Improbably imbued with ponderous value….

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Ffolkes,

Vague flutters, as tiny wings not seen, but heard on the very edge of awareness, fall obscurely upon the dark shadows, soullessly inhabiting these empty halls. A terrible, heavy silence grips the night by the throat, quelling any thought of outcry, any hope of warning, as minute by minute, the hour of fate approaches unbidden, unwanted, unknown…. Baleful denizens of darkness cower, shivering in the cold of a terror so great, so powerfully evil, all hope died, screaming, before it was ever born…..

Then, of course, I woke up, and all was well…. or, as well as things can be, all things considered…. At least we’re not in the evil grip of some kind of Steven King-like novel, like the poor sap in the first paragraph, eh? I’d hate to go there every day, even if only in my head…. Having been blessed once more by 10 solid hours of sleep, I feel GREAT! Well, I feel pretty good, anyway; I don’t think I’ll be climbing any mountains anytime soon, but, I may be able to make it past 2 PM without a nap, if I’m lucky, so, that’s a good thing, right? Right….

In the last week, other than two trips out of the house to take care of some business out in  the BBR, we’ve been stuck in the house ever since getting back from the cruise from hell, me with bronchitis, and my lady with a cold she managed to pick up inadvertently upon arriving home…. For the past five days, we have been alternating sitting, taking meds, and sleeping, pretty much, with some minor writing on my part in the early mornings, while my brain is actually functioning at a relatively normal level…. Part of what has kept us in the house, aside from illness, is the weather here in California, which has been reminiscent of Alaska in the early winter…. seriously…

It has been well below freezing point for five nights running, with temps here last night down to 21 degrees F…. For a town right on the water of a bay, on the Pacific Ocean, at around the 37th parallel, that is COLD!…. Especially here in this part of the state, where ‘mild’ is the word we use most often to describe our weather patterns…. This year, 2013, the area has had approximately five to six inches of rain, with only twenty-one days left in the year,  whereas, the annual average is close to 24 inches…. But, there’s no such thing as global warming, so, hey, not to worry, eh?….

Okay, that’s enough… Some fictional musings, some personal patter, a bit of weather, a mini-mini-environmental rant…. It will suffice for our purposes here….  I think we’re good to go for a dive… If things turn out to make that an erroneous decision, well, hey, we’ve been wrong before, haven’t we? Yes, yes, we have….

Shall we Pearl?…..

That ‘s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.

— Robert Browning (1812-1890) — Home-Thoughts from Abroad, ii
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“Whenever, therefore, the profession of arms becomes a distinct order in the state….the end of the social compact is defeated… No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state…Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.” — Richard Henry Lee

I mentioned a few days ago that I’d found a good quote for the beginning of a rant, and I was right, wasn’t I?….. Specifically, for a politirant, concerning gun control, and the misguided attempts to alter the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, if not wholly, at least by abridging its intent. This, I believe, is a HUGE mistake, even though it was fully expected by those who first made the law, to wit: Jefferson, Franklin, Mason, Paine, Hamilton, etc…. our founding fathers, in short. All of them believed very strongly that this amendment was the very backbone of what made our freedoms possible, and were leery of ANY changes to this law….

“Liberty cannot be guaranteed by law. Nor by any thing else except the resolution of free citizens to defend their liberties.” — Edward Abbey

Those fears were expressed, verbally and in writing, many times, before and after the Constitution’s approval, and all the available evidence shows how little these men trusted the monied, or titled, elite in society… More than once, in correspondence with each other, they discussed their mistrust, of the bankers, the corporations, the aristocrats, the professional politicians, the professional soldiers, and all who support those categories of society. They knew that, as soon as the laws were passed, these special influences would begin using their money, and their influence, to try to abrogate the intent of the laws, limiting them, altering them until they no longer were capable of protecting our rights….

“Freedom isn’t cheap and it never goes on sale.” — Smart Bee

That assault on the Bill of Rights, especially those of the First and Second Amendments, has been continuous since 1786, as can be seen by the Congressional logs of bills that were brought forth at one time or another throughout our history, bills attempting to limit the power of the amendments; some were successful, some were not….. and the assault is not over; it continues to this day, as the special interest groups all clamor to fill the public’s attention with unreasoning fears, by making a huge hullabaloo over EVERY shooting that occurs in this country….

Well, as long as it suits them, of course…. They don’t make a big deal out of one of their police or paramilitary types blowing away some ‘perp’, (…. kind of a demeaning term, don’t you think?…. As well as prejudicial… A ‘perpetrator’ is one who is considered guilty of an act, by connotation, if not denotation….), who is robbing a store because he needs food, or drugs…. Even the shooting of some little kid playing with a toy gun brings no particular outrage from the governors, or even the media, in response to that lack…. No, those types of shootings get little attention past the first report; the only investigations into THOSE incidents are internal, and never find any blame, or file any charges….

No, it is the incidents where some crazy asshole, most likely some private citizen with a long time internal struggle to be normal, gets hold of a gun, goes to some public area, and proceeds to blow away a bunch of other innocents…. These events, relatively isolated in comparison with other types of shootings, of any kind, are the incidents that are brought into the limelight, so that every detail of the agony of the victims is expressed, fanning the public’s outrage, making them afraid for their own safety…. This makes them much more malleable when the talking heads propose their newest limits to the guns that the people can have…. Don’t worry, they’ll get them all, it will just take them more time…

As I’ve stated before, I’m a warrior, raised by a man of honor, and have studied the Art of War, (both the book by Sun Tzu, and the actual Art itself….), for almost my entire life…. and though I don’t, as a rule, use guns (They’re too loud, too complicated to maintain in the field, & hard to use with stealth…. heavy, too….. Knives, and sticks, of many shapes, are quieter, simple to use, & much easier to conceal…. Ropes are pretty useful, too….), I do know how to use them….

If I should ever need one, why, then, I’ll acquire one, from someone who has more than they need, to use as I so require. Then I’ll put it away again, or give it back to the owner, if that individual happened to loan it to me…. If the gun I end up using was pointed at me, well, they won’t be needing it back, anyway….. So far in life, I’ve been smart enough to avoid the necessity of dealing with that, and have had no need for one, so, I’m content with that, for the time being….

But, no matter what the talking heads may do, or say, or how they may change the laws, our founding fathers already GAVE me the rights I have, and I won’t be giving them up, no matter how many legal sounding words they may send through their lips…. It will all be just noise, as far as I am concerned…. There is no rationalization that is, to my mind, conceivable, that could persuade me to give up those rights, because I’ve already heard them all…. After all, in addition to my book/day from 1961 onward, I HAVE been watching TV since the early 1950’s, (I remember the Republican convention in 1954 that nominated Eisenhower, watching it on a small B&W console TV…. “I LIKE IKE!”….), so, I’ve seen or heard just about every political lie there is to perceive…. They just recycle the same old BS every time, anyway….

I’m tired of ranting about this, because, to me, it’s already a settled issue in my mind…. so, let’s see if I can find some pearls to lighten up the tone, and still deliver a few shots to the midsection of the pundits and preachers out there, who deserve as many shots as we can give them….

“War is a matter of vital importance to the State; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.” — Sun Tzu

(Which is why I sincerely urge each and every one of you to PAY ATTENTION!….)

“The devil can quote Shakespeare for his own purpose.” — George Bernard Shaw

(And, too often, does so, right on TV, wearing a dark blue suit with a power red tie and a flag pin….)

“The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone expects to live at the expense of everyone else.” — Frederic Bastiat

“To use power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.” — Bene Gesserit

“A promise must never be broken.” — Alexander Hamilton

(Wait! How did THAT get in here?…. Oh, okay, it’s alright, he’s not a pundit, just a founding father…. If a bit of a prude in some ways…. Smart, but a bit anal, y’know?….)

“The Bill of Rights goes too far–it should have stopped at “Congress shall make no law” — Smart Bee

“The man who finds a truth lights a torch.” — Robert G. Ingersoll, _The Truth_

“In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.” — Sydney Smith (1769-1845) — Speech at Taunton, 1813
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I like this, not merely because it is beautiful in its execution, but for what it says, as well…. Exquisitely romantic, and powerfully emotional, it is indeed what I consider the BEST kind of poetry…. to wit: it affects the reader, engaging and enlightening at once…. Enjoy!

Sonnet 14 – If thou must love me, let it be for nought

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
‘I love her for her smile — her look — her way
Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,— and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

~~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~~

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“One of the most difficult of the philosopher’s tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

But, other times, the fools make it easy to show just where the pinch is biting…. such as when this fool opens his mouth…. You MUST read this, please… I know it is a hard one to believe, but, it was reported with a straight face by the news outlet, just as if it were real news, so we owe it the respect of doing the same, no matter how egregiously insane it may be…..

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2013/12/07/santorum-mandelas-fight-for-freedom-like-the-fight-against-obamacare/

Can you believe the sheer, blind selfishness of this man? No matter what his issues, he was asked to comment on the life of someone who died, and regardless of his own position, he could not put aside his own personal foibles long enough to make a statement of compassion for the family, or the loss to the world…. No, he attempted to equate the works of one of the last century’s most well-loved, and universally respected figures, trying to turn the moment to his own political advantage, with possibly the weakest, most illogical, most ill-informed argument I have heard outside a second-grade classroom, when the teacher asked the little boy why he ate his neighbor’s cookie….

“People become educated, as against trained, insofar as they achieve a grasp of certain critical principles, and the passion to choose, organize and shape their own ideas by means of them. Education is not a mere piling up of more and more bits and pieces of information. It is a process of deciding for ourselves what we believe. It implies a self-motivated action upon our own mental nature and a process in which we learn to open our mind, to correct and refine it, to enable it rationally to learn; thus to empower it to analyze and digest its own knowledge, to gain command over its own faculties, to achieve flexibility, fair-mindedness, and critical exactness. More and more students should have assignments that challenge their minds to think for themselves.

This requires, of course, that they are encouraged to question what is presented to them for belief, not only in the various subject areas, but on TV programs and movies, in news broadcasts, in the talk of their peers and others, in political speeches and personal discussions, in everyday decisions and ways of living. And they should do this not to discover that everything is relative and arbitrary or a matter of opinion, but that all beliefs and points of view are subject to rational analysis and assessment. Ideally the process will come to pervade the school climate and be reflected in the deepest structures of school life. By this means, schools can perhaps become, as they should be, leading institutions in society, paradigms of rationality, helping an irrational society to become what itself has said is its own highest goal: a free society of free and autonomous persons.” — Richard Paul

Rick Santorum is a perfect example of the kind of first type of education described in this quote, with a lot of well-memorized factoids running around in his head, which he is able to regurgitate in various formats on demand, all without ever having to apply a single moment’s actual thought, or use them to reason with for any purpose…. When one reasons, one might come up with a conclusion, which is a risk for a pundit….. He is a well-programmed autobot for the Republican right, which, for me, is a continual delight, as he also has an almost Romney-esque ability to keep his foot planted firmly between his teeth for long periods of time, and still talk around it…. This was a perfect example of that skill, along with a display of callous ignorance and lack of compassion that is merely astounding, rather than particularly surprising.

