Bursting with possibility, the newest day dawns, as ever, in shades of grey….

Posted on May 20, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

I’m certain, if not completely unsure, I’ve never experienced such a long-term tweak…. Usually, it takes a day, maybe two to get the ol’ back to calm down enough to return to relative normalcy…. This time, it keeps relapsing, so to speak, with each morning’s level of pain in the lower part competing to see which day will get the prize…. which means, given that my back and its pain are NOT being nice, NONE of the prior six or seven days will ever be called a winner…. No prizes will be awarded, unless I get one for not killing anyone, in spite of numerous episodes of encountering people who gave every impression of WANTING to become martyrs at the throne of stupid….

The above paragraph, however, is all the whining you’ll see…. (Trust me…) I’ve decided that today’s Pearl WILL be fresh, even if somebody must die…. Well, not me, of course; if I die, who’ll write the Pearl? But, if anyone gets in my way, or even in my vicinity, I’m taking them down, and that’s a promise…. I’m tired of Mr. Nice Guy…. Whether it’s me, or somebody else assuming that guise, I’m done with it….

That being said, there will be no rant, unless you consider this ill-mannered outburst as such….. There WILL be two old-school pearls, and a poem…. but, that’s ALL there will be today, and hell, if I find something better looking than what I feel SB can do today, then what you get will be from the archives…. Deal with it….

That is all I have today, ffolkes…. I’m not even sure I can follow my own rules today, and play nice with others…. We’ll see, I guess… In the meantime….

Shall we Pearl?….

“I’m PROUD to be a CARBON-BASED life form!”– gigoid, asb SB

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I have yet to begin searching through Smart Bee for some appropriate aphorisms, because I wanted to issue a warning, to both Smart Bee, and to y’all, to protect your sensibilities…. To SB, I say this…. DO NOT FUCK WITH ME TODAY. That’s it….. and, it had better be enough….

Oh, and, Smart Bee? If I were you, today, I would pay close attention to that warning, too…. To the Gentle Reader, my warning is this… if SB doesn’t behave, I will ask you to please avert your eyes; nobody should HAVE to see what I will do to the damn thing, as it will be guaranteed to cause nightmares, in both the recipient of the thrashing, and in anyone careless enough to watch…. Otherwise, enjoy, yes?…..

“Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.” — H.L. Mencken

“Every event that one would master must be mounted on the run, and no one ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.” — Smart Bee

“In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.” — Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-78)

“As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing!” — Arthur, my laptop

“Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity.” — John Selden (1584-1654) — Humility

“Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.” — Smart Bee

Okay, well, I like it….

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To avoid any accusations (or worse, litigation…) of cruelty to a poet, here is another one of mine, so nobody else gets blamed for this… I wrote this some time in the latter half of 2012…. It’s about Pearling, or, Life as We Know It….

When life calls, ready or not….

Memories are all we have sometimes
to keep our sanity intact,
with learned phrases and subtle rhymes
lessening life’s vicious, vibrant impact.

Presently all seems composed and intent
in stark contrast to hollow day,
forlorn patchwork emotions of unheralded bent,
fill up night’s bower, leaving hell to pay.

Such vigorous and elevated temper
brings us rare moments to ponder,
filled with lessons all need to remember
lest base perception lose valued wonder.

Laugh loud when entropy sticks fast
leaving shameless anger in its wake.
Let bygones pass quietly into the past
reaping only what is left to take.

Final words of wise imagination
tell us living well’s the best revenge, it appears
ever eluding choirs and congregations
finally finding home, never buried in tears.

~~ gigoid ~~

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Not too shabby so far; nobody’s dead, and no injuries requiring stitches…. bonus! In keeping with today’s pattern of insanity, here is another old-school pearl, fresh from SB’s database of virtual wisdom, hacker-style….. This one may be a bit loose, so don’t try to hang on to any of it too tight; just an easy grip, enough to allow you to follow it to where it leads….

“Happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.” — Robert G. Ingersoll (American lawyer and orator)

“The land of the free! This is the land of the free! Why, if I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and that’s my freedom. Free? Why I have never been in any country where the individual has such an abject fear of his fellow countrymen. Because, as I say, they are free to lynch him the moment he shows he is not one of them.” — D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

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

“How do you know that electrons are political? Because you can never determine their exact position.” — Smart Bee

“Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.” — Langston Hughes, Dreams

“An it harm none,
Do what ye will.” — This is the core belief in Wicca, upon which all the rest of their philosophy of life is based….

“Unknowingly, we plow the dust of stars, blown about us by the wind, and drink the universe in a glass of rain.” — Ihab Hassan

Ooh, nice finish! There you have it, ffolkes…. THIS is a pearl of virtual wisdom, clearly….

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I did it…. In the interests of not hurting myself, though, I don’t think I’ll pat myself on the back just yet…. Instead, I’ll just trust in my instincts, and put this out for consumption, sans further attention or editing…. See you tomorrow, ffolkes, most likely…. Considering my record, the odds are good….

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

Further remonstrances should be unnecessary….

Posted on May 19, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Realizing such an overreaction would draw attention, I put away my weapon, and proceeded to thrash the idiot with my bare hands….. Having thus protected the next poor slob who tried to buy one of the asshole’s fake watches, (The fool didn’t even bother to put works in them, or set them to the right time….. just tried to foist off a fake Rolex on me, without any real idea of what a watch like that would cost, or look like…. What an idiot….), I walked out of the alley where I left his groaning carcass, giving him the opportunity for a leisurely introspection, wherein he could contemplate the error of his ways…. I turned south, toward the waterfront, where the ship that would carry me on the next leg of my journey only waited for me to board….

As I strolled down the Avenida del Revolucion, other, more honest vendors hawked their wares, to the early tourists and locals who crowded the narrow sidewalks, jostling each other in the crowded spaces between the shops and the street-side displays for each….. All the stalls were colorfully crammed with hundreds of items for sale, handy to the cars that crawled past, filled with other tourist groups and possible buyers…. The street vendors, each hawking the wares of the shop in front of which they stood, joined their cries to each other’s, almost a sing-song of prices and salutations, a commercial music that blended with and through the noise of the cars, and the blaring mariachi music from the speakers every fifty feet….

Then, of course, I woke up, and lost all sense of proportion, staring into the darkened room, wondering whether I was still in Mexico, shivering slightly in the cold air from the open window, behind me…. Pulling on a t-shirt, I arose, grabbed the essentials, and came out to try to start this Pearl….. The above two paragraphs are the best I can do, ffolkes; on looking it over, it’s not bad, but, it isn’t the best I’ve ever done, either….. Given the handicap under which I’m operating, I’m fairly content, as it is better than I’d hoped, given the level of spasming and pain I’m currently ignoring….. well, as best as I can….

Regardless of that, I’m not going to whine…. What I WILL do is try to put out a complete Pearl, fresh, (other than poetically…. I’m afraid I don’t have THAT in me right now…. but, I’ll pick something worthwhile to make up for any lack of freshness or originality on MY part….), and as compelling as I can make it…. It may not be quite up to snuff, but, it will have to do, because, well, it will….

On that note, I’m going to forgo any further folderol, or nonsense from my darker side, & jump into the rest of today’s effort….. which, as I can already tell y’all, is an effort, indeed….

Shall we Pearl?….

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

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

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

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“Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race — the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910), “The Mysterious Stranger”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/17/government-lies-nsa-justice-department-supreme-court

Is there any more question? Can it be laid out any clearer? It’s pretty clear to me….. Our world has been usurped, pirated by the myrmidons of the paranoid übermensch, the sociopathic monied elite, who seek to control every aspect of life on this planet, to further their own pathetic need to control and manipulate the rest of mankind for their insane personal ends….

Now, some might think that’s a long stretch of the imagination, to extrapolate such dire accusations from the shenanigans of one federal agency, or even two, apparently turning it all around into blaming the poor, faceless gazillionaires who control the resources of the planet; after all, most people now are inured to being lied to, stolen from, and getting their fannies reamed by those in charge of society, having endured that sort of treatment their entire lives.

Given that sort of background, what could be LESS surprising than to hear that someone in the government had lied, to protect someone else in another governmental branch?…. (Please note: both the liars, and those they lie about, are UN-elected officials, having been appointed to their positions….) Or that the Justice (?) Department was no longer bound by the Constitution, or, apparently, any other laws that are contrary to their purpose, thus giving them the legal right to lie, to the public, and to the SUPREME FUCKING COURT?….

Sadly, I’m not sure they needed to lie to the Supremes; that particular batch of lawyers, who, after first indicating which path to glory they preferred, mutated into judges, of such obvious degrees of corruption they became worthy of the attention of one or more of the Shrubs, those blatant corporate/spook soldiers who appointed them…. (Notice again how voting doesn’t come into this picture?…)…..

This particular current batch of Supremes seems to be more than ready to fuck things up all by themselves, casually casting aside numerous laws set, over time, as legal precedents by previous Supremes, laws designed to guard against societal discrimination, as being “no longer an issue of law”…. meaning, they are changing the law themselves, sans any need to ask for, or receive, approval from anyone else, such as Congress, the Executive Branch, or god forbid, the people of this country….

It’s pretty clear in this case, it all connects at a deeper level, where the inner workings of a clandestine organization are merely the tip of the iceberg, compared to how the ice is being used….. which is, begad, a terrible metaphor. But, I think it’s clear that ALL of the branches of our government are now corrupted by this attitude, of entitlement and the absolute belief that whatever rights we, the people, may have had, are not relevant to their goals…. all of which, in their eyes, makes those ‘rights’ immaterial, pathetic obstacles to be brushed aside, in the interests of expediency and paranoia….

Ffolkes, I don’t like to join hands with the ranks of those who believe in all sorts of conspiracies; most of the time the evil that we see is not a matter of conspiring to take over the world…. there’s no need for that, because it has already happened. It actually happened thousands of years ago; the problem has always been that not many people are willing to look directly at the evidence, or able to accept the FACTS…. which are, to me, relatively clear.

“By all means, let’s not confuse the issue with facts.”– Smart Bee

The 1% (which, actually, is a misnomer; 1% of the total number of humans alive is actually a rather large number, in relation to the small number of people who actually have real control of the resources of the entire planet…. 1% of 7 Billion is actually 70 Million people; there are many times many fewer people than that who are the actual masters of this society…. Planet wide, the true figure of people who are in the true ruling elite is probably closer to 7000, or perhaps, 70,000, not millions…. Sorry, ffolkes, but, numbers CAN’T lie…. and, remember, these people DON’T share…..), are perfectly aware they don’t NEED a conspiracy, when the controls they require have been in place for centuries…. As long as people are susceptible to money, or power over others, as long as they are subject to their own fear and ignorance, no real planning is required, as people will, all-too-often, freely give their freedom away, to those who promise to remove their fear…..

This has always been true, ffolkes…. The weak and ignorant, of which there are so many, spend their lives in fear of not being able to succeed, of being confronted with the harsh realities of life without the means to deal with any of it. The unprincipled rulers of mankind, with the willing and able assistance of the religious fanatics who support them, don’t actually conspire against the rest of humanity….

They merely live up to their own standards, which are based on expediency and self-promotion, and the ignorant masses fall right into line, giving their allegiance and obedience to temporal authority, while both the church and the rulers steadily, and thoroughly, empty their pockets of all they don’t require for basic living…. and more, if they feel they can get away with it….

I don’t profess to have any special knowledge of what is going on behind the scenes; all of my opinions are based on what can be seen right out in the public arena, based on what I read, what I see, and what I can deduce from that data. Everyone alive has the same opportunity as I do to see what is going on….

