, that makes all internet users vulnerable to identity and data theft, for TWO FULL YEARS….. Not only did they know about it, they HAVE BEEN ACTIVELY EXPLOITING THE FLAW, using the conveniently provided back door into sources of data on the internet FOR THAT ENTIRE TIME….
The agency has apparently done this without ever notifying ANYONE in the public, or in the halls of government the flaw was there, much less letting anyone know how they were using it to discover unauthorized data, steal data. The site mentioned in the news blurb, Ghostery, (found here: https://www.ghostery.com/en/ ), shows the code that powers the net, and allows people to see where they’ve been, who is tracking them, how others track them, and manage the amount of data that is vulnerable…. According to what the reporter found, the NSA allegedly has known about Heartbleed for over two years, as the code shows them using the back door repeatedly to access data to which they had no right….
Why am I NOT surprised? Oh, I don’t know…. Maybe it’s all the evidence laying right out in public for people to see that makes me jaded to learn about this…. It fits right in with the other psychopathic behaviors the agency displays, such as spying on their own citizens, the leaders and citizens of other countries, and whomever else their paranoid little minds can conceive of who might, in some fantasy world of their own, present some risk to their insane world view, and their insane need to control EVERY FUCKING THING THEY PERCEIVE…..
It outrages me, on a regular basis, to be living in a society in which shadowy, cowardly, self-serving, avaricious sociopaths control the rest of the populace through the use of economic oppression, and the time-tested political skills based on using fear of the unknown, and the elusive, ambiguous threat of terrorism, which, in reality, exists only in the minds of those who do not know how to use their power of reason, to see that the most serious threat to their own liberty is their own government, and the insane assholes who use their money to control it….
When I look at the way our modern government functions, at the sheer effrontery, the unmitigated gall with which they lie to the public, and at almost all the actions of those who call themselves our leaders, I am incensed…. It enrages me to have to admit the dream of our Founding Fathers has been usurped, corrupted and perverted by the clandestine corporate snakeheads who control all the money and resources, enforced by their paid minions, aka political gigolos, with the full knowledge and support of the clergy of all religions, and the military and police myrmidons, who find in public police work a way to act out their aggressive, bullying natures with official sanction….
In short, I am BEYOND angry, because the people like myself, in this country, and in the world at large, who DON’T have any desire for power over others, live with less freedom today than the original colonists had in the England they fled, to find and make their own way in a new world, free of the oppression of those who would control their every act, and their every thought, if they could….
Those Founding Fathers placed a responsibility in our hands, which we have shirked, so long we are now at the point of being unable to organize, or to gather enough people to fight back…. There are not enough people alive today who are willing to make the sacrifices that were made on their behalf, not enough people willing to accept Thomas Jefferson’s challenge, to nurture the Tree of Liberty by the sacrifice of the blood of patriots.
People in today’s society would rather just stay indoors, nodding their heads, docilely going along with whatever the talking heads on TV tell them to do, which is to waste half of their available, active neuronic connections playing with their smart phones, which makes them FEEL as if they have some control over the world…. when, in reality, these little mini-computers are merely a complicated hammer, which is currently in use as a tool in the project the pundits have going, to dismantle the US Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of the United States….
And they’re doing it right in front of our faces, ffolkes…. If you don’t see it, then, I’m sorry, but you’re just not paying attention to the right information, and will join the rest of mankind on the path to our own extinction, without ever having had a clue that anything was at all wrong…. SIGH… It makes me sad, and it makes me mad, so I rant, and I blather, and I take my shots at the BRC whenever I can…. The rest of the time, I am just like anyone else, just trying to stay within myself long enough to find the peace, of mind, and spirit, that I know is there…. somewhere….
“Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Never give up the fight.” — Bob Marley
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Originally, I first posted this classical poem on this site on June 25, 2012, though it is much older than that…. I realize this is fairly long, but some pearls just shine more brightly than others….. In fact, this is so good, I see no reason to wish you enjoyment in reading it, because I know you will… as have, no doubt, literally millions of people, in the time since it was first penned, in the nineteenth century….
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been. The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time’s flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side. Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my friends!