In a way, though, he is also a frightening phenomenon, for there are actually people in this country who take what he says as gospel, who dote on his unpopular opinions, mostly because they tend to fall into misogynistic, racist, bigoted, fundamentalist Christian guidelines,…. a group of characteristics, you will note, that purportedly have NOTHING to do with government, other than as things to fight against inclusion in that process…. Yet, there he is, the darling of the fascistic fundies, just like that hive of bees in my head that, in spite of telling them of all the flowers that are in other locations, remains ensconced in the eaves under the roof of my mind…. and, well, there they are, so what do I do with them?….

“Annoy a Fundamentalist: Tell him the truth!” — Smart Bee

Hmm, that’s good advice…. To get back to Rick’s case, at least there are times like this one, when he provides me with at least a few moments of hilarity, at the breadth and depth of his stupidity, until, saddened by the same sheer ignorance in one in a position to do so much harm, I become depressed again, when I think of how many idiots are out there taking him seriously….. SIGH….. That thought is SO depressing, I’m going to quit this rant, and go find something fun to do, just so I don’t have to think about him any more….. Wish me luck, and I’ll wish it back at ya…. And remember, ffolkes, I may not be right, but I make up for it by being sure…..

“For the love of God, folks, don’t do this at home.” — David Letterman, CBS Late Show, demonstrating the Donut-o-pult, 1995
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I’m not entirely certain just how it happened, but, I think I’ve done it…. Let’s go see…. Well…. I’m still not sure, but, now, at least, I know it did happen, so…. I guess I’m outta here for today…. 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

dozer3

Skeptical images go in the bluest bin…. (Spoiler: 94% fresh material…)

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Ffolkes,

I’m often amazed at how much the world can change in one day; never has that been more clearly defined for me than in the past 24 hours, when I took the time to compare that day to the 24 hours that preceded…. The difference, in how I feel, in how I view the world, in the world itself, all are in direct contrast to each other, and serve to send my mind into the realms of thought and introspection…. which is a good thing, mostly, if a bit strange for the average bear…. I’ve never been a particularly average bear, though, so, no worries, eh?….

My condition, both physical and mental, over the last few days was complicated by a certain policy decision I’d made, which, in the light of subsequent events, became, quite obviously, the wrong policy to adopt at this particular time, if ever. Since returning the policy to its former state, all seems to be well, in many respects that were NOT doing well….

This tells me that reinstating the policy was the correct decision, so, once again, that’s a good thing, even if all this is so obscure that even I am not sure what the hell I’m talking about…. But, that’s okay, it’s not really important for any other purpose than my own inner serenity, which is always a bit wobbly, so, we’ll just keep it that way, and let things settle into their most propitious alignments without further interference from me….

Now, wasn’t THAT fun! I could possibly have made that even more obdurately obscure, but, what’s the point in that? I can barely follow it myself, so even the NSA will have trouble figuring out what I’m talking about, even with ALL my meta-data to work with…. They’re missing the key encryption factor, which is located deep within the confines of my brain, in places of which even I am not fully cognizant; I keep it there on purpose, so I can’t tell them if I ever get caught….

Okay, so I’m no James Bond…. I can pretend, can’t I?….. Besides, I’m no real threat, (yet…), to them, other than by what I may write, and that has, thus far, been fairly mild, in terms of actual, practical revolutionary content…. I have yet to actually BUY a gun, (yet…), and haven’t started meeting up with like-minded radicals from other places around the country, (yet…). Nor have I started a newsletter, or published a paper, or any of the other organizational activities one might suspect if I chose to pursue such a course…. (yet…..)

I’ve thought about all of them, and may, someday relatively soon, go about following up on one or more of those impulses; it’s about damn time for some changes in this sad old world, that’s for sure….

But, not yet…. not quite yet….. I’m not convinced at this point as to how many others out there would consider joining with me in such activity, though I suspect there are many more than the BRC would believe…. Plus, when the time actually comes for me to do something practical, do they actually think that I’m stupid enough to tell them about it first? I guess they are, so, we’ll just let them go on believing that, and get on with what we’re doing…. which, at this point should probably involve some diving for pearls…. otherwise, we many never get out of here, and I know I’m low on snack items…. so…..

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Between the vision and the act lies the shadow.” — T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
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‘Kay…. I’m submitting to the will of Fate, such as it presents itself, as we all must when it does…. Oh, we all like to come up with high sounding rationalizations why our fate is in our own hands, or, we like to pretend it is subject to adjustment, if we hold to a certain set of beliefs, that protect us from its vagaries, but, when it all comes down to the final analysis, we will ALWAYS do what we do, and the WHY has NO BEARING on what will occur…. 

What will be, will be…. This is something that most people have a hard time coming to accept, myself included….. I’ve discovered, over the years, it is often best to go with the odds, so…. in order to honor the concept of “always cut the cards”, I’d like to talk a bit about the process of getting old…..

“Yep, getting old just plain sux.” — lobotero ( http://lobotero.com/ )

This quote was left as a comment for me on a recent post, wherein I was once again discussing my health, and mentioned that feeling poorly was “getting old”…. My new friend, lobotero, agreed with the sentiment, as he, I know, lives with his own difficult health issues…. But, when he said that, I was struck by the simple fact that, although it is true, as true as the sun coming up each day, it only describes half of the universe in which we live, the living half,  and it’s only because we are suffering that the other half, the dying, is so hard to acknowledge…..

“I’d rather die happy than not die at all….” — Bob Weir

Yeah, I’m hating big parts of this getting old shit, most of which is due to the fact that none of it was in the damn manual…. Of course, there was no manual, but, you know what I mean…. When we’re growing up, do the adults tell us, “don’t worry, you’ll be in pain soon, too, dear….”?… No, of course not… It’s all, “Oh, go play, dear, have fun. Use your mind, and your body, just be safe!”, or some such happy shit, never giving a clue, until later in life, that we all should have begun practicing some years ago at those things that will help us later in life…. SIGH… If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a conspiracy…..

But, I know better than to attribute to malevolence anything that is more likely the result of asininity, or just plain stupidity….. We’re all not the brightest creatures on the platter, you know…. Why else would we still be stuck hanging around some backwater planet like this? There HAS to be somewhere more civilized to go, if only to find an adequate cup of ambrosia….. Logic says there MUST be…. As I am, sadly, no smarter than the rest of the monkeys stuck here, I suppose that means I have to try again to get along with the inhabitants, at least for long enough to get through another incarnation….

I must be feeling a little bit better, as this is the most coherent bit of cogitation I’ve managed for a week or more, as well as the most light-hearted…. I miss my sense of humor when it’s hiding behind the outrage, or the pain, or whatever it finds to stay out of the limelight…. But, one mustn’t spook the muses, now, so, shhh, we won’t talk of it any more just now…. Where was I?

Oh, yes, I was getting old, and, mostly liking it…. I guess that is the thrust of what I’m trying to say here….. I’ve had a HELL of a good time in my life, having managed to do just about all I wanted to do at one time or another, along with, of course, quite a few things I didn’t want to do so much…. But, all of them have taught me something, so, I figure I’m ahead of the game in that respect…. Plus, I just remembered why I MUST be feeling better, and why it’s so…..

When one is using one’s MIND (caps deliberate, to denote I’m really serious here….), when it is fully engaged in doing the work at which it excels, it actually has healing, and recuperative powers, in respect to the rest of the body…. This idea is a commonly held belief in many spiritual circles, and there is medical evidence to support it, as well, so I’m not just talking through my ass (though that has been known to occur…. but, not now….)… Any who, when one is thinking hard, and concentrating, the body has actually been measured, with results that indicate it does not merely STOP AGING, but, in point of fact, will repair some of the damage time wreaks, making us younger…..

For some time now, perhaps an hour or so, I’ve been thinking about what my friend said, above, and the echoes of the thoughts are still reverberating around in my head, stimulating other ideas, bouncing around. colliding with other ideas like a nuclear reaction in full swing, and, in essence, creating conditions in my body that are helping me to get better….. Until, of course, the actual illness itself steps in, to let me know it’s not quite gone… S’cuse me…. break time…. I hope to be right back….

So much for the wishes of a man in the face of fate, or Fate, or even destiny…. To continue…. in that hour that I’ve spent in thinking about how it sux to get old, I have felt better than I have for over a week, and certainly the best I’ve felt since becoming ill, several weeks ago, when I caught a cold for the first time in decades…. But, a full hour of the mind at work, and much of the damage has been, if not eliminated fully, mitigated to a significant degree; you can’t complain about a deal like that, now, can you?…..

So, yes, getting old sux, big time, a lot of the time…. Fortunately, that’s not the end of the story for us humans….. Myself, I have always enjoyed the process of learning, which just so happens to occur at a regular rate as we grow older (as long as we are paying attention….), and wouldn’t trade a single grey hair for those darker tendrils that adorned my head as a youth….. They still grow, grey as they are, a fact that, to me, indicates how things actually are, if we know how to perceive them….

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned something new with each passing hour; the things I’ve learned make my life much fuller, filled with the feelings and experiences that I enjoy, such as the anticipation and excitement of traveling, or the profound joy of meeting new people, and I don’t believe I’d care to go back to being young, because the trade-off wouldn’t be a fair bargain, for me, or for the world….

I’ll just take things the way they are, and do the best I can to learn to enjoy even the difficult times, as being another kind of lesson….. This one taught me to find my way back to the proper attitudes for my mental and physical well-being, so, I’m content, for the nonce, even though I’m older than I was when I began…..

“You’ve little to fear, brave knight…unless the dragon stops purring.” — Smart Bee
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At times, all I want is a simple poem, that speaks directly to the truth of life…. Oh, look, here’s one now!…..

A Bottle And Friend

There’s nane that’s blest of human kind,
But the cheerful and the gay, man,
Fal, la, la, &c.

Here’s a bottle and an honest friend!
What wad ye wish for mair, man?
Wha kens, before his life may end,
What his share may be o’ care, man?

Then catch the moments as they fly,
And use them as ye ought, man:
Believe me, happiness is shy,
And comes not aye when sought, man.

~~ Robert Burns ~~

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As I was searching the other day, looking for pearls for an old-school pearl I was putting together, a group of another type kept popping up in SB, obviously trying to get me to include them in a post…. I put them aside for the moment, but now will complete the group, and include them here, so they will stop whimpering at me…. Actually, this is looking like it will be a pretty good one….