Sadly, most people don’t seem to have, or, to use if they do have, the simple intelligence required to put the pieces together, into a picture they can understand…. which, in turn, means they cannot control their own destiny…. Nor will they ever be able to do so, as long as they continue to give up the right to control their own minds, to the Beloved Ruling Classes, including the priestly hierarchies, and all the faceless myrmidons (police and military…), who do the bidding of the powered elite, the corporate snakes/monied assholes, (sorry, I decided elegant doesn’t work when describing these pricks, but, short, pithy Anglo-Saxon slang works just fine….), who prey on the rest of mankind….

I think, personally, it’s time for me to buy a gun…. and lots and lots of ammunition…. As an American citizen, I can only say that, I’m tired of my ass being continuously threatened with impalement, on the shaft of government indifference, or corporate immorality, and, I don’t intend to have it go on that way forever…. I’m sure we can find something that will work better, and won’t constantly be a pain in our collective ass….

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” — Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) — Churchill’s Commentary on Man

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There are times when the mere act of reading a poem, if done honestly, paying attention & trying to put oneself into the author’s mind, to fully understand the metaphor of life being portrayed, is a worthy experience in and of itself, with no more justification needed, or required, by either the universe, or the monitors of this blog, who are, as we know, non-existent…. Well, I know it; if y’all still have doubts, just submit another claim….

In the meantime, here is a poem, which long-time prisoners, er, readers, will probably recognize as having been seen here previously…. That’s just because it’s a good one, and, because I can…. Enjoy, please, as millions of history’s readers have done for a long time…..

A Dialogue of Self and Soul

{My Soul} I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
‘Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul
i{My Self}. The consecretes blade upon my knees
Is Sato’s ancient blade, still as it was,
Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
Unspotted by the centuries;
That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
From some court-lady’s dress and round
The wodden scabbard bound and wound
Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn
i{My Soul.} Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination scorn the earth
And interllect is wandering
To this and that and t’other thing,
Deliver from the crime of death and birth.
i{My self.} Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
Five hundred years ago, about it lie
Flowers from I know not what embroidery —
Heart’s purple — and all these I set
For emblems of the day against the tower
Emblematical of the night,
And claim as by a soldier’s right
A charter to commit the crime once more.
i{My Soul.} Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
i{Is} from the i{Ought,} or i{knower} from the i{Known — }
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue’s a stone.
i{My Self.} A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
What matter if the ditches are impure?
What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
The finished man among his enemies? —
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what’s the good of an escape
If honour find him in the wintry blast?
I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch,
A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.
I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

~ William Butler Yeats ~~

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Okay, finally, a bit of fun for us all…. I’ve been working hard to get this done before the pain gets to the point where someone has to die, and it’s going fairly well, all things considered…. Let’s see if Smart Bee is up to a bit of cooperation this morning, shall we? I’ve got my wet suit on, and my scuba tank is full…. Let’s dive, ffolkes…. Oh, yeah, take your knife; no parameters today….

Hug O’ War

I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

~~ Shel Silverstein ~~

“A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” — Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Madison, 1787

“To think contrary to one’s era is heroism. But to speak against it is madness.” — Eugene Ionesco

“One must never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than, “Watch this!” (Keep ’em guessing.) — The Third Commandment of Frisbee — Dan Roddick

“Fear is the lock and laughter the key to your heart.” — Steven Stills

“That which leads us to the performance of duty by offering pleasure as its reward, is not virtue, but a deceptive copy and imitation of virtue.” — Cicero (B.C. 106-43)

“What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?” — Ursula K. LeGuin

I really love this job….. too bad nobody will pay me to do it…..

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Well, ffolkes, (and that’s a deep subject….) (Sorry, really…. I’m an incorrigible punster, so, don’t incorrige me…) (Okay, sorry, I’m done….), here we are again…. I’m still uncertain as to whether or not I’ll continue to try to keep myself unblooded today; I suppose it will depend on how much pain I’m fighting when some idiot tests my resolve. But, at my age, I don’t really give much of a shit whether it does, or not, and if things get out of hand, I’ll just blame Murphy…. it’s about time he took some of the heat he dishes out…. See y’all tomorrow, ffolkes….

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

Precious moments of subtle grandeur…..

Posted on May 16, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

You probably can’t tell by looking, but, in this space, earlier today, three complete fictional beginnings to a story were composed, then edited to the point of deletion, each one being rather LESS acceptable than the one before…. I can’t recall ever coming up with so much CRAP so early in the day, unless of course, we count that time in Phoenix, of which, the binding documents of non-disclosure I signed then preclude any mention…. That’s okay by me, I wouldn’t want stuff like that to ever be associated with my name, if I can help it….

Unfortunately for TODAY’s Pearl, that leaves me here, too deep in to back out, but with not a damn thing to go here….. at least, nothing I’d allow past my inner censor. Hell, at this point, it’s all I can do to blink both eyes in unison; I’m that discombobulated this morning…. My eyes are giving me fits, trying to focus; my thumb aches like crazy, telling me it’s time to stop ignoring it, & go see the Doc about it…..

I just hate thinking of the probable treatment, a shot of cortisone…. it works great, but, I’m not real sanguine about using steroids, for anything, even the stuff for which it is commonly prescribed…. Just because we’ve used something for a while doesn’t mean they know what the long term effects are…. the medical profession has too many priors in that respect for me to ever trust them completely…. Remember the time they x-rayed some guy in the ER, & found he had a surgical tool, a pair of forceps, to be exact, still inside his abdomen, left there by a forgetful surgeon a few weeks previously?…. I do….

But, that’s all just avoiding the issue, which is the lack of stimulation/inspiration I’m experiencing today, that is keeping this intro in “Inanity Mode”, with long, wandering discussions of not very much, stretched, padded, and stuffed full of useless verbiage, all designed to take us just a little further down the page, until we find ourselves in an area where we can stop a moment, catch our breath, look around, and make the self-serving, but appropriate decision to bring this section to a close, having reached a point where such a decision becomes practicable….

Why, look! We’ve reached just such a point now! How about that, ffolkes? I even fooled myself today, into thinking this might work…. which it did, I’ll point out…. Here we are, five full paragraphs in, and we’re ready to cut loose with whatever is to take place today…. It’s always a surprise to me, and should be for y’all, as well…. Hope springs eternal…. as does my chutzpah…. though, to be honest, it doesn’t really spring, so much as creep, but, hey, it SOUNDS good, right?

Shall we Pearl?…. I think it would be for the best if we did….

In lazy apathy let stoics boast
Their virtue fix’d: ‘t is fix’d as in a frost;
Contracted all, retiring to the breast;
But strength of mind is exercise, not rest.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Essay on Man, Epistle ii, Line 101

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I’m in a lot of pain this morning…. but, I also decided not to complain about it; instead we have the above nonsense, while here, in section one, I’ll go with an older rant, on a subject that never goes out of style…. not here, anyway….

From 9/19/2012, I offer the following pearl, for your viewing enjoyment:

A while back, I wrote a comment regarding another a post on another blog, concerning the proposal made in that blog of writing some new amendments to the Constitution. Most of the suggested amendments made good sense, as they would remove many of the entitlements that Congress has awarded itself over the years. However, there was one suggested change with which I wholeheartedly disagree…. This is the response to that suggestion… The address of the original blog is included, in case you want to read it first….. To wit:

In Response to a Proposed 35th Amendment

From the blog site at:

http://lennemi.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/a-proposal-for-a-new-bill-of-rights/#comment-234

After reading the above blog, I posted the following comment:

Sir, or madam,

Excellent post, well reasoned and presented…. I have a few comments, if I may….

It has long been a delusion in human society that morality can be enforced, or induced at all, by legislation. This is an idea, as proven time and time again throughout thousands of years of human history, that is doomed to fail, every time it is attempted. That is not speculation, or guesswork. Look it up…..

Therefore, it is my suggestion that you forget #35, in favor of the Second Amendment already in place in the Bill of Rights; this concept is based on a false assumption, and making a flat statement of what (YOU believe) my rights are, or should be, is not acceptable to me as a citizen of this republic, or as a human being responsible for my own actions. Bearing arms is not a privilege, nor will I, and most likely at least 150 million, or more, other people in this country, accept that idea for a moment, a fact that should be obvious to any one with practical understanding of reality.

I do not, nor will I ever believe that Federal, State, or Local jurisdiction have either the right, or the authority to say differently, and I doubt seriously that there are very many in this country who do believe that. I reject utterly the statement that they, or you, or anyone else, has the right to decide for me what I will or will not own, or keep, or use in my defense. After guns, free speech would be the next to go….any bets?

That, my friend, is a fact of life, and of human nature. We only have those rights we can defend…. and this is merely another doomed attempt to legislate morality into human nature. Violence exists. Period. Get used to it, because you are not going to remove it from people’s core nature, or from reality, any more than attempting to remove guns will stop crime, or killing, or the tendency toward violence that is part of the nature of Man. Better to understand the impulse, and work toward educating people in how to cope with that part of themselves constructively, rather than destructively…..

The rest of your amendments are perfectly in alignment with what I believe is needed to improve the conditions of inequality and elitism so prevalent in today’s society, and would receive my full support.

To be honest, up to recently, I never owned, or saw a need to own a gun. As one who has followed the Warrior’s Path since my early teens (and probably before; I was raised on army posts from birth to age 10), and a long-time student of martial arts, and the theories of war, I learned how to deal with violence in many ways, with many techniques, a large number of which I had to apply in my work for years, physically controlling out-of-control psychotic mental patients, without hurting them, or getting hurt.

I got pretty good at dealing with violent people, especially in recognizing such outbursts before they manifested fully, and diverting it as needed. I am very familiar with violence, in a great many of its guises. That said, it seems clear that I have generally been able to deal with whatever physical violence may occur in my immediate vicinity.

Now, however, I’m not as fast as I once was, nor as well-conditioned; I’m better at foresight, it comes with age. And I can foresee a time when I could conceivably need the equalizing factor of a weapon like a gun, in order to live up to my standard of handling events without injury, as far as I can…..so, I’m probably going to buy one or two…

Because of that, and even more, because of insane (sorry, don’t mean to flame; but, it isn’t fully sane to attempt to change human nature) talk such as this, of watching society willingly slip on their slave collars…This is NOT going to happen in my world…. or, at least, not in the little piece of it I can control….

If anyone, or anyone’s brother, or anyone else, tries to take away the Second Amendment rights I now have, well, I can only say, good luck with that….. and bring lots of well-armed, battle-tested friends…you’ll need them….

Oh, and I’d keep in mind…. those folks, like the police in Sanford, Florida, who were complicit in covering up the murder there, aren’t going to disarm themselves, now are they?…. How far will you trust them to behave with honor, and respect for YOUR rights? Get real…..and I don’t mean that disrespectfully, but in hope that you will open your eyes to what is plainly there to see….

Note from 2014:

“Those who really deserve praise are the people who, while human enough to enjoy power, nevertheless pay more attention to justice than they are compelled to do by their situation.” — Thucydides

Now, if only there were ANYONE left in our society who fit this description, we might be able to hold on to some hope…..

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Since I’m using archived material today, I’m going with this older poem of mine, which seems to fit in with the tone, if not the exact same tune we are singing today….

Rhyming is better than lying….

It’s all too, too much, he cried
I can take no more!
It’s all crazy, my brain is fried,
battered, bloody, and sore.

Talking heads shout out hatred and fear
jam for my morning toast.
Pointing fingers far, middle, and near
enemies everywhere, almost.

Women, gays, and seniors fall prey,
easy targets, slow and weak.
Convenient fools, wanting only to play,
used, and abused, even as we speak.