The shadow of the linden-trees
Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
A shadow, thou didst pass.
Thy dress was like the lilies,
And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God’s holy messengers
Did walk with me that day.
I saw the branches of the trees
Bend down thy touch to meet,
The clover-blossoms in the grass
Rise up to kiss thy feet,
“Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares,
Of earth and folly born!”
Solemnly sang the village choir
On that sweet Sabbath morn.
Through the closed blinds the golden sun
Poured in a dusty beam,
Like the celestial ladder seen
By Jacob in his dream.
And ever and anon, the wind,
Sweet-scented with the hay,
Turned o’er the hymn-book’s fluttering leaves
That on the window lay.
Long was the good man’s sermon,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,
And still I thought of thee.
Long was the prayer he uttered,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For in my heart I prayed with him,
And still I thought of thee.
But now, alas! the place seems changed;
Thou art no longer here:
Part of the sunshine of the scene
With thee did disappear.
Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart,
Like pine-trees dark and high,
Subdue the light of noon, and breathe
A low and ceaseless sigh;
This memory brightens o’er the past,
As when the sun, concealed
Behind some cloud that near us hangs
Shines on a distant field.
~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~~
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In searching through the SB database for appropriate pearls to accompany the rant in section one, I found some rather good pearls that obviously went together, so, here they are, on a subject that like the Truth, will make itself known, if you are open to finding and accepting it….
“By learning you will teach; by teaching you will learn.” — Latin Proverb
“A lie isn’t a lie if it’s in reply to a question the questioner has no right to ask.” — Rex Stout
(Do you see the flaw in this? I hope so…. If not, you may now join the ranks of Americans who haven’t a clue as to the true meaning of the word “honor”, “truth”, or “virtue”, a very large number that has grown much faster of late, as the overall level of virtue in our society drops…. Sorry, ffolkes, but, a lie is a lie, no matter what color one tries to paint it, or what false justification one manufactures…. Believing such illogic can lead one to believe almost anything that SOUNDS as if it should be true…)
(My second thought when reading this was, I wonder if Rex feels the same when someone applies this piece of illogic, unfortunately commonplace in our culture, to HIS questions…. If I were asked such a question, it seems to me the most virtuous response would have to be something along the lines of, “I won’t answer that, because I feel you have no right to ask.”…. Direct, honest, communicative…. with the added advantage of being the absolute truth…. Telling a lie justified by this belief lowers one to the level of those who manipulate others for their own benefit….)
“It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system would see in our species — which has tended to be cruel, destructive, wasteful, and irrational — the crown and apex of cosmic evolution. Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us as a transitional species makes more sense — and gives us more hope. — Betty McCollister, “Our Transitional Species”, — Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
“Many men fancy that what they experience they also understand.” — Goethe
“There are some remedies worse than the disease.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 301
“To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.” — Epictetus
“That proves you are unusual,” returned the Scarecrow “, and I am convinced the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.” — L. Frank Baum, “The Land of Oz”
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Today’s Pearl, having come together in an unprecedented fashion, seamlessly combining the old and the new to produce a quite acceptable post, may now be considered done, and done well…. Well, I like it, and that’s all that really matters in the final analysis….. Of course, then one must acknowledge the inevitability of analysis, which, I find, is somewhat limiting…. so, I won’t. Regardless of my own philosophical anomalies, or idiosyncracies, as we like to call them, we’re done here…. “I kinna do nae more, lads!”, to paraphrase Robbie Burns at his broguish best…. See ya, ffolkes, if you don’t see me coming first….
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 
Well, hell… I have no bloody idea why the WP editor made all these formatting changes today…. I did everything I usually do, but it doesn’t seem to want to accept any of it without some kind of alteration going on… So be it…. As I said above, “I kinna do nae more!”…. We’ll see how tomorrow’s version comes out before I start complaining to the WP moguls…. If parts are too small to read, use CTRL- + to make it bigger, as I did….
Okay, not bad… I went back to edit as well as I could, and it came out a bit better… only the centered poetry kept the odd format style in this version… so, we’ll stop fussing with it, as the text is now readable…. Got stuff to do, so, see ya…
😎