“People are divided into two groups – the righteous and the unrighteous – and the righteous do the dividing.” — Lord Cohen

EVANGELIST, n.  A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“At the beginning there was the Word – at the end just the Cliche.” — Stanislaw J. Lec

“Any system of religion which has anything in it which offends the mind of a child cannot be a true system.” — Thomas Paine

“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.” — Albert Einstein

“All men are born naked.” — Carlos Eduardo Novaes

“If attacked by a lion thrust your arm down his throat. This takes some practice.” — Cyril Connolly

For those who have been reading this blog for a while, you may understand why I recognize this to be one of the finest pearls I’ve ever come up with; for those unfamiliar with how my mind works, (a group that often includes myself….), this will seem like something almost familiar, but, elusive and difficult to pin down….. For what it is worth, a key decryption tool for deciphering the meaning here would be the word, “dogma”; even more useful, the word, “poltroon”…. Of course, if you use the latter, you will need to remember to bring some Windex, or perhaps, a bit of WD-40, to the aftermath party…..
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Today is one of those special days, brimming with the possibility of epiphany, tempered by the patina of age, yet shining with the luster that comes from elegance…. Oh wait, that’s just some oatmeal on my glasses….Whoops! Oh well, I had hopes there, for a moment…. Let’s see if it lives up to any of its promises….

Well, actually, it does…. I like it, and though I’m not particularly hard to please, still, it’s pretty okay…. I know, I’m damning it with faint praise, but, it can’t be helped… If I gush, I seem too egotistical, and, it’s not THAT good…. Whatever it is, I hope y’all enjoy today’s effort, because I enjoyed writing it…. 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

dozer3

Bring me the brass candlesticks from aisle three….

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8

Ffolkes,

It’s a Sunday…. It’s also another day I can pretty much write off, in terms of getting much done, as this bronchitis is still kicking both my figurative, and my literal ass. I have no energy at all, in spite of the best night’s sleep I’ve had in over a week (got almost 7 whole hours of it, with no coughing, and no needed emergency trips…. whee!….). I’ve decided to not try to push myself into writing a lot, even though I told myself I wouldn’t give in to this being sick stuff, as I have done for much of my life… When I told myself that, I wasn’t considering how old I am, or how damn sick I am, so give me a break, eh? I’m still delirious half of the time, and not too sure when I might be back to relative normalcy….. whatever THAT may mean around here….

Instead, I’m going to include some short pearls that comprised an old Pearl, a new poem I found by Emily (new to me….), and one fresh old school pearl, the type that is easiest on my head, as well as my body, as they don’t take long; plus, bonus material…. actual thinking isn’t required…. Okay, no comments about “oh, we knew THAT!”…. I’m doing my best here, and don’t need the grief….. Any who, I hope this doesn’t drive away too many ffolkes because I’m not being fresh…

I do have stuff I COULD talk about…. Those idiots in Congress are at it again, shuffling about in their ignorance and blind maliciousness, talking about undermining some diplomatic deal the POTUS accomplished with some of the insane assholes from the Middle East, where they pride themselves on how ignorantly they can live…. It’s funny how these Republican assholes (that is, as opposed to those Democratic assholes with whom they share office space…) seem to go into the most fantastic contortions of nasty, ill-tempered, ill-conceived machinations designed (in their tiny minds) to make it hard for Obama, just because it isn’t the way THEY want it done, when, in fact, it is their own image they are tarnishing, by appearing to be small minded and childish….. And they still don’t understand why they lost the election…. I also have a wonderful little quote about gun control that I’ve been saving, and the percolating that I’ve felt going on in there on this one promises to make it a doozy, or, as we like to say around here, some damn good shit….

But, I don’t have the energy for more than what you just got, so, we’re going with the plan outlined above for the day, as it is the best hope I have of coming up with anything worth reading…. at least, that’s my take on it, and, I’m driving…. So….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Well, one must get an idea someplace.” — Stephen Hawking
_____________________________

I was reading one of the old Pearls that the new WP function recommended, and thought there was some pretty good stuff in it…. I was going to just re-blog it today; instead, I’m just going to include a few of the short pearls it contained…. I hope they tickle your fancy, or at least your plain….

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from 12/28/2011

Ffolkes,

Hoy, yo soy una tabula raza. Y cuando you escribo, es muy dificil.  Pero, tambien soy un brujo, y la realidad es mi amigo. Andalé! Vamanos!……. Pop!

Okay, whew! Thought I’d be stuck in Spanish all day; it’s all because last night I had a dream about my first real trip to Mexico, many years ago, when my partner-in-crime, Dusty, and I, rode the train from Mexicali to Mazatlan, a brutal 30 hour ride. We found out an important piece of information on that trip.

Mexican beer won’t get you drunk, no matter how fast you consume it.  It’s a decent way to stay hydrated, but that’s all. If not kept cool, it starts to taste somewhat like badger piss, though I’m only familiar with that on a hearsay level. Sure won’t give a buzz, though; it’s only about 1% alcohol. We forgot, it’s a Catholic country, and still rooted in the last century, minus one, in a cultural sense. Ah well, ’twas alright; we just spent the entire week with whiskey instead of beer. Jack is Jack, no matter where he travels….  Oh, I was wrong yesterday…. I didn’t lose my mind; it’s here somewhere. It’s just that, due to intense mind fog, all thoughts have been grounded.

Okay, I’m ready…. let’s rock….

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

“You could say I’d lost my faith in our politicians.” — Smart Bee

But it was a small loss, considering there wasn’t much there to begin with…. I’d be willing to have a bit more faith in them, if even ONE of them would stop consistently lying to me. Note I said consistently; I’m adult enough to realize that, being what they are, they have to lie. If they could just learn to not lie EVERY time they open their mouths, we could reach some kind of compromise agreement. But they don’t seem to want, or seem not to be able, to do that, so I’ll just have to go on wallowing in my disbelief. That way, I’m not disappointed so often…. My mind ain’t so open that just anything can crawl right in.

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” — Paulo Freire

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‘You can’t go home again if home is a place you’ve never been.”– Ursula K Leguin

Sad it is that too many people in our society, of all ages, know exactly what this means, from cruel experience. Society has always had its poor and homeless, and repeated explorations into the reasons for it have all been inconclusive, for they all get to the same point and lose coherent credibility. When the vagaries and complexities of human nature are brought into the equation, the sheer number of variables makes the equation unsolvable.  In other words, nobody knows for sure why society arranges itself as it does.

We just don’t know enough for certain to be able to say with any high degree of confidence, “THIS is why this is so”. Thus, any and all attempts at finding a solution to the problem have been ineffective at best. We live in a nation with more natural resources than all but a handful of countries around the world, but we still have a small but significant percentage of our population who don’t know whether they will eat today, or whether they will sleep indoors tonight. I can’t say I’m any smarter than anyone else who has looked at this issue; I don’t claim to have any magic bullets. But I can feel compassion, and I can wish….

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“If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it if you have love, compassion, and tolerance. The clear truth of a person’s love of God is if that person genuinely shows love to fellow human beings.” — Dalai Lama

Here we have some plain common sense, in the guise of eternal wisdom. I like to think that even the most dogmatic religious devotee, of any religion, would agree with this concept. (I know, that’s a stretch, even for one with my sunny disposition, always filled with optimism…. HACK!  Oops, sorry, almost choked….) It’s difficult to object when it matches so closely the most basic beliefs of almost every sect. Though proponents of each world-view may differ greatly on the shape and nature of what they worship, none would deny that love, compassion, and tolerance are lessons taught by all of them, in their study and contemplation of human nature, and its niche in the scheme of things. In every face with which God is seen by Man, one may see these three attributes written clearly on their visage. If we have any redeeming feature written on the slate of our souls, love for one’s fellow man would be that characteristic….

“[…] For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner […] on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. […] That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.” — Carl Sagan
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As promised, a bit of Emily’s amazing vision, sans accoutrement…. (also, without formatting, which apparently got lost along the way here….)

A Coffin is a Small Domain

A Coffin is a small Domain,
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In it diminished Plane.

A Grave is a restricted Breadth
Yet ampler than the Sun
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon

To Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend
Circumference without Relief
Or Estimate or End

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~
_____________________________

Also as promised, below you will find a fresh harlequin pearl, ripped from the very bowels…. no, wait, that’s the wrong image for someone with current issues in that direction…. Let’s try again…. Here are some fine, fresh pearls, and I hope you enjoy them…. (It seemed the best thing, to keep it simple…. nobody can say I don’t have tact, eh?…. Maybe not a lick of sense, but, tact, I got….)

“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.” — Leo Tolstoy

Curse away!
And let me tell thee, Beausant, a wise proverb
The Arabs have,–“Curses are like young chickens,
And still come home to roost.”

— Edward Bulwer Lytton (1805-1873) — The Lady of Lyons, Act v, Sc. 2

“Remember that when you hear a horse, it might be a zebra.” — African proverb

“No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.” — Plato, Laws

“Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac” — Smart Bee

“A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” — Albert Camus

“There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.” — Benchley’s Law of Distinction

This MIGHT be the oddest pearl I’ve ever created, but, it’s fairly consistent, and very deep, if you give it a chance…. If it still doesn’t gel for you, just forget it, and go on to the next task in your list…. That always works for me….. Or, just break it down into its individual components; each is perfectly usable as a stand-alone proverb, or, as we call them, oysters….
_____________________________

I have a feeling this Pearl may not be up to my usual standards, but, I just don’t care much at this point…. I’ll check, but, as far as I’m concerned, it’s done, and I can go back to bed now…. See you tomorrow, I hope….

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

dozer3

Delusional allusions to improper illusions….

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Ffolkes,

I’m thinking it might be easier to accept the aging process if it would just leave us with a bit of our dignity…. The passage of time, and the subsequent erosion of our physical well-being over that time, seems, all too frequently, to affect us in ways that demean our ability to maintain any kind of calm, confident manner, disabling any kind of chance to live our life in a way that displays some degree of aplomb; in short, it destroys our dignity. I believe I’ll leave it at that, as going any further down this line of thought could lead us into areas none of us wish to explore, especially so early in the day….

Besides, whining is SO unattractive, and what with the eruption of moles and warts, the swelling of various body parts which previously displayed a svelte, if not lissome, visual aspect, the ongoing loss of hair, and the general sagging of flesh that occurs on a daily basis, it becomes far too simple for us to just give in, and join the ranks of old farts wandering around in a ratty old robe and fuzzy slippers, a bit ripe, scratching whatever itches at the moment…. Not that there is anything WRONG with that, it just doesn’t fit my self-image, as I’ve tried to develop it over the years….