It enough to drive me floridly insane,
or want to buy a gun.
I may end up in jail, or in massive pain,
but, oh, it would be fun….

~~ gigoid ~~

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

I don’t know how, but, I seem to have tweaked my lower back in my sleep last night; it’s giving me fits this morning…. But, I think I’ve got enough in me to finish this off, as long as I go old-school here in section three…. which I shall proceed to do…. Enjoy! This is all the fresh stuff you’ll get today….

“How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.” — Thomas Jefferson, “Writings” Vol. XVI

“No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.” — Andrew Carnegie

“Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, Necessity and Freewill.” — Carlyle (1795-1881)

“Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.” — Robert Lindner

“Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.” — John Adams (1735-1826)

“There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.” — Seneca

“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)

I love it when a plan comes together…..

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Today’s Pearl has been brought to you by the word “stubborn”, and the number 13, which has always been my favorite of all the prime numbers…. and, no, I don’t know what that means about me, nor do I care….. This is done, and for now, that’s all I do care about, as I’m about to go obliviate my consciousness with large quantities of drugs…. See y’all tomorrow, one way or another….

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

That’s right; now sprinkle thoroughly with the powdered milk flakes….

Posted on May 15, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

The power of paradox has been entered into the equation, ffolkes, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it; our skills, as humans, do not yet extend to being able to alter the forces of nature, or reality, beyond the confines of our own minds…. Not only is this statement true, it’s true in and of itself, indicating by that its own sense of paradox, for, ultimately, how can the truth be paradoxical? Only by the most elegant of reasoning can we, as humans, ever come to understand this principle, a happenstance unlikely to occur very often, not in THIS species…. It is only by the grace of reality we have the opportunity to even try….

What the hell was that? Well…. by all appearances, it’s a statement of belief, but, it seems to be lacking something, something that would give it the relevance it now lacks…. But, then, these days, I think we’re all a little tired of being relevant; I know I could use a bit of irrelevance in MY life, that’s for sure…. Unfortunately, reality itself has a hard time with that; since it doesn’t care one way or the other about relevance, other than how things may be relevant to its own existence…. and, I think we, or I, am now entering an area of discussion from which we may never find our way back….

I know for a fact, right now, that I’m completely lost. Whatever it was I had in mind when I started this, two paragraphs back, this isn’t it. I hate when that happens; losing one’s train of thought is actually not a matter of losing it, so much as the train runs itself off the tracks, which makes for a tough row to hoe, both for the train, and for the place where the train ends up, while running off the rails… Plus, I have not a single clue as to what any of this means, or how I got here, or how I can save this intro….

I suppose I COULD resort to emergency method #4, which always works to get us past this section; in fact, I am going to do that, as I simply can’t think of anything else that might work at this point…. I’m totally clueless right now, so, after using #4, I’ll need to take a break, to reboot my head for a few minutes…. Otherwise, I can’t be held responsible for what may happen in any of the other parts of today’s Pearl…. I’m thinking you might want to stand back a foot or two, while I do this….

Shall we Pearl?….

“After many years of study, scientists have determined that dogs bark just for the hell of it.” — Smithsonian

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

“Existing order thrives upon ignorance and lies. Objective truth and individual reason are feared above all.”– Smart Bee

For several years now, here, and in my conversations with other people, I’ve been talking about how little time we have left to fix the damage we’ve done to the Earth, with our complete disregard for the harm we are perpetrating…. we, of course, being the human race, the largest example on the planet, of a life-form commonly classified as “slime”….. Of course, all the other forms of slime are, in some way, beneficial in their relationship with the Earth; ours is the only species, out of MILLIONS of forms of life, which has deliberately chosen to foul our own nest, and, in the process, destroy the very tree in which we have chosen to build that nest….

I’ve ranted on this subject often, and don’t feel as if I’ve pulled any punches in stating the severity of the issue, or in stating the facts about how quickly it will all be upon us; it’s really too bad that nobody ever hears me, other than the few regular Gentle Readers who are kind, and fortunate, enough to come by often…. Those twenty or thirty ffolkes can be considered members of the choir, anyway, as almost all of them know of this issue, and agree with my assessment….. From an efficiency standpoint, I’d say that’s a wash…

None of my rants, however, have hit the main points involved in the issue as well as the following two of three articles; the columns are by two authors whose work I have touted previously…. Both of these men are clear-sighted, erudite, and logical in their assessment of what is going on, and though they have two completely diametric styles of writing, and reasoning, they both end up at the same point in this discussion, driving their points home with excellent accuracy, poignancy, and elegance…. The third link included is one you saw yesterday; this report from NASA on the state of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is what stimulated both columns….

I’m being nice again today, which, given the mess I made in the intro section, is probably a wise decision; I’m NOT going to rant on this, but, instead, will just ask you to read these two columns, and the report that caused them to be written…. I’ll also ask you to THINK about it, and try to decide how we, that’s you, and me, and everyone else, are going to go about dealing with this….

There will be a lot of tough decisions to make in coming years, not the least of which will be whether or not to place the blame for all of this where it belongs, smack in the lap of the corporate snakeheads, the BRC, and the priestly hierarchies, who have usurped society for their own selfish ends, thus bringing us to this impasse; I for one think we should figure out a way to use them as some kind of alternative fuel, to replace the carbon based oil products we are now codependent with, thus helping solve the energy crisis…. But, that’s me; I don’t have much sympathy for them, and would just as soon see them melted by a Klingon disruptor….

Read the following, ffolkes, it will scare you, and piss you off, if you have ANY sense at all…. Just remember, I can point you to the people who put us here, whenever you’re ready to deal with them as they need to be dealt with…. I’ll help, I promise…. I’ll also note that promises, being sacrosanct to me, are something I don’t offer lightly….

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/It-is-not-hard-to-follow-the-money-5475550.php

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2014/05/13/heart-attack-of-the-world/

http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/NASA-spots-worrisome-Antarctic-ice-sheet-melt-5471531.php?cmpid=hp-hc-nationworld

“Why not try peace? If we find war is better, it will not be difficult to fight again.” — Smart Bee

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I’m using a poem of my own today, mainly because I’m too lazy to go find one by someone else; these are right here in a folder, so they’re easy to find…. I like this one, (well, I suppose that’s not a surprise, since I wrote it…), and not just because it’s one of my latest…. I think it’s one of my better ones, but, then, I’m no judge, other than for what I like…. Hopefully, you’ll like it, too…. If not, well, just skip on down to the third section….

Blithely Untitled

A poem came to me today, willy, nilly,
along with a sharp blow to the head.
Since it left me feeling just a bit silly,
anything that rhymes should lessen the dread.

Manifesting destiny into a small, insidious group
we push on toward sanity, concentrating hard.
Full engaging moments spent navigating the loop
shall ever make a difference to victims found in the yard.

Still corpses of creatures, straight out of nightmare
fill up the corners of our tortured minds.
While ever saddened, the iconic male, most debonair,
gazes softly, ironically, at all the mutual interest he finds.

Moronic public statutes compel outbreaks of sanity,
responding to momentary impulses toward inducing peace.
Still, the motions get completed, in fertile stages of inanity
while the bulk of our inmates can find no surcease.

Reluctant motivation to continue is unbound,
striving to ascertain how far there yet remains to go.
No precognitive guesswork will make any less of a sound
to soften the final strains, to teach us to really know.

~~ gigoid ~~

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Y’all know what’s coming now, don’t you? I knew I couldn’t fool you; not in the state I’m in today…. I’m feeling lucky just to still be able to type, at this point; even that is getting problematic, as my thumb continues to throb and complain at each movement…. Ah well, such is life, and pain is no stranger…. I think, to avoid whining, or spewing, or any further blathering, we should go for a dive…. Shall we?….. No parameters, ffolkes, so wear something expendable, or that you at least don’t mind getting soiled…..

“Solon gave the following advice: “Consider your honour, as a gentleman, of more weight than an oath. Never tell a lie. Pay attention to matters of importance.”” — Diogenes Laertius (c. 200 AD) — Solon, xii

“If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.” — Confucius (B.C. 551-479)

“All cruelty springs from weakness.” — Seneca

“No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.” — George Bernard Shaw

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” — Lucius Anneaus Seneca

“There is something inside all of us that yearns not for reason but for mystery… not for penetrating clear thought but for the whisperings of the irrational… not for science but for wizardry disguised as science.. not for rationally founded influence but for magic.” — Karl Jaspers

You will note that there are only six pearls here…. about which it may be said, there is good reason aphorisms such as these are called “ancient wisdom”. Each of these certainly qualifies, though the one from G.B. Shaw may only be old, not quite ancient…. There are only six because I could NOT find the right one to finish it off…. However, I DO know exactly what will fit, and provide the proper finishing touch…. a certain picture I have in mind, to wit:
And there you have it….such as it is…..
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Today’s Pearl is one that you can chalk up to sheer stubbornness; if I wasn’t so damn stubborn, I’d have given up on this one long ago…. As it is, I’m done with it, so much so, I don’t even want to go back to edit and/or proof it…. Unfortunately for me, my intransigence extends into all areas of my existence…. So….

Well…. I suppose, given my state of mind (melted, mostly….), I’ll have to admit it’s not bad…. None of it seems toxic, anyway, so, I’m letting it go without any further fuss or bother…. Y’all will, like me, just have to take your chances…. If it helps, remember how much you paid to do this…. See ya, ffolkes….

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

It’s just like the other one, mate…..

Posted on May 14, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Just once, I wish…. Shit! Duck!…. Get down, you bozos, this is live fire!…. Crap, who wasn’t paying attention to the perimeter alarms? Where’s my M-16? Thanks, keep your head down…. Oh, okay, Stan, no worries, we’ll check those later…. Damn, ffolkes, sorry ’bout this…. Stay behind the armored plating, & you’ll be fine….

We haven’t had an attack like this in months, since putting in the new digital cams on the perimeter…. Looks like they finally hacked them, or brought them down somehow; Stan says the monitors are dark…. Well, hang on, they never bring enough firepower; this should only take a few moments to drive them off….

Okay, good work, troops…. Ffolkes, you can go ahead and take your assigned seats now…. we’ll be taking off for the pearl beds in a few minutes…. Anybody sustain any injuries they can’t deal with using the first aid kit in the seat compartment? Good…. Stan, you’ll check the troops, please, to make sure they’re all intact? Thanks…. Me, I’ll get into the cockpit, and fire this sucker up….

Well, THAT was exciting, yes? Nothing like some adrenaline to get the juices moving, is there? My issue with that is the four hours it takes me to get over those little rushes that are our gift from our little supercharger gland…. It’s kind of fun, feeling ten feet tall and covered with armor, though it does take its toll later, when the crash comes at the end of the rush….

I prefer to have copious quantities of a preferred adult beverage on hand to consume, or some other merely semi-legal substance that will instigate the same sort mellowing process, with fewer side effects than the alcohol…. I guess my “spirits” are getting old; I know my liver is, for sure…. Can’t take those mornings after anymore….

Oh, that? Ah, don’t sweat the small stuff; this morning’s attack was actually a planned exercise; I don’t advertise them ahead of time, for a lot of reasons, the main one being security…. But, the forces that were firing at us, though using live ammo, would only have aimed to wound, not kill. The exercise is part of a mutual-assistance agreement I have with another libertarian down the street…. Once a month, unscheduled, we each mount a surprise attack on the other’s property, just to keep us each in tune, and give some practice to the shock troops who will be taking the brunt of any defensive casualties, as part of their contract….

