Zip….

Zilch….

Nada…. which translates as “Not a damn thing”….

Nothing….

Nope, not yet….

Hmm…. huh? Oh, sorry, no, nothing yet…

Hell, at this rate, I may as well go back to bed….

That’s it, I give up….

I was waiting for inspiration to strike, but, it seems to have taken the day off, along with Calliope, or whichever muse is involved with the written word, outside of poetry…. Calliope probably has more to do with music, by the sound of her name, and it really doesn’t matter a damn bit, because none of them are here, or are willing to help today, so, fuck ’em…. We can’t wait any longer, and I’m just getting more p.o.’d by the moment…. I should have know better than to take one of them at their word; they may be iconic forces of nature, but, they ARE female….

Before you get all pissy at me for being sexist, I’m not…. Well, maybe a little….  I have one (a sex, that is…), so, it’s natural to have a bit of an attitude that sees the issue from that perspective…. With that in mind, it remains my opinion, based on my experience, that it is the nature of women, as a separate entity from men, to be less than truthful, if they have a reason to believe the truth would not serve their purposes.

I’m not saying men are any better at it than women, sadly, but, our code of honor (at least, for those of us who have one…) will cause us to at least CONSIDER telling the truth SOME of the time…. From what I can tell from a lifetime of observation, the truth, to women, is something they use at whim, to suit their purpose…. I have yet to find ONE who is completely honest, at least when it comes to what they tell men…. Sorry, but, that is the truth, ffolkes, and you can call me whatever you like, but, it remains the truth….

I don’t hold it against them, most of the time; it’s part of their nature, one dictated by Mother Nature as part of their role as the primary care giver for children….. A woman must think FIRST of survival, of herself, and of her children; this is natural law, and not subject to change at this late date in our development…. Thus, it is clearly not in their interest to consider telling the truth, if it won’t help them survive, or protect their young…. The truth, to women, is primarily a tool, one they use to meet their needs, but, not something they consider written in stone…. which is fine, from an evolutionary standpoint….

On a personal level, however, since women are really no more ethical or moral than men, and possibly less, given this characteristic, this tendency on the part of the fairer sex has caused me no end of hurt over the course of my life…. Of course, the answer to the whole issue is clear, anyway…. All one needs to do to protect themselves against the kind of problems that untruthfulness creates is to cultivate the ability to NOT expect to be told the truth…. that’s it.

If one doesn’t expect the truth, it isn’t a disappointment when one is lied to…. It’s still a bother, and a mild pain, but, at least it doesn’t take one by surprise, which is usually what causes the worst of any reaction to such prevarication…. In other words, don’t expect women to be anything other than what they are…. human, and flawed, just like men… Once one sees the whole picture from this perspective, it becomes possible to appreciate the opposite sex in full, for what they actually are, not what we fantasize them to be…..

Okay, well, that was interesting, if a bit risky to my health & well-being…. I’m not sure, exactly, how we got off into THAT particular subject, but, I think we’ll drop it there, as it is one that tends to create more controversy than it warrants…. The ongoing war between the sexes, to my mind, is fabricated by the media, and those in society who spend more time thinking about other folk’s behavior than they do monitoring their own…. along with all the gullible fools who buy into that sort of nonsense to begin with….

It’s all a bunch of BS, anyway, as I’ve found, after many years of trying to disengage from the battle, the primary key to successful relationships is honest communication, something both sides of the human species need to work on, especially when dealing with each other…. An attitude of appreciative acceptance of the true nature of the beast, on BOTH sides of the issue, is the key to successful relations with the opposite gender….

Why, look, though! It seems my blathering, even if it’s about a real, honest-to-goodness issue from reality, has once again brought us sufficiently far down the page to call this a legal introduction…. Of course, it does nothing to introduce anything, other than as a sort of separating line between the silence, and the cacophony which now ensues…. but, then, around here, we don’t expect it to do that, nor would we know what to do if it did….

Besides, it’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that if I ever do figure out how to do this section easily, it may just be the death knell of this whole process…. and we wouldn’t want that, now, would we? Would we? Hey, aren’t you going to answer that?….. Ah hell, never mind…. let’s get on with this….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a woman…” — Lennon & McCartney

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Having gone completely off the rails in the intro section (not to mention risking my male neck with a discussion of the ongoing battle between the sexes….) I think we’ll start today with an old-school pearl, just to sort of clear the pipes, or the air, or other such euphemisms for getting on with it…. Let’s see what SB has for us today….

“Life without learning is death.” — Cicero

“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” — Thomas Paine “Common Sense”

“All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.” — Edward Abbey

“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.” — J. K. Galbraith

“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.” — Edward Abbey

“If you work on your mind with your mind, how can you avoid an immense confusion?” — Seng-Ts’an

In a message announcing victory in the naval battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812, Oliver Hazard Perry informed the American land armies, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

In one of the earliest expressions of ecological concern, Walt Kelley’s cartoon characters stood in their polluted swampland home, where Pogo sadly informed his companions, “We have met the enemy, and they are us.”

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I’ve searched for some time now, and can’t make up my mind on a poem for today…. To save time, and because I can’t find anything more appropriate to today’s tenuous theme, here is a poem I wrote during the National Poetry Writing Challenge in April of 2013…. such as it is….

“Believe me!  The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!” — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

This section was originally scheduled for another episode of the Life and Times of Wise Old Pine Cone, but, the Wise One has been busy with his new student, and he wasn’t able to let me get enough pictures to make an entry…. but, we’re working on it…. For today, I DO have a couple of pictures that I got one day last week…. We were talking about advanced techniques of meditation, and the Old Cone revealed his power by demonstrating the art of disappearing…. Look closely at these photos, and you’ll see an amazing feat of martial artistry, and the power of the mind….

The two photos below were taken in the space of two seconds, which is enough to show the effect, though not the actual disappearance, which is too fast for even a digital camera…. Watch….

Here is the master, seated on his meditation stool….

Now, two seconds later, the same stool….

Amazing, isn’t it? Next, in the picture below, we see the master, almost naturally hidden by his own natural camouflage, standing by a bush….

Without moving the camera, two seconds later, this is what it saw…..

    Absolutely incredible, eh? That would be a handy little trick, if one was involved with say, a group of NSA myrmidons, who want to discuss my politics, at THEIR house…. Being able to leave whenever I wish could be a good thing…. Regardless of my paranoia, though, it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?

I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next!…..

“The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.” — Lao Tzu

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It seems I’m done…. which, given my lack of mental organization today, is not just a surprise, it’s a moral victory…. Hell, I would have laid even money today’s post would end up mostly from the archives; since it didn’t, I figure it’s got to be counted on the positive side of the scale…. But, then, I do tend to foster delusional beliefs in my own free time, so, I suppose we’d best take that, and just play it as it lies…. All of which means, of course, that I can now bring this to a close, which will greatly please my thumb, throbbing with each keystroke as it is…. It’ll be fine tomorrow, most likely, so, see ya, ffolkes…..