It gets hard, though, and only through the most diligent efforts, at fighting against the apathy and discouragement that naturally happens under the assault of Time, have I been able to hang on to any shred of what I consider a touch of savoir faire…. and that’s getting harder to find every day…. Some folks tell me that I should be more graceful about accepting this aging business, and perhaps I should…. but, I’m thinking that, more likely, it must be the shoes….. Well, that, plus, I’ve always, always had a very hard time doing what everyone tells me I SHOULD be doing….. just goes against the grain, y’know…

Spike Lee-isms aside, what I tend to forget when I’m in the throes of one of these episodes, where dealing with the effects of aging takes precedence over all else in one’s consciousness, is that it will pass…. By that, I don’t mean that the aging will pass, though that is what it is actually doing… No, I mean that the discomfort that is brought to us at these times will always pass…. It just takes longer these days, as everything seems to do…. But, with some patience, and the only kind of faith I allow myself, it always passes into memory, and we feel as normal as we ever do, even if somewhat less energetic than we were formerly able to feel…

All this being said, I think I’d best stop just rambling, as I’ve now spent almost five paragraphs dancing around a delicate subject, and still not nailed down what I’m trying to say…. In fact, I’m not sure at this point just what it was I WAS trying to say, and it’s certainly gone now…. Oh well, I guess EOA struck again…. That’s Early Onset Alzheimer’s, for those who don’t get the acronym, a condition to which I am frequently subjected, especially when dealing with delicate ideas requiring some tact and eloquence to discuss…. In short, I forgot what I wanted to say, so, fuck it….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Because, while I do not know who the enemy is any longer, I do know who my friends are, and that I have not done as well by them as I should.  I hope to change that.  I hope to do better.” — Londo Mollari, Babylon 5
_____________________________

One advantage of having written so much in the last few years is that I am always coming across pieces that fit in with what I’m doing on any particular day…. This is a discussion I found from earlier this year, prior to all my travels and travails, when I was still in full waiting mode, anxiously biding the time until my SS benefits were awarded…. Actually, that sounds like I won a prize, when all I did was claim what I’d been saving all those years….. which goes to show how well we can be programmed and brainwashed, to use the terms the BRC wants us to use, which shape the way we think….

Any who, that’s a different rant…. Here are some words on the Mind, Reality, and the interaction between the two…..

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

From 2/10/13:

“….it is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that I had believed to be true since my earliest youth.  And since that time, I have been convinced that I must once and for all seriously try to rid myself of all the opinions which I had formerly accepted, and begin to build anew, if I wanted to establish any firm and permanent structure for my beliefs.” — Rene Descartes, Meditations

After due consideration, he came up with, “I think, therefore I am.” That’s it…. After all his steady cogitation, all his heavy thought, he comes up with six words…. Seems like he might have gone a bit further with it, since he was already thinking, but, hey, that’s just me….  He probably got distracted solving a quadratic equation in his head, or something equally fascinating, and just wrote down the first thing that came to him…. I suspect a lot of philosophies start that way, if what is in them is any indication…. Many of the ancient philosophies seem to me to have been put together during a drunken night around a campfire, and copied down the next day while hung over….

Actually, Descartes “I think” statement is one of the more consistent and logical of the statements that speak to belief, and its origins. I cannot say it is logically unassailable, for it is not, but, it is consistent within its own paradigm. This logical flaw is one reason I modified the idea when I came to make my own set of philosophical assertions, Peruaosophy…. where I said, in Axiom #1, “I think I am…. that’s close enough.”….. Much more tautological, I would say, and not subject to the same sort of picking apart, as it has no holes in it. Well, actually, it’s so holey it doesn’t need air-conditioning, but that is what supplies that logical strength, as it is a flexible enough proposition to fit any size mind….

It is not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong,
It is not what we read but what we remember that makes us wise,
It is not what we earn but what we save that makes us rich,
It is not what beliefs we hold but what we do with those beliefs that make us what we are.

– Old Chinese misquotation.

You gotta love honesty…. I love that this is so aptly named as a misquotation; that kind of honesty just tickles my fancy, and makes for some good mental exercise…. In this case, it means trying to figure out WHICH part is misquoted, a process by which one can learn a lot, both about what is said in the quote, or misquote, and about themselves, and how their mind works. If it works, that is….

I am not sure exactly where this pearl is going…. it started out okay, but seems to be wandering a bit now, and I can’t seem to figure out how to find the way back to my original intent…. must be time for fresh coffee…. be right back….

“We begin life with a seemingly blank slate, and, though the writing that gradually appears on that slate is not our own, our judgment of the things written thereon determines what we are and what we will become. In much the same way, our work will be judged by the use to which other people put it…” — Marion Zimmer Bradley, _The Codex of Riveda_

What, then, is the mind? What is consciousness? We know they exist, for we perceive ourselves as a separate entity from the rest of what we perceive. Encountering other minds serves as corroboration of our perceptions, while at the same time offering solace for our separation from the universe, trapped alone in the confines of our minds, with only our own thoughts as company. I don’t know about anyone else, but just knowing there are others who are in the same boat is a comforting thought…. It’s a big universe, full of dark and dangerous energy, as well as beauty, and opportunities for joy, and it would be a shame to have no one with whom to share it all….

“The mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence.” — Sir Francis Bacon

I suppose I’m just wandering now, rambling around in my own mind, without a clue as to how to bring this to a close…. but, here goes….

“I think I am…. that’s close enough.”  This is MY philosophy of life, and my take on consciousness…. As I see it, I know I’m here, and I know what I can do in my own mind….. and no matter what the rest of the universe is up to, or believes, that’s enough for me. I don’t need confirmation of my existence, or permission from a  supernatural entity, or anyone else, to live my life the way I choose.

Mssr. Descartes statement is, to my mind, too stiff, too formal, and doesn’t meet the test of illogic…. We all interpret Reality in our own way, according to our own perceptions of that Reality, and our own set of decisions about how we will approach life…. our attitudes, as it were. We can make those attitudes whatever we choose, regardless of how clear are our motives to others; in my mind, all living creatures have that right…. with, of course, the caveat that whatever attitudes we choose must be able to merge with the attitudes of others, or, at least, not step on the other person’s right to the same freedom of choice….

In short….  You were issued a mind when you came into this universe….  It would be a good thing, for you, and for the universe, to learn to use it….

Just a suggestion…. The reason I urge each and every one to make this effort is my strong belief in Axiom #2 of Peruaosophy, perhaps the most accurate, and powerfully influential, of all the axioms therein…. to wit:

Axiom #2: “The Nature of the Universe is Change. Unpredictable, innovative Transformation of Reality is the Norm. If you have a problem with this, you are in for a Rough Ride.”
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Serendipity strikes in unusual fashion, which, I suppose, accounts for much of the surprise that seems to come with it each time it shows up…. In this case, it brought this little gem from a classical master, with just the right message to go with the events of the day…. Well, it does it for me, anyway… I hope you enjoy it as well…. It may be small, but it’s mighty….

Youth And Age

MUCH did I rage when young,
Being by the world oppressed,
But now with flattering tongue
It speeds the parting guest.

~~ William Butler Yeats ~~

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Originally, this morning, I had intended to put a rant in this section, using a great quote about “a well-regulated militia” to define the parameters of the discussion…. but, I just don’t feel that sober, or outraged, to give it the thought and effort it deserves as an important subject…. So, I’m saving that for another day in the near future, and will proceed to share with y’all the few pictures I was able to take during my recent journey into hell…. or, more accurately, on my journey to Ensenada, Mexico on a ship from hell…. As usual, I had a good time in the town, and at the site we visited, La Bufadora, a tidal blow hole about thirty or forty miles away, south, down the coast from town….

Though I made heavy work of it, I managed to walk quite a ways, all the way through the now extensive market that leads to the blow hole’s overlook point, and got a few good pictures…. The highlight of the day, and the trip in some ways, was the little jaguar cub I saw in one of the restaurant/shops at the market…

It was a female cub, rescued and supported by a local wildlife foundation, and was playing out on the floor of the shop when we walked through… It was cute, even when I clucked my tongue at it, and it playfully attacked my shoe, giving me a moment’s thrill of slight fear, that it would use it’s claws…. Fortunately, it was playing, and didn’t go into full wild cat mode….  I hope you enjoy the pix; they took a lot of effort to acquire….

Ensenada plus 035Ensenada plus 037Ensenada plus 038Ensenada plus 039Ensenada plus 048Ensenada plus 045_____________________________

I was not sure, when I arose, how this would go today, but, it all came out better than I’d hoped…. or seemed to as I wrote it, anyway…. Let’s see now what really happened…..

Okay, well, that’s not too bad at all… with the distinct advantage of not being overly long, as can be the tendency around here….. It always helps to have some graphic art to throw into the mix…. I guess, since I’ve done the damage I came to do, I’ll leave y’all to your own devices for the remains of the day…. 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

dozer3

Here, the exception is held as rule….

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Ffolkes,

As time passes, the traumatizing events of the recent past are slowly beginning to fade, with some reluctance…. I’m still fighting off the bronchitis I picked up on my trip, along with concomitant issues of less than delightful nature; all in all, though, I’m feeling much better than the last four days….. I guess tons of breathing treatments, prednisone, & anti-diarrheal medications, all augmented by heavy antibiotics, will do that, as long as one is not at death’s door to start with…. Not to say it isn’t still a bit of danger at my age, but, everything seems to be under control, if not fully whipped as yet…. I’ll do for this, anyway…. It’s getting so I can do these in my sleep, sort of….

My trip to Ensenada on the Ghetto Princess is going into the memory category in my head that NEVER gets any visits, other than as a reminder to avoid certain things in the future…. This was my fourth cruise this year, as I’ve completely indulged myself in spending most of the back payments that Social Security saved up for me by putting me off for so long…. Of those four trips, this one managed to fall into last place from the outset, never looking back, until it had completely fallen off the charts of any statistics kept on “bad vacations”.

The staff of the ship did their best, for the most part, but they were operating under the handicap of a ship in need of refurbishing, rigid company policies in need of review, and a managerial staff who were obviously less well trained, or experienced, than the standards usually found on Princess ships…. Structural changes in the way the ship was set up were made that made it less comfortable for passengers, by crowding more people into smaller spaces, such as in the buffet, where they removed part of the serving area to make room for more seats… This made it hard to get the food at all, as the newly designed serving area was cramped and crowded at all hours…

The ship itself was in need of repairs in many small ways, and the staff was rushed and obviously overworked. They try to turn over their passengers between these quick 3 and four day cruises so quickly that nothing ever gets all the way done, or done well…. They disembark one group from 0730 to 1000 or 1100 AM, then start loading people back on at about noon, and sail at 4:30 PM, all the while moving luggage and restocking stores for the next cruise…

The room service food, which we used a lot due to my illness, was NOT up to their usual fare, and almost always arrived luke-warm…. which is okay for the lasagna, but not so good for a cheeseburger, or the lobster bisque…. I did meet the Executive Chef in charge of the specialty and main dining rooms (not the buffet, or room service…. that was under the auspices of the Executive Sous Chef….), who was a nice man, and reported all the things I pointed out to him as another chef…. but, there was little he could do beyond that. From speaking with him, I wish I’d been well enough to eat in one of his outlets, as I’m sure it would have been better than what I experienced in the other venues….