Of course, all of the above paragraphs are a complete fabrication….. I don’t believe there are more than three or four words of truth in any of them, or all of them together, even though I padded them as much as possible…. What d’ya think, eh? Not too bad, and certainly not the average opening you’ll find anywhere else… I do try to find something new and fresh for y’all, and sometimes it works better than others, I’d say…. Whether or not THIS is one of those if for y’all to say….

Regardless of how it turned out, though, it IS an intro section, and, as such, there are certain regulations that must be observed…. Not that we pay all that much attention to them, but, we do observe them, from afar, with great admiration…. In spite of our lack of respect for those regulations, we do keep them in mind when composing this, even though WE are only ME; I just fall too easily into the royal ‘we’, so easily adopted when using the famous “sotto voce”…. as we do here, unashamedly, we admit, but, to great effect…. sort of…. To frequent effect, anyway….

Having thus used it, without the typical abuse that can follow, mostly, I believe I have reached the minimum limit of the aforementioned regulations, so, I’m going to summarily end this, hoping to go on to something a bit more entertaining…. I know, this wasn’t bad, but, I didn’t hear any outright guffaws, so, it needs a bit of work…. In the meantime….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Anyone who isn’t confused really doesn’t understand the situation.” — Edward R. Murrow

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Any one of the following articles would, under most circumstances, be sufficient to produce a rant, if all things were equal…. At the moment, for a day or two, they are NOT equal…. Mother Nature is giving us a taste of how miserable the weather can be, and of how unpredictable it has become in these days prior to the completely chaotic time to come in the future, as the effects of global warming become more pronounced…. For now, She’s giving us a small heat wave, in May, with temps in the area threatening to hit triple digits….

Fortunately for me, the town I live in only expects to get into the mid-90’s, Fahrenheit, which isn’t too bad, but, given my decreased tolerance for heat, is more than enough to put me into a comatose state for much of the day, motionless in front of a fan on high speed…. I just can’t take it like I used to be able to do. Right now, it’s pretty nice outside, at a bit past 4 AM, but, the air is still, there’s no fog, as we usually see in summer, and it already feels muggy…. These are typically NOT good signs for the rest of the day; they tell me that HEAT is on its way….

As such, my energy levels are dropping dramatically, as I KNOW I’ll be needing it all to keep myself still, and cool, for much of the day, confining any physical activity to the morning, or late evening hours. I went to the bother of collecting these articles, so, I’m leaving them here, for you to peruse in your spare time; they’re scary enough all by themselves, even without my added commentary designed to bring out the obvious flaws or lies that you’ll see in them… especially the first one…

The two on either end are quite scary in their implications; the potential scenarios that have evolved, and those yet to formulate, from those issues, are NOT comforting, to say the least…. The one in the middle, on the FCC decision, is more encouraging, as it seems the noise we consumers made about it is having an effect on the officials involved…. YAY! It’s nice when so many people speak that they HAVE to listen….

But, I’m already tired, and sweaty, and it’s only 0423 in the morning, so, from this point, you’re on your own with these…. I WILL follow them with a five-star pearl to drive some of the points home, or, as in this case, to provide some contrasting information, in an ethical sense…. Enjoy this little taste of current events, please, or, at least, LISTEN UP….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/NASA-spots-worrisome-Antarctic-ice-sheet-melt-5471531.php?cmpid=hp-hc-nationworld

http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2014/05/12/fcc-chair-said-to-be-backing-down-on-plan-to-destroy-net-neutrality/?cmpid=hp-hc-bustech

https://news.yahoo.com/spying-on-millions-of-americans-living-in-the–united-states-of-secrets-183952032.html

“Sanity is for the masses who don’t know how to handle insanity.” — Tim Sailer

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” — Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

“The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one’s self.” — Nietzsche

“The measure of man is what he does with power.” — Pittacus

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: (1) not going all the way; and (2) not starting.” — Buddha

Ffolkes, I just can’t make it any clearer than that, without resorting to a rant….

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Since this will be an entirely fresh Pearl today, I’d best go with a poem of my own, to save the reputation of anyone else I might choose….

Accentuated Lessons

Bold statements of calculated intent
Become common rule of the malcontent.
Avarice assumes such attractive wear
Beguiling deception, illusory and fair.

Grasping and pulling with ghostly hands
Legally proper in all the signatory lands.
Seeking and finding each vulnerable soul
Anguish as payment for exacting the toll.

Wraiths of commerce’s invisible dead guards
Still haunt the dreams left in sad empty yards.
While absentee nobles sit in stiffly elegant splendor
Served by sad-faced detainees in abject surrender.

Escape from reality is illusory at best
Often we falter and fail its daily test.
Only when focused on inner strength
Does peace stay with us for any length.

Peace lies within, always…..

~~ gigoid ~~

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

Having decided to forgo a rant today, that means this will be another old-school pearl…. Yes, I’m being nice today; I’m too hot & bothered to spend the energy to be a curmudgeon… Enjoy!….

“Apparently I’m insane. But I’m one of the happy kinds!” — John Young

“In a technological world where anything is possible, paranoia will reign supreme.” — Stephen Crandall

“Never encourage Politicians, Fools, or Punsters!” — Smart Bee

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“Common and vulgar people ascribe all ill that they feel to others; people of little wisdom ascribe to themselves; people of much wisdom, to no one.” — Epictetus

” … for these truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being … For a principle which everyone must have to understand anything that is, is not a hypothesis … Evidently then, such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the subject in the same respect.” — Aristotle

“All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.” — Albert Camus

And sometimes, they end on that same silly note…..

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After reading this, in editing/proofing mode, I think it would be best if I keep this closing section relatively short…. There’s too much in the above that could construed as legally actionable, or, at the very least, taken wrongly by those who find it hard to operate BOTH of their functional neurons at the same instant…. which is a clandestine insult those self-same few will never get, as it flies, serenely, right over their heads….

In any case, I heard an old saw once that says an author should always leave his audience wanting a bit more…. Unable to decide if I have reached that point, or not, I’ll concede its relevance, and just take my leave…. See you tomorrow, ffolkes….. if I don’t melt….

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

An Andorean warrior, curiously in mufti, stares in wonder….

Posted on May 13, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

One technique I’ve developed, in the past two-plus years of writing this blog, has to do with this introductory section, which, if you’ve more than one time logged in to read here, you are aware the intro has long been my nemesis, so far as consistency goes…. Nothing I’ve been able to come up with has ever struck me as the one sure way to go, so, every morning, I sit and stare at the blank white screen, filled with as much ignorance as I ever allow myself to experience, in regards to what the hell to put there to fill up the vast void of white that confronts me, here, and in my nightmares….

Now, consistency, as you also may know, is NOT one of our watchwords; one of history’s great minds once told us that it is not necessarily a good thing, defining it as merely a concern of those with no real genius in them (“the hobgoblin of tiny minds” I think was the phrase used…. and, I forget, whether it was GB Shaw, or GK Chesterton, or exactly who first said it…. It was one of those eighteenth or nineteenth century Brit lit icons….

It will come to me, whereupon I’ll insert it into the narrative, probably in some parentheses, as here….. I know how y’all love it when I editorialize in the middle of stuff….). Where was I? Oh, right, consistency…

Since it doesn’t concern us overly, I’ve never worried about achieving it to any significant degree, at least, not here…. There ARE parts of my life where I’m very consistent, but, nobody really cares much how well I can cook, or tie my shoes, so, it’s not really an issue for me…. except here…. Oh, I don’t really CARE if I’m consistent; I just want it to be uniformly good, or readable, or whatever adjective you choose to say I like people to like what I write…. If they get either a chuckle, or a random thought about morality, ethics, or compassionate love for others, out of what I produce, well, I’m good with that….

If they don’t, I do try to give folks, and ffolkes, every opportunity to object, or to disagree, or to otherwise express their thoughts and/or feelings about what I’ve written….. Since that’s true, and the ball’s in their court, I feel as if I’ve done all I can do….

That, as you are well aware, is something in which I firmly believe, i.e., “All you can do is all you can do”, so, I feel as if I’m pretty well entitled to be guilt-free, at least in that respect…. Of course, there are always those who might disagree with that assessment, but, for those misguided few, we have a special procedure, involving large plastic anal probes, and a number of excitable young primates borrowed from a local zoo…

Ooh, that’s nasty! It might be good at this point to remind y’all about today’s special offer…. Today, and today only, we will be offering each and every participant in this…. well, whatever it is… each one in attendance, whether recently buffed or polished, will be supplied with their very own portion of whoop-ass, and the opportunity to let it out on a real, actual, dyed-in-the-wool politician, which we have taken the trouble to capture and sedate, so you won’t even have to tie them down to whoop on them…. Each one is fresh from a recent press conference, so you know they’ve been lying; thus, no guilt necessary for putting them through your personal wringer….

Okay, I’m done now…. I’m relatively awake, have consumed sufficient coffee that homicide is no longer an issue, and ready to move on to another form of personal torture…. I can’t say that today’s intro comes up to the standard set yesterday (that was a good one, I thought….), but, hey, it’s got six paragraphs, or more, so, it’s legal, and that, as you know, is all I really care about…. In fact, having thus completed the obligatory number of references, we can now do this….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Damage control is easy. Reading Klingon — that’s hard.” — Commander Montgomery Scott, Star Trek IV, The Search for Spock

(It was Ralph Waldo, the Emerson, and the quote says, precisely: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” And, yes, I was totally wrong about the author’s nationality, though not the time period….)

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

I am beset today by the onset of heat; the temperature here on the coast is supposed to go into the nineties this afternoon, and I’m NOT looking forward to it at all. I’m no longer the young stud I used to be, and can’t seem to tolerate the heat like I could in my younger days…. I used to go to Arizona in the summertime, when in my teens; if California wasn’t hot enough for me, I liked to go visit my uncle, in Tempe, spending time wandering around the desert, dodging snakes and Indian spirits, & soaking in the rays…

Now, these days, I don’t tolerate it well when it gets above 85º F, or so, and it’s supposed to hit 94 today. My intention is to either sit in a cool tub all afternoon, or go somewhere air-conditioned, and pretend to be interested in whatever is going on there…. for as long as necessary to avoid getting sweaty and/or miserable….

At this point, you may be asking yourself, “what does this have to do with a Pearl?” The answer to that would be, “not much”, but, enough…. It means that I’m not going to rant in this section, as I can’t find it in me to do so this morning…. It is already warmer than I like, so, I’m going to get this Pearl done as quickly as I can, so I can go seek out cooler pastures for the day…. Hence, the following seven-star pearl, sans parameters, our fastest product, construction-wise…. Enjoy, ffolkes, it should be a good one….

“Sometimes I think I understand everything… Then I regain consciousness.” — Smart Bee

“So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Life of Pericles

—-> If you cut here, you’ll ruin your monitor. <—-

“Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, ix, 19

“As the tempest and the thunder affect not the sun or the stars, but spend their fury on stones and trees below; so injuries ascend not to the Soul of the great, but waste themselves on such as are those who offer them.” — Akhenaton? (c. B.C. 1375)

“The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.” — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

“Always tell the truth–if you want to make trouble.” — Smart Bee

See? Told ya….. (It’s all in the wrist….)

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

I found this poem in Smart Bee, hanging around in prose format…. I really like it, so, I tried to break it down into its poetic frames, or verses, but, I’m not sure I got it the way Rainer intended it to be when he wrote it… If you feel it should be different, feel free to leave a comment, showing how you’d do it; I’m sure somebody can do it better, and I’ve tried long enough… Enjoy, please, it’s a good one, even if the cadence or structure is a bit off…..

Again, Again!

