The plan I’ve developed, (read: made up on the spot) involves some cheating, but, it can’t be helped, as I am, in sooth, a well-trained consumer, when I wish to allow it, and I can cheat, lie, & steal with the best of them. Not that I make a habit of allowing such nonsense, but, there are moments when expediency has its uses, as we all know. Hell, some of us wouldn’t eat if we didn’t give in to it now & again. But, I digress, & we don’t have time for that. In light of our short-fuse this morning, I’ll use my executive privilege, and make a decision, tough as it is pre-breakfast. Y’all will have to make your own decision, as to whether or not you’ll tag along today. I hope you do’ it promises to be, well, different, if naught else.

On that cryptic note, we’ll get the slow on the toad….. just like this….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” — Ambrose Redmoon

“You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and
trivial things — broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which
exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them — and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon — laughter.  Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution — these can lift at a colossal humbug — push it a little — weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.  You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one?  No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all?  No; you lack sense and the courage.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910), “The Mysterious Stranger”

From 11/6/2012:

50% of all people are below average….– Shocking Truth

This truth, which is mathematically indisputable, is quite a shock to many people. Oddly enough, human nature is such that nobody at all is constitutionally able to conceive of themselves being part of that 50% that makes up the lower half of the whole. If you ask anyone at all where they would place themselves on a scale of human intelligence, I would wager good money that not a single one would place themselves on that part of the curve. (It’s a bell curve…. Humanity, in all it’s measurable traits, exists on a bell curve….Trust me…..) Yet, the simple fact remains that SOMEBODY has to make up that part of the whole, and the chances that anyone at all is in the lower 50% are exactly even….

This is one of the hardest things for any human to accept, and the power of their denial is in direct proportion to how far below the average they fall. Myself, I would not trade being well above the average for anything…. It can be a pain, for sure, but the perks are very persuasive…. However, there is a lot to be said for the ability to absolutely refute the facts of reality… I think it’s been said before that “ignorance is bliss”, and this is the reason why that is true. Human beings have an incredibly strong sense of denial when it comes to reality, in spite of the obvious drawbacks (I guess if they were able to see the drawbacks, it would be different, but what is, is….), and probably nothing else in our make-up causes more problems for us than that single trait.

This ability to ignore what reality is saying to us can easily be shown to be responsible for the entire concept of global warming and climate change, two subjects that are now forcing their way into our awareness in the most dramatic fashion…. I really can’t recall a November in my 62 years where I was forced to turn on the air conditioning during the day, to combat the 85-90 degree temperatures that are currently par-boiling Northern California. It’s not as if fall hasn’t been nice before, but this is ridiculous. To have summer-like weather this far into fall, even here where the seasons tend to run together in similarity, seems to be to be pretty incontrovertible proof of the weather changes that are happening…. especially if one factors in all the OTHER places in the world where extreme weather is becoming normal.

No, global warming and climate change are FACTS, ffolkes. The evidence is right there for anyone to see…. but, most of the people who are responsible for much of it happening are in complete denial of those facts, so the problem just continues to worsen as time goes on. I suppose when the super-storms start hitting New York and Washington D.C. in mid-summer, flooding out the stock market and congress again, maybe they’ll start admitting to some of it….

Given the history of the power of ignorance and denial, though, I rather think it won’t happen until it’s too late to do much about it. I just hope by then, I’ve figured out how to emigrate to another planet, where, as a natural result of having weeded out the stupid, the more intelligent settlers of new worlds will perhaps learn to live without falling into the process of fouling our own nest…. SIGH…. A pipe dream, I know, but mine own….. and, I can’t see much else that will work, so in that respect, I’m asserting my own form of denial…..

Well, it’s done, again. Having rushed through the process, annoying the cat no end, as it cuts into her time, I shan’t bother to go back over it. This may, of course, lead to such nasty occurrences as typos, or non sequitors, or other literary faux pas. You are advised to ignore them, as that is what I’m going to do, In fact, I’m just going to leave now, and be done with this. See y’all tomorrow, ffolkes. No, no, I insist….