Any who, what with other issues on board, my illness, and more problems that showed up in our travel arrangements with shuttle companies, etc., this trip was the worst we’ve ever been on, and we are now determined to remain homebodies for the next few months, to get his trip out of our system, and plan for a better trip next fall, when we’re planning to go to Europe, to the British Isles…. This is the last whine you’ll have to endure on this trip, which I had hoped to make into a better story…. Maybe after I’ve recovered a bit, I’ll be able to see more of the humorous side of what happened, but, just now, while I’m still sick and uncomfortable, it’s a bit hard to see it that way… C’est la vie, eh? I guess, after three great trips, it was my turn for a bad one….

In the meantime, it’s morning, and time to go diving…. Since I’ve been up, answering email, and writing this post, for quite a while, I’ll need to use some archived material today, but, by tomorrow, should be back to all fresh material, once I have built up a bit more energy than I’m currently able to muster….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Go placidly among the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence….” — Desiderata
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As mentioned above, I’m using something from the archives, but for a purpose…. I wanted to point out that, along with Lou, the other blogger to whom I refer in the pearl below, I was trying to let people know about the spying being done on the public by the government, long before the revelations by Eric Snowden that PROVED how much is being lifted from our private data, all by the “most transparent administration” we were promised when we elected Obama ( Yes, I voted for him, twice, as the lesser of two evils…. I’m regretting it, mostly because he has proved to be as bad a liar as the rest of them….)…. Any who, this is from late in 2012, before Mr. Snowden released his information, which makes Lou and I somewhat precognitive, don’t you think?…..

From the Pearl posted on 11/24/2012:

“Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you!” — Smart Bee

Last week, or maybe earlier, another blogger and I were both ID’d as being a bit paranoid, (self-identified, I might add, along with accusations by another blogger….) because we happen to believe at least some of the conspiracy rumors continually floating around the internet. Each of us took comfort from the above sentiment, knowing it to be 100% true, and have mutual agreement in that belief. Lou seems to be pretty tech-savvy, posting a lot of different types of media on his blog, so he must have similar knowledge as I of computers, and the functions of which current technology is capable. This knowledge, along with a deep understanding of human nature, is the root cause for our paranoia, and, it’s justification….

“No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.” — Aristotle

The little laptop computer upon which I type to create these Pearls of Virtual Wisdom is an amazing machine, and fairly representative of what is available to the public these days. It has, quite simply, more computing power in it than was present in the ENTIRE WORLD when the first laptop was on the design boards, when I got my first clunky 386.

What this simple fact(oid) implies is this: the government, and its supporters, the bankers, corporations, and churches, have available for their use, enough computing power to record EVERY piece of communication, of EVERY type, created each day in the ENTIRE WORLD.

Along with that capability, to monitor ALL communications, it has the capability of mining that huge amount of data for significant words, phrases, and patterns that will inform them of anyone, anywhere, who is speaking in a way that is potentially against their interests.

Yep…. every single piece of published communication, via phone, internet, TV, radio, or any other form of media by which humans communicate, is vulnerable to being overheard by those in the beloved ruling class…. Allow me to assure you, the reasons for which they want this information have nothing to do with YOUR rights, or YOUR interests, nor are they going to tell you, either that they are doing it, or how often, or where, or anything about it.  In many public places, with cameras and recording devices, it is possible for them to overhear even the words we speak to each other face to face.

If they wish, they can even concentrate technology on a single spot, (such as your car, your living room, or kitchen….), and listen to every word spoken there, even if they are not within miles of the place. There is, by published report, no place left on Earth where technology cannot penetrate, to listen to what is being spoken, given the opportunity, and the time to employ the needed technology.

So, my friend and I are well aware that what we write and publish here online is perfectly available to those who care about such matters, and they WILL be listening to what EVERYONE is saying, even, or, perhaps especially, us. Since I have a tendency to rant against the very people who are listening, I doubt that my name is missing from several lists of theirs. In fact, I’d be surprised if it was missing from those lists…. if it is, they’re not paying attention….

As I’ve said before ffolkes, be alert; the world needs all the lerts it can get. You are being watched, and listened to, whether you choose to believe it or not, so it would behoove you to, perhaps, take that into account. Please, don’t fall into that, “oh, you’re just being paranoid,” attitude, or the “well, if I don’t say anything wrong, they can’t get me,” fallacy….

One of the primary characteristics of those with the power-mongering gene is a certain irrationality, a characteristic that is inherent in their make-up…. They have an unfortunate tendency to act on belief and faith, not on fact, so their actions, while fairly predictable, are somewhat irrationally chosen, and don’t necessarily make any sense to those of us who use our minds for other things than reclining upon….  Remember, as Lazarus Long advises, “Always cut the cards.”….

I have read and understood the above.   X______________________

_____________________________

I’m currently without poetic impulse, though I have the feeling there is something in there, growing…. For now, though, to keep from allowing anyone else to share the blame for today’s post, I’ll include what I consider to be one of my better pieces from the past…. Well, I like it, anyway, so, here ’tis….

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 ~~

_____________________________

As always at this juncture, I find it necessary to fall into default mode, and come up with what I like to call an “old-school” pearl… So, here it is…. Enjoy!…. Oh, and, ffolkes, remember, don’t fight against wherever the pearl directs your mind…. you could hurt yourself, and my insurance is already maxed out…. Thanks…. Take care with this, and you’ll be fine….. In fact, if it works out the way I want, you’ll not only enjoy it, but your acne will clear up within a few hours….

“The first sign of a nervous breakdown is when you start thinking your work is terribly important.” — Milo Bloom

“It is a secret known to but a few, yet no small use in the conduct of life, that if you fall into a man’s conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.” — Steele

“If nothing’s fair, why can’t it ever be unfair in my favor?” — Calvin

“[Freedom is] the power to live as you will.  Who then lives as he wills?” — Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is:  what are we busy about?” — Henry David Thoreau

“I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.” — Stephen Hawking

“FOOLED you!  Absorb EGO SHATTERING impulse rays, polyester poltroon!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Okay, I will admit…. some days it works better than others…. You’ll have to make your own judgment as to how this one gets rated…. I like it, but, then, I did it, so, mine don’t count…. At least it isn’t sharp enough to cut yourself on…..
_____________________________

Well, it’s been a long morning, and it isn’t even seven o’clock yet…. Fun, though, for the most part…. I suppose it goes to prove that everything is relative, as the fun part seems to be connected to the fact that I’m NOT feeling shitty in some fashion… That, plus I’m done with this, which is always an uplifting event around here…. Now let’s see how it came out….

Well, damn, Samn, that’s not bad at all… I’ll take it, and run with it, all the way downtown…. or, back to bed, which sounds more attractive at the moment…. I had fun, and so did you, admit it…. Oh well, be that way…. 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

dozer3

Fields of nascent cogitation, fallow in the morning sun….

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Ffolkes,

Feedle farble fristible farum! Or, as we’ve been known to say downtown, with no small degree of intensity, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK! If that isn’t clear enough, I can get more graphic, in a heartbeat….. Sorry, ffolkes, but, nothing relieves built up stress quite as well as a good curse, and, after the four days just passed in my world, relieving stress is the paramount task at hand…. “How can this be?”, you may well ask, as the last time y’all heard from me I was headed off to the indulgently hedonistic country of cruise ships, there to once again soothe my troubled spirit with the balm of overt consumerism, as is my wont….

That was then, this is now….. I should have noted at the outset of the trip, the very first item of note on the trip list failed to meet expectations, indicating a certain lack of cooperation on the part of the universe in falling in with my plans for a nice little four-day getaway….. a failure soon followed by a massive outpouring of chaotic events, along with some covert cosmic interference, with Murphy starring in the leading role, that of the consummate asshole…. Suffice to say at this point, the entire trip was one disappointment and problematic issue after another, compounded at the last by my body’s own frailty, to the tune of a $2000 medical emergency on the final night of the cruise…. and a lovely time was had by all…. NOT!

For the moment, that is all I’ll say on that subject; I am saving the details, and the major part of the angst, to put into letters yet-to-be-written, one to the cruise ship company, and one to my medical insurance company, outlining the series of events that brought home to me the futility of all of Mankind’s hopes and dreams, when the universe has other plans for us…. For four days, one thing after another went badly, to be followed almost immediately by something else going wrong…. which would be immediately prior to spilling something on myself in an embarrassing place, even if it was only something as simple as my own body fluids going astray…. Most excruciatingly upsetting, to be sure!….

I’m really glad to be home, and sleeping, as much as I ever do anymore, in my own bed, with my little computer here to absorb my overwrought feelings, and help me to transform them into some kind of acceptance, thereby regaining some of my hard-won serenity of spirit…. At the least, here at home, there is some chance of success in that venture…. For four days I’ve had every attempt at successful living thrown back in my face, burning hot…..

Okay, all done whining…. I’m sure y’all are somewhat less than riveted by my travails, so I’ll get on with something more entertaining, I hope, as soon as I can wrap up this intro section…. which, I see by the drivel above, has reached a minimum legal limit…. As such, I can actually just stop here…. so, I will….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“It matters not how long you live, but how well.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 829
_____________________________

Any ranting that I do today will be related to the above subject, in order to keep the details fresh in what is left of my mind…. Plus, I haven’t kept up with what is happening out in the Big Blue Room, which tends to keep me from picking a current event to rag upon, more’s the pity….. That does mean a bonus for y’all, as I’ll naturally fall back into the default position here at ECR when this happens….

Yes, you know what it means, ffolkes, another old-school pearl, a group of small but tasty pearls, all in a certain direction, or implying a certain theme…. Sure, those themes may not be immediately apparent, even to the most discriminating of Gentle Readers, but, more often, they simply bash one over the brows, driving home the desired point with all the delicacy of a professional wrestler….

I am, as is already obvious, more than just a little verbose this morning, having not written ANYTHING for over four days…. but, I don’t think that will hurt this section, since I’m going to segue right into the remainder of this section’s contents by using the old magical phrase, “slick as Natty Bumpo’s Chevrolet sedan!”…. Or, as we like to say here on ECR… let’s dive…. Ooh, ooh, let’s go really old school, too, with poetry brackets and everything all mellow….

I knew, by the smoke that so gracefully curl’d
Above the green elms, that a cottage was near;
And I said, “If there ‘s peace to be found in the world,
A heart that was humble might hope for it here.”

— Thomas Moore (1779-1852) — Ballad Stanzas

“I readily relapse into my reflections on the uselessness of our education.  Its aim has been to make us not good and wise, but learned; and in this it has succeeded. It has not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and wisdom, but has imprinted their derivations and etymologies on our minds. We are able
to decline ‘virtue’ even if we are unable to love it; if we do not know what wisdom is in fact and by experience, we are familiar with it as a jargon learned by heart.” — Michael de Montaigne, Essays

In the vacant places, we will build with new bricks.” — T.S. Eliot

“As long as we’re going insane, we might as well go the whole way. A mere shred of sanity is of no value.” — Smart Bee

“Be not ashamed of thy virtues; honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.” — Ben Johnson

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

Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch
Beware the jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious bandersnatch

— _Jabberwocky_, by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson)
_____________________________

As with many of the classical offerings I include, this needs no adornment from my direction…. just enjoy….