Again, again, even if we know the countryside of love,
and the tiny churchyard with its names mourning,
and the chasm, more and more silent, terrifying,
into which the others dropped:
we walk out together anyway beneath the ancient trees,
we lie down again, again,
among the flowers, and face the sky.

— Rainer Maria Rilke ~~

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

This Pearl has turned on me a bit…. it’s taken me almost two full hours to get this far, and I haven’t ranted at all. Not only that, but, I still don’t have a clue as to what should go here…. I’m not filled with enough angst to produce anything worthwhile in the way of a rant, nor do I really want to let Smart Bee loose again; it might get the wrong idea…. What to do, what to do…. I know, I’ll take a short break, and see what comes up when I return…..

I’m back, and I’ll bet you never even noticed I was gone, did ya?… S’okay, I didn’t expect to be that long, but, got busy spending money online…. more’s the pity… Any who, I decided to go with an older rant, from a couple of years ago, about one of my favorite subjects, to wit: human intelligence, and/or the glaring lack thereof in today’s world…. Enjoy!….

From 6/26/2012:

IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.” — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

When I picked out this pearl, I had intended to write a piece exploring human intelligence. However, my brain had a different plan, and all of the thoughts that I had marshaled to use went into the wind, poof, gone….. Since I’m feeling a bit lazy today, I’m keeping the pearl, and writing something about it anyway, so there….

Ranting about human stupidity is an endless challenge; there is so much of it to pick from that the choosing becomes harder than the actual writing. Every day’s news brings more examples of how dumb folks can be, and finding just one that is acceptable is merely a matter of deciding which is the better choice from a humorous view, or a serious view, or whatever viewpoint from which we will write. I’ve yet to see a single day when there weren’t at least four or five instances of stories that illustrate how talented people are at finding new ways to show how stupid they really are…..

“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.” — Lazarus Long

We’ve all seen this one, I think; if not this one by Robert Heinlein, then one from another author or philosopher. It’s a pretty common theme, after all. Often, examples can be found on the front pages, especially during election years. But the back pages also carry numerous examples, taken from real life…. such as this one….

Back when I was attending the University of Utah, The Daily Utah Chronicle ran a joke ad for a debate between Phil Donahue and Whiskers the Lamb. Over 30 people showed up. (what they were expecting, God only knows.) — Smart Bee

In order to further prove my point, here is an example taken from today’s news….

http://www.fark.com/comments/7182500

This link leads to a very short article from Yahoo news, and is a perfect example of how the world is going mad, step by step….. I’m not even going to comment on the article, as it’s already too hard to think about it without laughing at the absurdity of the whole issue…..

Okay, I think my point is proved. The human race is pretty stupid, and getting stupider all the time. Sure, we’ve got men in space, we’ve raised the average age to 72 with medical advances, we’ve been to the moon. But we also are still making war on each other. We still abuse animals, and women, and children, and any thing else that is weaker, and will stand still. We are still killing ourselves, and denying that it is even happening.

My only hope at this point is for something to happen to change human nature, to turn us away from this path we’ve chosen to walk. I hope it will happen, but I’m afraid the power of stupidity may just be greater than the power of hope….

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

Well, there you have it, such as it may be…. I’m certainly not going to do it again, at least, not until tomorrow, when I flog myself once again. to get up at this ungodly hour, while my frail old body has a modicum of use left in it, and do this all over, but, different… I hope. Until that time, I bid thee adieu….

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

A schlemiel, or a putz?… Not an easy choice….

Posted on May 12, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

There are moments, when I sit to begin each day, when my mind wanders, into places that other people know not…. which is something about which they should be very glad…. But, in a real sense, that could easily be said of just about anyone’s mind, not just mine, so, y’all probably have an idea of the kinds of places I mean; I don’t believe for a minute that I’m all THAT different than the rest of mankind, even if a great deal of the available evidence says so….

This difference is one I’ve always tended to cultivate, actually, as the general run of ffolkes in the world are involved in stuff that holds no interest for me; they pay attention to people that I consider to be manipulative and self-serving, and spend a lot of time wasted, to my way of thinking, engaging in activities that don’t either improve their lot, or make them, and those they love, happy, both of which I see as our primary goals in this reality. Other ffolkes, I know, seem to think there are goals more worthwhile, but, to my mind, those two cover all of our REAL responsibilities in Life….

Anything else you hear in place of those activities is most likely something someone else told you, or convinced you to believe, in spite of how silly it sounds, or how much it doesn’t seem to help at all…. I know that all of my life there have been numerous silly asses who have tried to convince me of the rightness of their ideas (about God, about Life, about Government….), each of them more strident and more insistent than the last….

Fortunately, in my mind, I learned at a young age (4-5 years…) how to spot them, determining back then to NOT listen to them, as they were only trying to get me to do what THEY wanted, not what I thought I needed to do…. and somehow, what seemed right to me, with my young, unfettered mind, and no prejudices, was that what THEY were telling me was a bunch of bullshit; it was ALL so unbelievable, I couldn’t buy into it, so I’d just nod my head, and go my way without bothering to pay much attention…. I believe it drove several Sunday School teachers to drink….

I’m not sure what prompted this, except possibly the email I found in my inbox this morning…. Supposedly, it’s from Google, but, the link it wants me to connect to is suspicious, to say the least, (it connect to a private domain, with a dot.me suffix, so, I suspect it’s some hacker, phishing for whatever idiots he can find to click blindly on the link, just the way they are instructed to do in the letter, which threatens to close my account if I don’t click on it…. I didn’t, of course, and will check with Google later….. Somehow, I don’t think they’re sending out official emails at 0317 AM, to get people to verify their accounts….

But, because most people in this country are programmed to obey instructions from official sources, this guy will no doubt end up with a lot of fools who are giving them a clear path to steal their information, all because they never learned to use the crap detector their brain came equipped with when they were born…. They forgot, or got distracted, and never used or registered the software in their head that allows them to see the world with clear eyes, unhindered by the delusions/illusions that much of the world uses as their basis for belief…. I’ll say this, it’s a lot simpler when you can see the shit coming, ffolkes; it allows one the time to duck, thus saving us from getting hit in the face with that crap, or getting it on our clothing….

Okay, so, there you have it…. A complete, unbearably long, complicated, rant-like diatribe, right there at the front of the Pearl, where it can do the most damage, and serve as today’s excuse for an intro…. Six paragraphs should certainly be enough to satisfy any official myrmidons, and the unofficial ones aren’t armed, so I don’t pay them any mind…. For now, this will do, and, since my thumb and wrist are beginning to get rather painful as I type, it would no doubt be best to get on with today’s effort….

Shall we Pearl?…..

REVEILLE, n. A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted. In the American army it is ingeniously called “rev-e-lee,” and to that pronunciation our countrymen have pledged their lives, their misfortunes, and their sacred dishonor. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

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

Since my thumb is paining me, I’ll switch this intended rant about Ed Snowden, and the aftereffects of his heroic act of bravery, to a newer model Pearl, where I will provide links, then comment on the contents of the included articles, and the subject of those reports…. Let’s see what I’ve collected for us to poke at today….

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/09/westminster-may-have-to-concede-edward-snowden-had-a-point

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/10/the-battle-to-retake-our-privacy-can-be-won-in-the-halls-of-congress-really

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/guide-deceptions-word-games-obfuscations-officials-use-mislead-public-about-nsa

https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/07/nsa_lexicon_how_james_clapper_and_other_u_s_officials_mislead_the_american.html

“First as to speech. That privilege rests upon the premise that there is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that it may not be lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated. It need not rest upon the further premise that there are no propositions that are not open to doubt; it is enough, even if there are, that in the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy. Hence it has been again and again unconditionally proclaimed that there are no limits to the privilege so far as words seek to affect only the hearers’ beliefs and not their conduct. The trouble is that conduct is almost always based upon some belief, and that to change the hearer’s belief will generally to some extent change his conduct, and may even evoke conduct that the law forbids.” — [cf. Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty,– University of Chicago Press, 1952, The Art and Craft of Judging: — The Decisions of Judge Learned Hand, — edited and annotated by Herschel Shanks, The MacMillian Company, 1968.]

The five or six articles above are a series of reports on the NSA spying fiasco, complete with some articles that show us just how the assholes who run the spy agencies, and the politicians who are supporting them in their paranoia, all tend to use a different set of words than the other English speaking members of this country, having decided to assign new meanings to old words, so they can justify the lies they tell on a regular basis, merely pointing at their actual words, and telling us we didn’t understand what they actually meant by them….

I won’t belabor the point here, as the articles are pretty clear about how they do it, showing EXACTLY what words they have altered to suit their purposes, thus, in THEIR minds, making what they say the truth, not the lie it actually is, to anyone using the language in a normal fashion. They do it on purpose, to try to hide their chicanery, and, in many cases, they may actually BELIEVE their own lies…. which makes them all the more dangerous to the rest of us….

“Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” — William Pitt (1759-1806) speech on the India Bill, Nov. 18, 1783

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/10/judge-says-arkansas-gay-marriage-ban-is-unconstitutional

This one is here not because it is terribly controversial, (to me, this is no longer a question of anything but time until the laws of this country reflect reality more closely in this respect….), but, rather, because it is yet another example of the STUPIDITY displayed by so many in government….. Once again, because the Constitution is what it is, the illegal discriminatory laws are overturned by yet ANOTHER Federal judge who can read….

Yet, in spite of this, and in the face of EVERY OTHER decision that preceded it, in every case where such discrimination is challenged, the idiot assholes in the Arkansas Attorney General’s office are planning to appeal this, just as all the OTHER fools who keep trying to force their own beliefs on the rest of us keep trying to do, in the eight or nine states where this identical scenario has already been played out….

Talk about banging your head against the wall, to show your objection to having built it in the first place; it’s rather counter-productive to refuse to see what is real…. Sad to say, though, these folks are accustomed to believing many things which have no basis in reality, so I suppose it isn’t really surprising they would keep performing the same unreasoned response to an issue whose conclusion is no longer in doubt…. Stupid is as stupid does, as Forrest’s mama used to say…..

The Bible is true this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.

— Jordan Henderson

(Just for fun…. if you don’t already know it, look up the meaning of the Latin phrase, “ipse dixit”….)

“Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Give a man religion and he’ll starve to death praying for a fish.” — Smart Bee

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/A-look-at-all-that-Benghazi-stands-for-5469335.php

I finally figured out this whole Benghazi issue…. After reading some of the historical perspective presented in this article, I can see that most of it, if not all, is just an argument between the two major political parties about who can lie the best, and when they’re allowed to do so…. It’s all a mass of pots calling each other black, the whole thing…. The whole mess apparently began because the elephantine idiots in the Republican Party thought they could make some points with the public by making a stink over the lies told by the other side, the donkeyites in the Democratic Party

(I find it interesting to note the two terms for these parties, one hundred years ago, were reversed in terms of party philosophy…. The Republicans were the party of the people, and the Democrats were the rich fat cats; now it’s the opposite, image-wise… Philosophically, of course, neither one resembles anything close to a democratic organization, not anymore; they’re both oligarchies, plain and simple….)

The Republicans, in their self-imposed image of “disloyal opposition” have created an unholy cacophony of accusations and allegations of conspiracy, most of which came straight from their own imaginary fears of things that MIGHT have been true, if reality were not what it is….

The Democrats, having been caught making a paper trail, of their attempts at spin-doctoring all the information about the incident, are naturally upset at the Republicans, who are the reigning champions of lying to the public without a qualm or quiver of guilt. The Dems are upset because the Repubs are accusing THEM of lying, which is actually, to me, rather hilarious….