A Thing of Beauty (Endymion)

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkn’d ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

~~John Keats ~~

_____________________________

Having stated above there would be no rant today, I feel obligated to keep it light… Plus, I’m still not quite feeling as well as I’d like, and need to finish this up, so I can get on with the rest of the day…. So, we again dip into the archives, for a pearl the was fresh the day it was posted, which was in May of this year…. enjoy!….

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

This last pearl for today will be fresh, or as fresh as I can make it from old, unused pearls, that have been lounging around in my stash for some years now…. It should be okay, it’s all straight out of Smart Bee, back when I could trust it to run…. The point of today’s old-school effort will be as obvious as I can make it, but, I’m not giving that a lot of credence, and neither should you…. I would suggest you take notes, as it could be to your advantage later on….

“I have the simplest tastes.  I am always satisfied with the best.” — Oscar Wilde

“One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns he must die and accepts his sentence undismayed. ” — Robert Heinlein

“Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.” — Mark Twain

40. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a stroke of luck. — Instructions for life

“Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Life of Marcus Cato

All things good to know are difficult to learn. — Greek Proverb

“Was mir nicht umbringt macht mir streng!”  {What does not kill me, makes me strong!”} — Friederich Nietzsche
_____________________________

Okay, ffolkes, I’ve done what I can do, and don’t have any more in me, so I’m going to send this out to the email group, and get it posted before heading back to bed…. Whoops, better proof….  Not bad for a first effort after a lay-off; I’m going to press my luck, and let if fly with no further ado…. 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

dozer3

A plethora of pentangular puff pastries….

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Ffolkes,

“Surely,” I thought to myself, “surely there won’t be any more fear.” Then, I woke up, only to find that, once again, the screen is blank, and so is my mind…. If I were a writer for a magazine, or a news paper, or some specific job that hires writers, perhaps I wouldn’t face such a conundrum each morning…. I’d have my assignments of what to write already waiting for me, as given to me by my editors, may they rot in hell…. (Sorry, editors, but your reputation precedes you….)  The assignments would, no doubt, be as boring as they could make them, but, they’d be subjects, and I wouldn’t have to fret and fuss over finding something to start with….

Of course, I can always go into the “whine and cheese” mode, like this morning, where I just complain about how much of a hassle it all is; it may LOOK like it’s easy to put together, but, it really isn’t, you know…. Trying to do this, while making it sound and look different than all the other times I’ve used this method, well, it isn’t as simple as it may seem…. Of course, nothing about writing on a daily basis is as simple as it seems, either, at least, not as simple as it looked before I began doing it…. The actual doing of it takes more dedication and perseverance than it seems as if it would, when looking at it from the outside….

The advantage to this type of intro section is, naturally, the very thing I complain of, to wit: no restraints on me as to what I can write…. I can do this, I can write a fictional beginning, or I can do something entirely off the wall…. and no comments about ALL of it being off that wall, if you please…. I get that enough from my own head; I don’t need y’all to reinforce that idea any more than it already gets….

If you’ve been watching the last few weeks, you’ll see that I’ve gotten rather good at saying nothing for about four or five paragraphs…. Every day, for some time, I’ve managed to fill in this section with nonsense, or blather, either of which takes up the required space, but, without all the wear and tear on my bone of creativity….. (I only have the one, you know, so it’s kind of overworked….) I’ve been sleeping more in the last week, too, which has also had a small effect on things, though I’m still not certain what that effect might be…. It just makes me sound as if I know whereof I speak, which is important for an op/ed writer….

That is what I really consider myself to be, at the bottom…. I write opinion editorials, which I and many others call rants….. Why? Well, because if I didn’t, all that stuff would sit inside my head, and rot…. The end result of that particular form of chemical reaction is NOT healthy, for me, or for whomever is nearby when it comes rushing out of my head, percolated from merely food for thought, into outright outrage, and justified anger, toward that portion of humanity that preys upon the remainder….. I can’t seem to help it, the evidence is right there in the news, for all to see, and I just can’t let it lie, sleeping dog or no…

So, I’ll keep on keepin’ on, so to speak, as long as the Beloved Ruling Class continues to screw over the rest of humanity….. Given the state of the planet, and the rate at which we continue to pump particulate matter into its atmosphere, that really won’t be all that long…. more’s the pity…. I was really looking forward to seeing the rest of the galaxy, too….

Shall we Pearl?….

“For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his mind will be the greatest enemy.” — Bhagavad Gita (c. B.C. 400)
_____________________________

Though I described above how a pearl will generally include something rantable, or at least, formerly rantable and now archived, it should be noted that I do try to keep things as fresh as possible….. But, it gets hard, especially since the damn horse died…. I keep beating on it, but it won’t get up!…. Nonetheless, the subject matter will remain the same, in general…. the folks who stick it to the rest of us don’t change their spots, so they’re always there as targets…. At the present moment in time, however, my head isn’t quite ready for such vituperation… or perhaps it would be more accurate to say my HEART isn’t in it right now, as the emotions behind the rants are what make them powerful, on those occasions when they do achieve the proper tone of accusation and outrage….

Hence the following harlequin pearl, odd-numbered star variety, gathered fresh today for your perusal and delectation, snatched from the jaws of the Smart Bee to provide y’all with this morning’s food for thought, to go along with all the usual holiday hype we suffer from this time of the year…. I hope you enjoy them, they cost me a LOT of effort today…. Well, I’m assuming they will…. they always do….

“Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.” — Elbert Hubbard

I aske not labored letters which should weare
Long papers out: nor letters which should feare
Dishonest carriage: or a seer’s art:
Nor such as from the brayne come, but the hart.

— John Donne

“It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives…  When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force.  When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.” — Dorothy Thompson, American journalist, author (1894-1961)

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.

— Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) — In Memoriam, xcvi, Stanza 3

“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.” — G. C. Lichtenberg

“Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.” — Socrates

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” Albert Einstein
_____________________________

In the past few days, I’ve been posting poems that didn’t need any help or introduction from me; the sheer genius they displayed spoke for itself…. Rather than rely entirely upon the works of other people, I’ve decided to spread a bit of the blame onto my own shoulders, so there can be no speculation of discrimination, or lack thereof…. I know exactly how my poetry stands up to the classics; no illusions of grandeur there, believe me…. But, sometimes, I do okay….. If nothing else, the rhymes are almost always consistent, so, I’m happy….

I know I’m in the now, if only…..

Oh, there it is again, fiddle faddle;
  Begone, I said, vamoose, skedaddle!
It looked at me as if I were insane:
  Scoffed, it did, filled me with pain.

Where does it come from?
Where does it live?
I’d stick out my thumb,
if I had more to give.

If only, should, would, could it be?
  It went away again, this time free.
It will be back again, this I know;
  or I’m wrong, and it won’t show.

Who cares?
Who hears?
Such goings on wobble the sphere,
I wish it wouldn’t do that here.

I’ve been wrong before…..

~~ gigoid ~~


“Not all men who drink are poets. Some of us drink because we aren’t poets.” — Smart Bee
_____________________________

“A man who can fool chiefs, and even gods, must still face the monsters he himself created.” — Old Maori saying

Introspection has always been a hobby of mine, but, since turning the ripe old age of 63, it seems to have become even more of a time-consuming process for me than has been true for most of my life…..

I can remember lying on my bed in the state of Washington, when my father was stationed there at Fort Lewis…. I would stare at the bottom of my brother’s upper bunk, and imagine all manner of things, including about myself, and my place in the universe…. Even at the tender age of 8 or 9, as the son of an Army sergeant, I had been many places, and seen more of the world than is usual for anyone other than Army brats…. our proud designation for ourselves…. The quest to maintain one’s personality in the face of all the changes going on around us gave me the impetus to perpetually be aware of more than is the norm for kids of that age; at least, it always seemed so, from what I can tell from my knowledge of others of that age….

Now that I’ve reached an age that completely got skipped in my earlier musings of what life would be like, I seem to be thinking back and forth more often, making connections with the past that explain certain elements of my own persona as they manifest today…. My hair, for example…. (I know, I know, my hair isn’t generally the subject of a rant, but, that’s not really what this is…. this is more of a…. a retrospective, yeah, that’s it…. a retrospective…. so, calm down, I’m not going to get all graphic, or gloomy, or pick at anyone in particular, other than myself…. ‘kay?…. ‘Kay!…..)

So, I was looking at my picture on my About page, and can only say that, well, there I am…. My hair is even longer now, (a bit grayer, too….). as I see no particular reason to cut it…. which is the root thought that stimulated this entire subject today…. A little while ago, I was standing outside a moment, with my hair not yet tied back into the usual ponytail, and the wind was blowing it around a bit….. I started to get annoyed, then realized I could only blame myself for it getting in my face, because the solution to that problem is right over there in the drawer, where the scissors live…. I thought to myself, how many times has someone asked me, “why don’t you cut your hair?”, and realized I couldn’t count that high…

My own reaction to that particular query is to think, (again…), to myself, “Well, actually, the question that occurs to me to ask is, why don’t I NOT  cut my hair?”…. It seems to me, when I stop to consider the matter logically, and reasonably, that if the hair grows, as it has always done, it must have some sort of evolutionary purpose for doing so, right? It seems logical to me…. Therefore, it seems logical to ask, as well, “who am I to fuss with evolution?” This line of reasoning, naturally, tends to piss of most of the folks who make the original statement to me…. but, I figure that sort of anger is a personal problem, don’t you? I can’t go around taking the heat for what other people don’t like about me, when their anger is based on THEIR beliefs, not mine….

In a way, I suppose it’s the old hippie in me…. Aha, you say, now we’re getting to the meat of the matter! And, typically, I am supposed to say, at this point, “Just what do you mean by that? I don’t know what you’re talking about….”   Then, I smile, and get on with what I was doing, which is explaining why being a hippie is not what most people would think…. I mean, there were a lot of popular misconceptions floating around all during the 60’s (Believe me, it was a very confusing time…. I know, I was there….), when there were a lot of people who thought that there was something wrong, or even evil, about being described as one of those misunderstood knights of the sub-culture….

Yes, I said knights…. Jedi knights, before they were the iconic, eternal, peaceful warrior as made popular in later years…. Hippies were the knights of the 60’s and 70’s, diligently tilting at all the windmills we could find, poking our noses into the business of the military-industrial complex, which I now refer to as the BRC, until they were sick of the sight of anyone with long hair….. Back in the day, even the most rigid of conservative hawks understood that they were witnessing a change of culture, and there was nothing they could do to alter the course that history was taking…. The power of love, and compassion, and freedom swept through the entire world, as well as refreshing American society, with repercussions still being felt today….