I mean, talk about chutzpah! The Republican Party, calling someone ELSE a liar! It HAS to be one of the most egregiously arrogant, ignorant stances I’ve ever seen, having personally watched over 50 years of this circus called American politics. In the last national election, in 2012, I believe the average speech by their candidate, Romney, never passed 50% on the fact-checking done by several organizations…

This translates to mean the candidate they chose to represent them to the world at large was lying through his teeth, at least half of every time he opened his mouth to speak…. This is a statistic you may check yourself, but, I’m pretty sure of its accuracy, as I read the reports at the time; they all had him telling an untruth with every other statement he made…. I should add, most of the rest of what I heard was either wrong-headed, selfish, or completely lacking in compassion for anyone other than his own narrow group of supporters…..

Yet, these same liars are upset because the Dems lied to the public about this attack on an embassy, an attack that came as much of a surprise to them as it did to the entire rest of the world…. The attack wasn’t one of those big, planned events…. It was a clusterfuck of incompetence, all around, diplomatically, militarily, and intelligence-wise, on BOTH sides of the issue, and the war; nobody knew it would happen until it did…. Then, of course, the media and the pols get hold of it, and it becomes an issue for them to exploit in the public eye, for their own aggrandizement….

And people wonder why I don’t like ANY of them…..

Well, that’s certainly enough for one day…. even I can only take so much of the news before getting nauseous, so, rather than use up more of my anti-nausea meds, ( medications which double, fortunately, as pain relievers…. Cannabis is wonderfully flexible, sort of a multi-tasker when it comes to what it can do for us….) I’ll leave you with these final pearls, to send us on our way to the next section….

“The simple realization that there are other points of view is the beginning of wisdom. Understanding what they are is a great step. The final test is understanding why they are held.” — Charles M. Campbell

“In a state-run society the government promises you security. But it’s a false promise, predicated on the idea that the opposite of security in risk. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of security is insecurity, and the only way to overcome insecurity is to take risks. The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side.” — Theodore Forstmann

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

I’m going with whatever serendipitously throws itself under the wheels of this bus we’re on…. Here is a thought, and a poem, from two classical Chinese poets, to whose translators I offer my complete admiration, and thanks, for such excellent work….

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

Alone, Looking for Blossoms Along the River

The sorrow of riverside blossoms inexplicable,
And nowhere to complain — I’ve gone half crazy.
I look up our southern neighbor. But my friend in wine
Gone ten days drinking. I find only an empty bed.

A thick frenzy of blossoms shrouding the riverside,
I stroll, listing dangerously, in full fear of spring.
Poems, wine — even this profusely driven, I endure.
Arrangements for this old, white-haired man can wait.

A deep river, two or three houses in bamboo quiet,
And such goings on: red blossoms glaring with white!
Among spring’s vociferous glories, I too have my place:
With a lovely wine, bidding life’s affairs bon voyage.

Looking east to Shao, its smoke filled with blossoms,
I admire that stately Po-hua wineshop even more.
To empty golden wine cups, calling such beautiful
Dancing girls to embroidered mats — who could bear it?

East of the river, before Abbot Huang’s grave,
Spring is a frail splendor among gentle breezes.
In this crush of peach blossoms opening ownerless,
Shall I treasure light reds, or treasure them dark?

At Madame Huang’s house, blossoms fill the paths:
Thousands, tens of thousands haul the branches down.
And butterflies linger playfully — an unbroken
Dance floating to songs orioles sing at their ease.

I don’t so love blossoms I want to die. I’m afraid,
Once they are gone, of old age still more impetuous.
And they scatter gladly, by the branchful. Let’s talk
Things over, little buds —open delicately, sparingly.

~~ Tu Fu ~~

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

This is going better than I’d hoped, so rather than push my luck, we’re going old school now; I’ll take my chances with the critics…. Enjoy, ffolkes, serendipity has been good to me so far today, so, I have high hopes for this pearl….

“All history shows that every man who has authority is led to abuse it; he does not stop until he comes up against limitations…Things must be so arranged that one authority checks another.” — Montesquieu

“Imagine me going around with a pot belly. It would mean political ruin.” — Adolf Hitler

“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.” — Goethe

“What a fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking that by his laughter he shows superiority instead of latent idiocy.” — M. Corelli

“Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.” — Jean de la Fontaine

“Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.” — Aesop

“Fear has its use but cowardice has none.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Hmm….. Sometimes, pearls can be dense, unfathomable, inscrutable…. This one certainly is all of those, even though the actual quotes are not…. I mean, hey, maybe the one by Adolf requires some thought, but, the rest should be pretty clear…. Together, though, it’s a bit of a poser, so, just flow with it; it will come, if and when it does, and not before…. Some pearls are like that….Yeah, they are….

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

No matter what anybody says, I’m NOT doing it over!…. Nope, no way! This is actually a good one, so, as John Lennon said, so aptly, “Let it be”….. See ya, ffolkes…..

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

Distracted by a classic diversion…. cinnamon-glazed potato cakes….

Posted on May 10, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Soft, puffy, pristine white clouds scudded lazily across the morning sky, looking like nothing so much as huge balls of cotton, tumbling through the blue vastness, dazzling in the bright sun. The chirping calls of thousands of awakening birds echo through the trees, as the mundane creatures of the night silently retreat to their dens, giving way to those who hunt by day….

One of these predators, walking on two legs, is up, moving through the dappled light between the trees…. With rapid steps, he heads east, toward the sun, moving silently between the trees as the bright orb rises slowly, higher and higher, laying a blanket of oppressive heat over the landscape, stirred by the gentlest of breezes, enough only to make one wish for more….

Whoever that is, walking through the tropical forest (it’s too hot, too early to be anywhere but tropical…) is on their own today; I don’t care what he’s hunting, or how hot it gets…. It is now 0215 AM, and I’m up, wide awake, having slept for eight straight…. an unusual occurrence, to say the least…. I won’t be going back to sleep awhile yet, as I slept right through two pain pills (thank you mary jane!)…. Now, here I am, at this ungodly hour, wide awake, nerves dancing with massive dyskinesia, the result of missing two doses of Norco…. That alone will take an hour, before the pill I took hits, & I can stop jitterbugging in my chair, like a junkie who needs a fix….

So, I began with a landscape/story opening, just for practice, and to see how my mind is loosening up so far today…. Not too bad, all in all, so, there may be some hope for this process yet; I’ll be gracious, and try to assume the WORST is not necessarily going to happen…. I’m not yet ready to completely give up my curmudgeon status, so, I won’t be anticipating any Pollyanna issues, such as positive proof of the death of Murphy; however, I WILL try to keep a bit of a positive outlook about the future, especially as it pertains to this….

That isn’t to say I’ll be any more lucid or coherent than I usually am; no, I won’t make promises I can’t keep…. But, it does mean I probably won’t bite anyone, at least, not until someone actually SAYS something really stupid to me…. The mere act of being stupid in my vicinity won’t be held against them, beyond a bark or two, and I’ll break tradition so far as to go unarmed for the first couple of hours, until these homicidal urges pass….

By “unarmed”, I mean, of course, I won’t carry any guns, crossbows, spears, atl-atl’s, or other types of projectile weaponry…. Items such as knives, cords, shuriken, that sort of hidden tool set, doesn’t count toward the state of being unarmed, as I carry at least one of each of those at ALL times…. Just an old habit learned at me father’s knee, so to speak, and not subject to alteration…. You know how a Christian feels naked without clothes? Well, that’s me, without my standard tool set…

As is patently obvious at this point, though, it becomes clear that this intro section IS subject to alteration, and thank goodness for small favors, eh?…. In fact, I’ve already blathered sufficiently, following the fictional opening, to be able to legally call this an intro, and be done with it…. That, given the time of day, and my state of mind, may just save my ass, and, by logical concatenation, yours as well…. I find it to be a very good policy to keep the asses of my Gentle Readers intact, insofar as it is at all possible to do so; it makes everybody happier, especially my insurance guy….

With that in mind, I believe we’ll bring this to a halt; I’ll be firm, as it appears to be making an attempt to drag itself on, preventing me from either finishing this, or getting on with the rest of today’s effort…. But, as I say, firm…. so, with no further ado, we apply #4….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“We are all bozos on the bus of life, lunatics every one, but there is a difference; the one who can analyze his own delusion is often called a learned person, a philosopher.” — unknown smart guy, found in Smart Bee

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

“The public weal requires that men should betray and lie and massacre.” — Michael de Montaigne (1533-1592) — Essays, Book iii, Chap. i, Of Profit and Honesty

http://www.sfgate.com/business/energy/article/Obama-at-Wal-Mart-touts-efficiency-angers-labor-5465332.php

When I first saw this article, I wasn’t going to react; it was on one of those recent days when my pain level was through the roof, and it seemed too much effort to get into…. but, today, I’m okay, for the nonce, at least, so, we’ll take a shot at it, and see how it goes….

In truth, this article is one that provides us with a number of issues to discuss, so we should probably pick one to focus on, so we don’t get too lengthy, or involved to the point of distraction, & spend the entire day at it, creating an opus that nobody will ever read…. too long, too windy, too pedantic… So, lets see…. We could go for the obviously metaphorical conjunction of a “transparent” president using one of the country’s most reviled corporations as an example of green technology commitment; this, of course allows for a discussion of the minimum wage, and healthcare reform, either of which is a subject Wal-Mart fails at, totally…..

Or, we could talk about how Obama is now, finally, after six years in office, getting around to doing something about the climate change issue, as he promised in his first campaign, regarding an issue which, now, is even further away from being fixable than it was in 2008….

Or, we could talk about how Obama, and the BRC in general, are becoming less and less clandestine in their efforts to conceal the lies that are their stock in trade….. (Now, don’t start on me…. He’s a politician, therefore, he lies…. That is not a theorem, that is a proven fact, and arguing about it is counterproductive…. Please see the original pearl, at the beginning, by Montaigne; if they knew this in the 1500’s, it is certainly not disproved by any of today’s political figures…. They ALL lie, ffolkes, get used to it….)

I voted for Barry…. At the time, he was the only logical choice, since the only decision to make was which was the lesser of the evils, in the field from which we were forced to choose…. But, I was never convinced of his actual honesty, as the previous four years of his administration had already demonstrated he was no different than any other man who occupied that office in the last hundred years or more…. They all lied ffolkes, regularly, and with no shame; if you don’t believe that, then, I’m sorry, there is nothing at all that can be done to save your sorry ass from the consequences of that belief….

I’ve previously ranted numerous times on this subject, so I shouldn’t have to demonstrate any further just how often the lies are spread; my only source of data comes from the daily news, which is available to everyone, just as it is to me. All of the evidence needed to convict any politician is right there, in the public record for anyone to read, at any time of the day or night…..

The hardest part for me is to realize that, much of the time, the lies aren’t even being covered up any more; more and more often, they are being left right out there in the public eye, obviously untrue, yet, the Beloved Ruling Class says nothing to augment, defend, or alter them….. whereupon, the public just accepts it with resignation, or with deliberately ignorant enthusiasm…. Myself, I find it hard to be enthusiastic over having my ass reamed on a consistent basis by those who ostensibly work for me….

Ah well…. I could rant all day on this subject; there is a lot of evidence that supports it, and it’s easy to pick out examples that prove my contention. I mean, examples of political prevarication are all over the news, every day; one need only look, to find…. But, I feel too good this morning, physically, to spend any more time at this; I still have to read TODAY’s news, so, I figure it would be best to let go of what came from a couple days ago…. There will be plenty more data for me to use, should I choose to take up this gauntlet another time, I’m sure….