One of the most important characteristics of hippies that I don’t think most people understood is that we were only interested in revolution in the sense that revolution means change; no hippie worth the name ever wished to violently overthrow anything that didn’t threaten violence first…. But, it is also true that real hippies have no objection to using violence to defend themselves, a fact which always comes as a big surprise to those who would try to oppress them. As with any tool, honor has to be the regulatory agency for determining which tool should be used, and how…. This, sadly, is a concept that those who prey on other people, who seek power over them, can never truly understand, as it is not a part of their perception of reality….

I see that I’ve reached a point where this must either get very pointed, or fade into the background for the time being….. I’m feeling mellow, due to re-connecting with the halcyon days of my youth, so I’ll show mercy here, and opt for the latter…. Besides, I’m all out of introspection for the nonce, and there’s no telling when it might drop back by…. I’ll leave y’all with one final pearl, to seal the deal….

“Oh, how we fear the metamorphoses through which we truly become fledged humans, real mensches of the species homo sapiens. Yet even if we do not willingly undergo them, changes pursue us just the same. The woman who never bears a child metamorphoses in different ways. We may dig in our heels and dare life never to change, but, all the same, it changes under our feet like sand under the feet of a sea gazer as the tide runs out. Life is forever undermining us. Life is forever washing away our castles, reminding us that they were, after all, only sand and sea water.” — Erica Jong: Parachutes and Kisses
_____________________________

Okay, housekeeping…. I’m leaving in the morning, to go on another cruise, and doubt seriously if I’ll be able to post on Sunday…. Just too much to do out in the BBR, and no telling how the internet on board this new ship will turn out to be, speed-wise… So far, they’ve all been different…. Most likely, though, I will post on Monday, Tuesday, & possibly Wednesday, but, again, maybe not at all until Thursday…. I’ll just have to wait to see how it all pans out…. Suffice it to say, if it comes down to posting, or interrupting fun, well, we know what will win out, don’t we?…..

Now, let’s see how this came out….. Okay, well, it’s long enough, and it’s not overtly stupid, or mean, so, I’ll call it done, and be done with it…. Lots of stuff to do to get ready…. NOT!  I’m ready, for just under 22 hours from now, when I’ll walk out that door, on the way to the airport…. See ya, some time or another, ffolkes….

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

dozer3

Our favorite source for eclectic pants….

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Ffolkes,

Hardly a day goes by that I don’t miss ol’ Gumption…. He was the finest example a man could ever want to see, the all-around best kind of example, of how valuable it can be having a real, verifiable, mother-lovin’ orangutan running your town…. Not to say he was the best dressed mayor we’ve ever had, but, he made up for that by havin’ way more than his share of common sense, and a fine, well-honed sense of humor…. He was real smart about kissin’ babies, too, seemed to just love the little tykes…. and there sure weren’t any worries that he’d be making time with his secretary!….

Of course, it was a mite difficult at times, figuring out just what he was trying to say, but, most of the folks in town got real good at that there sign language he used to use to talk, so that big issue about those campaign promises was sure to blow over, once the right translation got circulated…. It was all a misunderstanding over the sign for “practice”, which, unfortunately, is almost identical to the sign for “masturbation”…. It could have happened to anyone!…. Yep, we’re gonna miss having some Gumption in the town hall, that’s for sure….

However, I’m even more sure that none of us will miss those two paragraphs, now that they’re done…. We can put them firmly behind us, and leave them there, with no regrets whatsoever…. Not only are there no regrets at being done with them, there is GREAT RELIEF, engendered, no doubt, by the realization of just how BAD they are…. Even as I was writing them, I could barely keep myself from tossing my cookies all over the keyboard, which, as we all know, is never a good idea…. It tends to make the rest of the day one of complete and utter chaos…. I don’t know about y’all, but, I’m not going there, not for anything….

Hence, the 360 turn upon completing the second paragraph above….. I mean, the concept of starting off with a bit of humor was a good one, and, in retrospect, actually showed some potential, especially the part about the orangutan in the town hall… Hell, it worked for Clint, right? But, it takes a bit more elegant prose than what I came up with to make it work, even if the elegance may be hard to find while using a southern-fried accent, with all the corn it implies….. The chopping off of consonants at the end of words was making it hard to type quickly, or efficiently, too, so there was that to account for….

What was I thinking? Well, I WAS thinking a bit of change might be nice…. but, I suppose it should be planned out a bit more thoroughly than this, eh? It isn’t quite one of my hidden talents, I’m guessing, to write an intro like that when I’m still in the stone-cold-brain stage of my morning routine…. Oh well, as a scientist, I’m not likely to hold on to the experience too long; no experiment is worth getting all worked up over, especially one that is a complete failure in most respects….

No, indeed, we don’t worry about stuff like failed experiments here at ECR….We just shrug our shoulders, and go on our merry, scientific way, to the next experiment, and the next introductory section, where we LIVE to experiment! Well, maybe not LIVE for it….. but, we definitely LOVE it!

Besides, it always gives me something else to write about, a process which, though it is a constant drain on my creativity, needing all the help it can get, nonetheless makes every word I write worthwhile…. Well…. we like to think so, anyway…. and, it keeps me from thinking about all the idiots out there the world would be better off without, which is what my mind tends to dwell upon, given the opportunity to do so…..

Shall we Pearl?…. Today, I think it would be best to do so, quickly….

“If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.” — Montesquieu
_____________________________

Day after tomorrow, I’m going on another cruise…. This one is a little short one, just a few days to Mexico and back, out of L.A….. I’ll be trying to post, but, we’ll see how it goes with the internet on board…. Often, the system they have isn’t up to the task of posting anything other than text, which, for me, is the hardest part to produce when I’m cruising…. Pictures I’ve taken are much more fun to put up, but the network on board the ships I’ve seen varies a lot in the bandwidth available for uploading… I had no problems on board the Celebrity ship in Europe, but all the Princess ships I’ve been on have been less than satisfactory, to say the least…. They’re also WAY overpriced, in terms of access charges per minute….

What that means for right now, though, is an old-school pearl for this section, because that’s what I FEEL like doing…. I’m not yet in enough of a state to rant, and don’t feel like it right now, anyway… I’ve got the grump on, for sure, but, don’t feel quite enough angst to carry it off yet…. hence, this paean to laziness…. Follow the bouncing ideas, ffolkes, and let this pearl lead you right where I want you to go, in your minds, which is where I will leave you today, so it will be easier to find your way back…. Enjoy!…. or not…. As always, the decision as to that remains as an exercise for the Gentle Reader….

“He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.” — Henry Ward Beecher

“You can stand me up at the gates of Hell, but I won’t back down.” — T. Petty

“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness, and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” — Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.” — Epicurus

“Even a cabbage may look at a king.” — Smart Bee

(Look at this one again; think on it a while…. There is more here than meets the ear…..)

“It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.” — Michael de Montaigne (1533-1592) — Essays, Book i, Chap. ix, Of Liars

— Bother! said Pooh, when he mixed up the Ben-Gay and the K-Y Jelly.

(Oh!… Ouch!…. Sorry,  that just happened…. I’ll try again for a good closer…. Disregard that one, please; it’s a plant, put there by one of Murphy’s myrmidons, no doubt….)

“Truth is merely common sense, says the naive realist. Really? Then where, precisely, is the location of–a rainbow? In the air? In the eye? In between? Or somewhere else?” — Edward Abbey

That’s better….. Sorry again for the disruption, ffolkes, I’ll double my security at the doors…. Oh, wait, I don’t have ANY security at the doors… Hmm, well, since there’s no budget for that, anyway, we’ll just have to put up with the occasional double entry…. If we move on quickly enough, maybe they’ll think we didn’t even notice, and give up…. Sure, that’s the ticket…. Okay, onward…
_____________________________

Again, a poem that requires no ups, no extras…..

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,–the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
 
~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

_____________________________

When I read a poem like the one above, I get a feeling in me, that if I could die, for beauty, or for truth, I could be content with life…. Perhaps it’s just me, but, given the popularity over time of Emily’s poetry, so I rather think that such is a fairly common reaction to the power of her visions, rather than something unusual in me…. This is true in spite of the funny looks I’ve received all my life whenever I’ve admitted to such feelings in front of my peers….. Being the stubbornly independent sort of cuss I am, such looks only fueled my desire to BE different, instead of persuading me to conform to custom, to “Man Up!”, have another beer, & put down a bet on the next football game…

Well, sorry, dudes, I’m Man enough, and don’t much care for beer any more…. Plus, I’ve been over football for many years, having grown weary long ago of all the commercialism that infuses every level of the sport, from Pop Warner’s five year old linemen to the nursing homes taking care of the 45 year-old NFL veterans with degenerative arthritis, who can’t walk by themselves anymore…..

Football, baseball, basketball, soccer, and, every other kind of sporting endeavor in which people engage, as far as possible in the last hundred years, has been completely commercialized, channeling and shaping society itself into the modern format, wherein a system is in place to find and train the best in each of those sports, over the course of the youth of the player pool in each country, with the full cooperation of government, schools, and society in general.

This system of sports leagues, associations, rules, and advertisement, allowed unchecked in schools, while simultaneously encouraged in society at large, ensures there will be a never-ending supply of talented players for each sport, so that a very small number of people can make a very large amount of money, buying and selling that talent, and packaging it in the glamor of professional sports….

The entire pantheon of sporting figures we are forced to watch on television is, ultimately, just another distraction, encouraged by those shadowy corporate entities who control society from the wings…. They are the perfect way to keep large portions of the populace quiet and occupied, making up fantasy leagues, vicariously living through the eyes of cameras that lionize the activities of the players, who take classes in college to learn how to talk to reporters…. so they won’t embarrass their schools, their teams, or their owners…. who are the final arbiters of what will take place in those venues, of course….

As a former athlete myself, it’s a sad thing to watch….. But, then, most of what I see in society today is pretty sad, as none of what I see acknowledges any of the problems that are so obvious to me… The world just goes on, fussing and feuding, worrying about whether or not their local quarterback will be able to maintain THEIR reputation around the country, as the local papers would have us believe when they parade his latest exploits all over the section devoted to sports news….

I don’t know how I got going on this, but, it seems to have turned on me, into a short, if cogent rant on the state of the state, as it were…. and I don’t see it as a good state…. Of course, there’s nothing particularly new and fresh about that…. The issues I see, and talk about, have been building up for a long time…. many centuries, in fact. But, the difference between what I am saying in my rants and what has gone before is critical, to my mind….

The issues I’m speaking of in my rants are real, and, like it or not, we have reached a point in our history when ALL of the evil that has been done will be coming home to roost…. The acts of deliberate cupidity being enacted by the corporate masters, who believe in their own invulnerability, are going to have serious consequences, for them, as well as for us….

The carbon (monoxide, dioxide, or any other oxide…. doesn’t matter, none of them belong there in such quantities….) being pumped into the atmosphere each SECOND, by industry and vehicles, is going to reach a point of no return; in fact, it may have already done so…. At that point, our survival as a species will become a question rather than a certainty…..

I, for one, am not looking forward to those times, as it may just turn into what we’ve been led to believe Ragnarök, or Armageddon might look like by some of our more visionary, and visually oriented, religions…. Whatever it is like, even the corporate masters aren’t going to like it, because even their money won’t help….