After all, all I have to do is watch TV, and wait for one of them to open their lips…. At that point, I know I’ll have another choice lie to add to my evidential pile….

“It is an unhappy lot which finds no enemies.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 499

“It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.” — Mark Twain

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

I wish I had known Oscar Wilde…. I think we would have had a lot to talk about…. Plus, the society of his time hadn’t a clue as to what to do about him, so, I think we would have been, in that sense, brothers in arms…. I like some of his poems, too, and though this isn’t one of them, it IS a good one…. I don’t always go with my own tastes; I try to be flexible, acknowledging those works that deserve it, even though it may not be completely to my liking…. This is okay; it’s a very good poem…. I just like others better…. Nonetheless, enjoy, please….

A Vision

Two crowned Kings, and One that stood alone
With no green weight of laurels round his head,
But with sad eyes as one uncomforted,
And wearied with man’s never-ceasing moan
For sins no bleating victim can atone,
And sweet long lips with tears and kisses fed.
Girt was he in a garment black and red,
And at his feet I marked a broken stone
Which sent up lilies, dove-like, to his knees.
Now at their sight, my heart being lit with flame,
I cried to Beatrice, ‘Who are these? ‘
And she made answer, knowing well each name,
‘AEschylos first, the second Sophokles,
And last (wide stream of tears!) Euripides.’

~~ Oscar Wilde ~~

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

I’m a bit disappointed in my rant today…. It’s long enough, but seems a bit disorganized to my mind; not enough vitriol, or anger on hand to drive it, I suppose. That’s what happens when I sleep so long; my attitude improves, and my ranting goes wonky…. SIGH…. Oh well, such is life…. I can make up for it all here, though, by putting together an excellent old-school pearl, thus balancing out the scales of reality…. Hey, we’re all entitled to our fantasies, right?…. Right….

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.” — Winston Churchill

“Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero!” [Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!] — Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) (65-8 B.C.)

“Not only is life a bitch, it has puppies.’ — Adrienne E. Gusoff

So the struck eagle, stretch’d upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
View’d his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing’d the shaft that quiver’d in his heart.

— Lord Byron (1788-1824) — English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Line 826

They say there is strangeness, too dangerous, in our theaters and bookstore shelves.
Those who know what’s best for us, must rise and save us from ourselves.
Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand;
ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand.

— Rush

“The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of in illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.” — Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

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

Sometimes, I look back over a pearl, such as this one, and I think to myself, “Wow.” Then, it occurs to me, I didn’t have a damn thing to do with what just took place here, not with any consciousness of doing so, anyway. Yet, taken as a progression of thoughts/ideas, in this instance, the seven pearls that constitute the greater pearl, in the context of today’s Pearl at large, still manage to follow a logical train of ideas to a conclusion that is at once infinite, yet, specific and precise, though not annoyingly so…. Much better than I can do myself, more’s the pity….

😉

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

If the process of putting out a Daily Pearl of Virtual Wisdom were this easy every day, I’d probably end up posting more often than once a day…. That isn’t to say this was a snap; it’s taken over two hours to get this far, into the closing section. But, all of it, completely fresh, came out smoothly, in a relative sense, and all of it, to my probably only semi-coherent mind, appears to be uniformly logical and well-reasoned, if a bit opinionated. Of course, logical doesn’t mean much, but, the reasoning is good…. I also avoided swearing a lot…. Mom would be proud….

Since it went so well, I’m thinking I’ll bring it to a halt here, so it doesn’t get out of control, as it can so quickly in this corner of the space-time continuum; reality tends to twist itself into some rather fanciful contortions, rather rapidly at times, so, we’ll take our leave before that happens today…. I will, however, be back tomorrow… Take that as a warning, or a heralding, your choice…. See ya….

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

Safely beyond the reach of the corporate myrmidons….

Posted on May 9, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Yesterday is a wash; one of those days that I’d just as soon forget, in spite of the rather nice finish it had….. Pain turned most of the day into a misery, a state of affairs that prompts me to make this decision…. The subjects, of pain, and/or yesterday, are now banished from all discussion, as being unworthy of either lamentation or praise….. There, hopefully, that will do it…. I didn’t wish to start out by whining; hence, the requisite banishment to the hinterlands….

It was bad enough yesterday without adding the indignity of whining about it, as I know, in spite of how it may have seemed to me at the time, my condition is not as bad as some other folks I know, and could be worse…. So, it’s not attractive of me to whine about it, when others have it so much harder than I….. At least, it seems that way to me…. At any rate, I was able to finish the Pearl, even though it was a push; afterward, THAT was the misery… which, I see, I am talking about, post banishment…. Does that make me a criminal?…. I don’t know, but, we’ll go on to bigger and better things….

Not that I could tell you, at this point, just what that might entail…. It IS still shy of 5 AM, though not by much, so, I’m way behind my usual schedule for this… A natural result, I would imagine, of the extra time I put in bed last night, to recover from the day. In fact, I slept long enough the cat got annoyed, & woke up milady, so she would poke me to arise…. Asshole cat!…. It DID get me up, but, unfortunately, it also got milady up, way before she was done sleeping….

I suppose it’s a bit pathetic, to have our lives run so chaotically, all because a cat decides to be a butthead…. Any time she gets annoyed, she starts in on her cycle of mischief….. Attacking ankles, jumping up on places she is proscribed from, knocking over stuff on tables or dressers, hiding when called, and generally getting into whatever she can, especially those things she KNOWS are liable to garner a “bad kitty”, or a squirt from the water spray bottle we keep for those instances….

I don’t imagine we are the only household that is often taken hostage by a cat, but, nonetheless, I’m going to start the process of talking milady into letting me get a dog…. I’ll get an Aussie heeler mix, mongrel enough so it isn’t expensive, but with enough heeler instinct to be happy to spend the day herding the cat away from trouble… I’ve had heelers before; their instinct to herd compels them to herd whatever is in their vicinity to herd….. kids, cats, hamsters, whatever, if it isn’t where they think it should be, they’ll try to make it go there…. If nothing else, it will give the cat something else to bother, or worry about….. and, I imagine, will end up the best of friends, as cats and dogs living together generally do….

Which is more than can be said of most people, isn’t it? I find animals, of almost all species, to be much easier to have as roommates than any people I’ve ever met…. They always seem to be willing to make accommodation for another creature’s presence, and usually learn to live without any severe arguing or fighting, other than the ‘play’ type all young animals engage in….. I have pictures of my own animals, cats and dogs mostly, sleeping and playing together, and will always believe, firmly, that the animals I’ve known were, or are, better people than most any of the people I compare them to….

Well, lookie there…. It’s an intro section, full and complete, with some whine, some cheese, some blather, and a bit of poignancy, just for good measure…. It’s such a full one, I’m not even going to think about what it says, as that could bring on nausea, or worse, the urge to do it over, and, I’m just not going there today….. Instead, we’ll do this…

Shall we Pearl?…..

“In the worlds before monkey, primal chaos reigned. Heaven sought order, but the Phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown. The four lands formed again and yet again, as endless eons wheeled and passed. The wind, time and water (??) all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation, and it became magically fertile. That first egg was called ‘thought.’ Tagahatha (??) Buddha, the Father Buddha, says, ‘with our thoughts, we make the world.’ Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it came a stone monkey. The nature of monkey was IRREPRESSIBLE!” — Smart Bee

Well, sorry, I know it’s a bit early for such…. enthusiasm…. However, to my way of thinking, this makes just as much sense as the Hindu version of creation, or, for that matter, the Muslim, or Christian versions…. They’re all a bit far-fetched, don’t you agree?…. This one, bless its soul, has the advantage of the concept of ‘monkey’, a rather perfect representation of the irresistible force of nature we call entropy, or chance….

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

“How do you explain Wayne Newton’s POWER over millions? It’s th’ MOUSTACHE… Have you ever noticed th’ way it radiates SINCERITY, HONESTY & WARMTH? It’s a MOUSTACHE you want to take HOME and introduce to NANCY SINATRA!” — Zippy the Pinhead

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/television/article/Efrem-Zimbalist-Jr-star-of-The-FBI-dead-at-95-5450261.php#page-1

First impressions are NOT always the most accurate, which, I’m sure, is a statement not all will be willing to accept without some discussion…. But, I can attest to its veracity, at least, partially, under the evidence of my own experiences…. Now, many of y’all may wonder just how an obituary column about a deceased TV actor connects to such a grandiose notion…. have no fear. You’re here in MY blog, and I’m gonna tell ya….

As a freshman in high school, in the fall of 1964, I was a member of a campus organization, the California Scholastic Federation, whose membership was limited to those students whose G.P.A. was above 3.25… i.e., the eggheads…. In my small school, there were only about 15 or 16 student members, who, once per year, were allowed to take a Friday off school for a weekend long school sponsored trip, to some location where there existed some kind of educational facility for us to explore, thus giving us a weekend holiday, as the educational facilities always seemed to be located near some attraction for teenagers, such as Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Fisherman’s Wharf, or other fun places to waste time….

As a sort of reward for being A students, once a year, we were given two days to play, with supervision by chaperons, who generally were the most popular teachers and advisers…. In my freshman year, my first as a member, we went to L.A., ostensibly to tour a movie studio, to observe how movies were made…. a fine prospect, to us, since it also gave us a whole day to attend the other fun activity of our choice, since the area has so many places that specialize in taking the money of millions of teens and their parents….

We chose Disneyland, for our activity AFTER seeing Warner Brothers Studios, the home of the TV studio where “The FBI”, a long-running series in the 60’s, was filmed…. The show’s leading star, of course, was Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., as noted in the above article…

See where this is headed? Yep, while touring Warner Bros., we got to watch as that show was shot, during which, Mr. Zimbalist, Jr. came over, near where we were standing, intending to use a telephone on a stand, right next to where I stood….

For about two or three minutes, I was treated/subjected to listening to his phone conversation with whomever was on the other end…. I decided, as I stood there, trapped in a spot where I couldn’t politely walk away, and couldn’t make it obvious I was listening, to do my best to try to not listen, but, it wasn’t possible to ignore it, as he didn’t seem to notice anyone was there, & spoke at the top of his actor’s voice….

The impression that conversation had on me was an epiphany; it gave me an entirely new perspective on TV, on actors, and on the entire culture we live in…. a lot, I know, for one short eavesdrop, but, remember, I was a smart kid…. and got even smarter after hearing that conversation, believe me….

For the next five minutes, all of my illusions, of modern culture, of society, of what we perceived vs. what we could believe, were shattered beyond all hope of reconstruction….. As I stood there, trapped and bemused, I listened to this man, who, according to the roles he played on TV, was a stud, a man’s man, a huge person who dominated the room he was in by force of personality… I listened as he stood next to me, blithely destroying ALL of my illusions….

First, he’s tiny… At 15 or 16, I was about 5’6″ tall, & weighed about 140 or so; he could not have been taller than 5’2″, & seemed shorter. Standing next to me, he came up to my shoulder, and couldn’t have weighed in at more than 110-115 lbs. Since we were at a filming of the FBI, he was in the standard cop suit, this one with heavily padded shoulders, to make him look bigger….