Sorry to be so gloomy…. I just got to thinking about all of this, and decided to let it flow out, to get some of it off my chest…. Maybe somebody who needs to see it will come by, and start the movement to save the world…. If so, great…. if not, well, there’s always tomorrow, right?….

Well, maybe not always…..

“Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?  Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don’t know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness…” — Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), “An agnostic’s Apology”, — Fortnightly Review, 1876
_____________________________

I have the feeling this came out okay, but, I can never be sure…. I guess I won’t find out unless I go check it out, so, here goes….. Okay, well, it’s definitely a Pearl, and as such, I declare it done…. This means I can go now, right? Oh, good…. I think I may have hurt myself somewhere…. Oh, wait, never mind, that’s just my pride, which I see I’ve dumped in the trash…..  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

dozer3

Open Your Heart to Open the Door

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rmott delivers yet another passionate outburst of sheer truth… Can you handle it? And what will you do?….

rmott62's avatarRebecca Mott

I have to play the Blues, play deep soul, play the music of the heart that has lost words to come close to what I need to write in this post.

It is a post about opening the door to indoors prostitution, open the door to who I had to be to be that “whore” who was in endless rooms with endless beds.

I was inside a world where language is stolen, a world that is upside-down and inside-out.

It was a world where all that humans have decided is wrong is made out to be right but good and the only way to exist.

The world of indoors prostitution is a world where pain, confusion, lies, lack of control and lost of humanity are the rules to live by –  that is blood and breath of  the prostitute woman/girls in that environment.

In order to understand the reality of…

View original post 817 more words

Even subliminally, it can smell risque…..

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Ffolkes,

I am currently in the throes of putting up the seasonal decorations around my place…. Yes, the lovely new attack dog is going out in the front yard, (right next to the new gun emplacements….), to make sure none of the usual door-to-door sales types will make it up the steps long enough to ring the bell, thereby annoying me…. I’ve gotten one of the latest models, animals trained to hide the body after they’ve run them down and killed them….. You can’t imagine the FORTUNE I’m saving in disposal costs….

I’m also putting up my holiday decorations….  spreading around the chewed-up briefcases and Awake magazines from former sales people who came into the yard, the bloody clothing, the chalk outlines, …… Oh, yeah, and I’m putting the barbed wire over the chimney so that fat asshole can’t get in anymore…. We’ll have the usual crowd of hired thugs outside, too, haranguing whomever walks by, shouting at them to go home, and stop being such well-trained consumers….

Seriously, here it is, just Thanksgiving, and I’m already sick to death of all the Christmas decorations, and the Christmas commercials that have already started dunning everyone on the vacuum tube, reminding them of how little time to spend they have, or what the latest hot item to spend money on looks like, or shouting about how much more they need to spend…..

Constant reminders of how many “shopping days until Christmas” are left to endure rain down on our consciousness at every turn, in stores, by the roads, on the airwaves, on TV, everywhere one looks is another visual and/or auditory barrage upon our senses, applying more psychologically designed pictures and phrases to stimulate the training that we as consumers have been programmed to receive….

I’m sick of it, with still almost four weeks to go to the main event, followed by the after-holiday push to spend more, so that the business ass wipes who run things in the world can squeeze out every possible penny of the disposable income of the middle class, and all the possible extra pennies left in the pockets of the lower classes…. Every little cent that their targeted victims, i.e., EVERYONE, can be persuaded to put toward the foolishness of manufactured desires, instead of using it to buy what is absolute necessity, is what they’re after, and they’ll get it….

But, the commercials don’t care, nor do those who make and pay for the commercials…. They don’t care that the parents of those children they’ve targeted with their ads cannot afford to buy the toy, or other unnecessary item for which they’ve created the obsession, making it so it becomes an issue of status for the child to not have one of the favored items to show in school, or in the park…. The assholes who create this entire commercial frenzy this time of year aren’t going to give up the period of time when they make the most profit, since they can mark everything with a higher price at this time of year, knowing people will buy anyway, because that’s what people do when they’re brainwashed….

Yes, ffolkes, you’re all brainwashed to spend money during the holidays…. There are even articles that help people get over the depression that this brings on at this time of year, depression that actually has a legitimate cause to exist, as it is made clearer to many folks that all of this fuss and bother is a complete fabrication…. The honest truth of the matter is, at this time of year nobody really gives a rat’s ass about Jesus, or compassion, or about anything other than corporate avarice, and making more money this year than last….

The few people who do suffer some qualms about all of this either stay out of it (like me, mostly….), or they get depressed, or they just shake their head, bury their feelings, and try to pretend, along with most everybody else, that they’re really having a good time…. I don’t know about y’all, but, starting now, and right up until the third of January or so, I will be completely ignoring the television, and trying not to even SEE all the ridiculous decorations and signs everywhere, all for the purpose of getting me to spend more money on crap that won’t last beyond the new year….

Oh, and maybe, just maybe, I will try to keep from ranting in the intro section…. even though it does fill up the space rather well….. I have a feeling it’s not the way to pull ffolkes in to read further…. Just a hunch, but, a good one, I think…. Any who, since I’ve once again filled up this section with ranting and complaining about society’s moral compass, or lack of one, there’s no need to carry on any further down that path; we’ll go find a new direction to take, one that, hopefully, will be more entertaining than this…. even if I’m right….

Shall we Pearl?….

“He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.” — Horace

(Around here, this is sometimes a good thing to remember….)
_____________________________

“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.” — Albert Einstein

Originally, when I saw this, I thought it would be a perfect start for a discussion of public ethics, or societal morality, either of which could be supported by its premise, logically speaking…. But, then I thought about what I had said above, in the intro, and decided that the two subjects are similar enough to bring tears of boredom to my eyes, as well as, arguably, having the power to glaze over ANYONE’s eyes in a New York minute…. Ethics and/or morals don’t usually make for the most stimulating rants; they tend to be critical enough to tune out even the most hardened DIY’er, such as a graduate of an EST program, or a survivor from a Sterling Men’s Weekend….

But, old-school pearls are a perfect venue for such critical outpourings…. they can deliver the same degree of displeasure and disgust at the acts being described, but in such a way that the humor makes the criticism more palatable for those who are in need of the knowledge… Well, that’s the theory, anyway, which has always held true in the past….

This format just makes it simpler to get the points across, and in such a way that the receiver doesn’t automatically dismiss it, out of hand…. We can hope, anyway, right?…. Right?… Besides, this is more fun, and much easier on my head, my back, and my hips…. Let’s see how Smart Bee is feeling today, shall we?…. Today, we’ll be looking for pearls that point the way to an honorable life, or, at the least, a life of honorable intent….

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.” — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

“So you see, the only true proof of what you are is in the way you hear the truth.” — Lemmy Kilmeister

“The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.” — Albert Einstein

“Whatever became of eternal truth?” — Smart Bee

“I used to wonder about the meaning of life.  But I looked it up in the dictionary under L and there it was, the meaning of life. It was less than I expected.” — Dogbert

“There is Moral Sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it.” — Mark Twain

“How’s the wife?  Is she at home enjoying capitalism?” — Zippy the Pinhead
_____________________________

More genius, unadorned….

Death Wants More Death

death wants more death, and its webs are full:
I remember my father’s garage, how child-like
I would brush the corpses of flies
from the windows they thought were escape-
their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies
shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass
only to spin and flit
in that second larger than hell or heaven
onto the edge of the ledge,
and then the spider from his dank hole
nervous and exposed
the puff of body swelling
hanging there
not really quite knowing,
and then knowing-
something sending it down its string,
the wet web,
toward the weak shield of buzzing,
the pulsing;
a last desperate moving hair-leg
there against the glass
there alive in the sun,
spun in white;
and almost like love:
the closing over,
the first hushed spider-sucking:
filling its sack
upon this thing that lived;
crouching there upon its back
drawing its certain blood
as the world goes by outside
and my temples scream
and I hurl the broom against them:
the spider dull with spider-anger
still thinking of its prey
and waving an amazed broken leg;
the fly very still,
a dirty speck stranded to straw;
I shake the killer loose
and he walks lame and peeved
towards some dark corner
but I intercept his dawdling
his crawling like some broken hero,
and the straws smash his legs
now waving
above his head
and looking
looking for the enemy
and somewhat valiant,
dying without apparent pain
simply crawling backward
piece by piece
leaving nothing there
until at last the red gut sack
splashes
its secrets,
and I run child-like
with God’s anger a step behind,
back to simple sunlight,
wondering
as the world goes by
with curled smile
if anyone else
saw or sensed my crime

~~ Charles Bukowski ~~

_____________________________

I’m having a bit of pain this morning, a surprising event, considering all the sleep I’ve gotten the past four days…. Ah well, c’est la vie…. The net effect of that, though, is that I am getting lazier by the moment, and have decided to go in a new direction altogether…. I’ve been collecting links, to articles that I intended to rant about, or use to justify a rant, however one wishes to look at it… Laziness, however, always takes precedence over ranting, so, instead, I’m just going to provide you with some reading material, should you choose to follow the links to their sources….

What you will find is a group of articles that will show you just how avarice, and immorality, and corruption, and, and, and,….. almost every human failing that brings people into conflict with one another, are not just present in modern life, but, have become the standard of our cultural interactions….. Each of these articles discusses a segment of society that is engaged in some kind of behavior that is unethical, or paranoid, or corrupt in some way…. well, except for the last one, which offers a solution, of sorts, to a lot of the tension and stress caused by the manifestations outlined in the other links…. The last one, as radical as it is in its language, its spirituality, along with its author’s mildly abrasive approach, is perhaps the sanest article in the whole lot….

So, read these, if you’ve got the time…. Then go and try some meditation, or whatever method you choose to get back in touch with your center, which is where we all need to learn to exist….. Strange, isn’t it? How such a simple idea, existing at one’s own center of being, is really and truly the key to a happy life…. Yet, there it is, in all its simplicity…. All we have to do is pick it up, and use it….. Hey, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it? Nothing else seems to be working, if these stories are any indication…..

http://news.yahoo.com/eu-lays-down-steps-us-must-protect-data-142411846.html

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/dotcommentary/article/Spying-on-online-sex-lives-raises-red-flags-5017893.php

http://blog.sfgate.com/crime/2013/11/27/san-jose-cop-charged-with-writing-bogus-tickets/

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Holiday-shopping-season-begins-on-Thanksgiving-5019245.php

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2013/11/26/meditation-for-the-damned/
_____________________________

This one took some doing, it did, so it only gets a cursory examination for errors…. which I’m doing now, even though you can’t see me…. Some days, this process shows me more than just the usual justification for its evolved state…. That may sound a bit obscure, but, that’s okay, because we’re done for the day, and it won’t hurt at all, unless you get all huffy and try too hard to figure it out…. Don’t fret, amigo, no está importante….. 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

dozer3