He was wearing nice shoes, though, since they never got on camera…. You see, The stage upon which they filmed was staggered with steps…. Efrem was the only actor on the top level, all the other parts played steps lower, and the cameras filmed the scenes from below the steps…. This gave the visual impression on screen that Efrem was taller, or as tall as everyone else, though he only stood as high as most of their chins……

He was not only tiny, compared to a high school freshman, but, his mannerisms and speech patterns were NOT exactly those one associates with someone like the Marlboro Man…. When he spoke, his speech was what I would term, “Hollywood smarm”, with lots of air kisses, laughter, sprinkled with ‘darling’ and ‘my sweet bubaloo’, or other such endearing phrases, all delivered in a high-pitched, distressingly GAY voice…

Yep, to my 15-year old mind, full of prior misconceptions/illusions, the way he was acting on the phone convinced me, without any doubt, that he was as gay as the day is long…. That opinion, which, naturally was a revelation, compared to what I had seen on TV, stayed with me for the rest of my life, and colored a lot of what I thought about the Hollywood culture, and movies & TV at large….

But, what I now realize, after reading more about him in the retrospective article above, is that my impression was influenced a great deal by the cloud of misconceptions and prejudices I yet retained in my persona at that tender age, of fourteen, or fifteen, depending on the time of the year it actually took place in reality, outside my obviously colored memory…. What I thought I knew, at that age, was seriously challenged by the tenor, content, and delivery of the interaction I heard that day, and not all of what I perceived was fully understood by my adolescent self…. all of which is what I see NOW, but didn’t understand then….

In essence, I’ve been laboring for many years under a staggeringly WRONG impression, created by a moment’s observation of an actor, who, come to think of it, may have been playing another role, for the obviously provincial teenager eavesdropping on his phone call, to give the kid a raspberry, so to speak, without ever talking to me….

Regardless, even now, at my current age of 63, it seems that I have lessons to learn, about making snap judgments of people, based on possible misperceptions, and holding on to those as if they are written in stone, rather than being merely a passing impression that should never be used to judge another’s real persona….

I AM a Bozo, of the first degree, ffolkes, and, apparently, have been so for a very long time….. Ain’t LIFE Grand?….

“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” — Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

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

It’s one of those days, ffolkes…. so much one of those days I’d best use a poem of my own, to keep from getting anyone else in trouble…. Ah… nice…. This one seems appropriate…. Enjoy, please….

A Dubiously Soft Morning

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

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

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

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

~~ gigoid ~~

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

The piece in section one has been developed over the last five days, since the article appeared; I was fortunate it was nearly complete, as my late start today had me behind schedule…. But, since all I had to do was finish the last four or five paragraphs today, we are back to being fairly on time, and can put here a normally constructed old-school pearl, just as if it were meant to be that way…..

You gotta love serendipity… Well, I do…. it saves me a lot of time and energy…. Too bad, being what it is, we can’t DEPEND on it always being there for us, but, hey, it always feels good when it IS around, so, that will do…. Enjoy, if you please….

“God always has another custard pie up his sleeve.” — Smart Bee

“He who dies for virtue, does not perish.” — Plautus (B.C. 254-184)

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” — Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

“Every word that we utter rouses its contrary.” — Goethe, _Maxims and Reflections_

“Ignorance of one’s misfortunes is clear gain.’ — Euripides

“The head thinks, the hands labor, but it’s the heart that laughs.” — Liz Curtis Higgs

” — Bother!” said Pooh “Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump; Piglet, meet me in transporter room three.”

By the way, this pearl is a classic…. Surrounded, by bookends from Smart Bee and Pooh’s evil twin, the five pieces of LIFE knowledge in between assume a greater degree, or darker, more noticeable shade, if you will, of their inherent meaning from the contrast implied by their positions…. Or, that could be just another of my own little personal delusions, but, we’ll never know now, will we, because, hey, I’m outta here….

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

(For the next line, you must imagine the voice speaking these lines with an accent…. Little Rock, Arkansas, or perhaps, Birmingham, Alabama will be about right…..) Well, shoot, Orville, tha’s jest a whole lot better ‘en I thought it maght be….Ah thank we cane let it go on out thar ‘thout any more tweakin’…. (Okay, accent off…. if you’re having trouble doing that in your head, just use the toggle switch on the underside of the left hand arm rest of your seat….)

Having thus completed my self-imposed duty, I will now take my leave of you, post-haste, to try to beat the also self-imposed deadline for posting…. Well, that, and the obviously forthcoming legal challenges…. In any case, it’s done, I’m happy, and I’m gone….. See ya, ffolkes….

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

Naturally, the investment of prior absolution for future transgressions received gratis by agnostics causes catechism envy in devout Catholics, and numerous Episcopalians….

Posted on May 8, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Since retiring in 2011, (2010, technically, but, ’11 was my first full year in that state, so, we’ll use it as the jumping-off point, for the sake of mathematical convenience….), I’ve been slowly, steadily having more problems with my ambulation, as my spine, hip & shoulder joints, and overall level of arthritic deterioration reaches levels of effect that can’t be ignored, or compensated for, without paying a price, measured in steps of the 10-point scale of pain…. This includes whatever pinching of my sciatic nerves is going on to create the numbness that forms on my thighs when I stand, or walk, too long…. I can now only get a couple of blocks before sitting down for a recovery period becomes mandatory, lest I go into distressed metabolic crisis mode from the grinding pain that builds up….

Now, I’m a tough guy, for the most part…. Football, basketball, judo, and kung fu (to name just a few of the sporting activities I once pursued, daily….) taught me well, how to use my body to the limit of its strength and ability, while ignoring certain levels of pain, which were part and parcel of smashing into other’s bodies in football, and other sports, as well as the physical training involved in the martial arts, not to mention throws, kicks, punches, blocks, and many other skills that are painful to learn; learning to turn off pain’s demands on our attention is a primary skill of any athlete, or martial artist…. Pain becomes another motivational factor, not a limitation….

Then, of course, age related issues intervene, and one can no longer tolerate the physical demands of sports and the arts; for me, this began around age 40-45, when certain issues involving digestion became the foremost point of experience for me…. It’s a condition called diverticulosis, and there are physical aspects of having it that preclude certain athletic pastimes, so, starting at that age, my level of conditioning began to decline, and I began to experience more pain, of several different types….

Why, you are asking about now, is he regaling us with these tales of woe from his past? Hell, I’m not exactly sure…. except that this morning, pain is foremost in my mind, since my body decided to gift me with two of three possible types of pain, both at a level I can’t quite get stuffed into the box where it won’t affect me so badly…. which, in turn, is making it hard to concentrate on this Pearl…. So, in what may have been poor judgment, I decided to try to use it as a springboard for discussion, and lead into today’s Pearl that way…. However, it seems to be more of a bitch-fest, and that wasn’t what I had in mind for today, by a long shot….

I think I was going to try to turn the discussion into how to deal with pain effectively, but, since I can’t seem to do that myself this morning, trying to tell y’all how to do it might be asking more of my writing skills than is wise…. It also might be more of an intellectual challenge than I’m up to, as I can’t seem to concentrate for long on any one thought…. That makes writing, or ranting, or even pearling, particularly problematic…. Since that’s all I do here, it’s going to be touch and go as to whether or not this bombs completely….

I’m going to take a chance, though, and continue on to the rest of today’s effort…. It may turn out to be a mistake, but, that’s a risk worth taking, to get past this morning’s wonderful state of agony with a bit of aplomb….

Shall we Pearl?…..

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

I definitely don’t have an organized, official-type rant in me today, so I’m going to use a pearl format that I’ve used a few times previously, to good effect…. I’ll let SB pick out five pearls, then I’ll comment on them, hopefully in a way that will lead us somewhere worth being…. or, we could end up somewhere we’ll never find our way home from…. It’s a risk, but, I’m pretty confident I can find my way back from wherever we find ourselves, so, let’s give it a whirl….

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Essay on Criticism, Part ii, Line 15

It’s always good to start with a poetic pearl; it’s just classier…. This, of course, is a very familiar poem, (Okay, it’s actually an excerpt from a larger poem…. be that way….) even to those people who don’t read a lot of poetry. The first line has become almost a cliche in common speech patterns, as it has been used ever since first appearing, to indicate the perils of both possessing knowledge, and the lack of it, when reasoning, or, trying to reason…. It is only those of us who go on to read the rest of the epic poem who can truly understand the poignancy of this lament, as the last two lines of the quatrain show plainly the marked price of original sin…. and, in the process, gives us a hint of WHY we ate the apple…. Powerful stuff, of which Pope created a LOT…..

“You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.” — Margaret Thatcher

When I first saw this, I thought it was the PERFECT way to show how the thought processes of politicians operate; upon reflection, I believe it to be even better than that, as it shows not only WHAT virtually every one of them thinks, but, also shows the self-delusion that MUST take place in a pundit’s mind for them to turn that direction….

This little statement implies that, not only is a little white lie okay, when it’s for the good of those who are being led (“good”, naturally, being decided by the one elected, not the folks being led….), it’s practically a duty to lie, in order to be in the position to make that decision for others (you HAVE to be evasive?)….. Of course, this doesn’t admit to possessing, or come anywhere near any display of ANY sort of ethical, or moral reasons for acting in this manner, as there aren’t any that are justifiable…. That, unfortunately, has never seemed to matter much to them, or kept them from making up their lies….

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” — Marcus Aurelius

Okay, so, this one ISN’T about politicians, or preachers, or corporate snakeheads…. it’s about Life at Large, and how to live it well… And, darn it, it doesn’t need any more embellishment from me…. Oh, well, onward….

LAWYER: A professional advocate hired to bend the law on behalf of a paying client; for this reason considered the most suitable background for entry into politics. — Definition from “THE CYNIC’S DICTIONARY”

Now THAT’s what I’m talking about!…. This is a wonderful observation, made all the more appealing to me because it SOUNDS as if it is said in jest, when, in truth, it is a perfectly sober, accurate definition, based on long-term observation of Reality, as it pertains to society and culture….

Our government is inundated in lawyers; in certain circles, of which I am a conversant member, we refer to their presence in such numbers as an infestation, which gives a better feel for what they’re really like, to wit: vermin, such as rats, mice, or fleas…. the assholes…. As Jay Leno once noted, the definition of the word “politics” is from the Greek…. That is “poli” from “poly”, meaning “many”, and “tics”, meaning, “small, blood sucking vermin”….

Sorry, maybe I DO have a bit of a rant in there…..

“Nations and empires flourish and decay,
By turns command, and in their turns obey.

— Ovid

Now this is a very deep, incredibly insightful little couplet, from an poetess who lived well over 2000 years ago…. Even then, so long ago, there were enough ffolkes who could see the grand folly that permeates human society and culture, and were able to foretell the outcome of their own era’s repetition of what had gone before…. Now, if only we could get some of those who are in the position of leadership in this country to comprehend this concept, there might be a better chance for us to survive….

I’m not particularly hopeful that will ever happen, though, as I’m firmly convinced the men and women who inhabit the halls of our government wont’ ever get a clue, as they have what they consider more important work to do, that of emptying as much of the public treasury as they can fit into their own pockets; that doesn’t leave them room enough to accommodate, or even entertain, any such altruistic notion as species survival…. more’s the pity….

So, there you have it, a pearl of nondescript origin, in a reasonably new, different format, to take the place of what would probably have been merely another indictment of a lot of guilty folks, which happens often here, and is no doubt becoming a bit stale…. Hopefully, this little breath of fresh air will clear the atmosphere sufficiently to allow us a bit of breathing room, so we can come back to rant again another day…. When I do, I’ll be using this brilliant manifesto of technique, voiced by an old British bulldog, who became a politician, though reluctantly, I think….

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time–a tremendous whack.” — Sir Winston Churchill

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

Having begun the day, in section one, with a bit of classicism, it must be time for another reprint of an old favorite, from one of the masters…. 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 ~~

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

As noted, today, pain is causing this process to move along at a rapid pace, without a lot of heavy thought, which would be beyond my current capabilities…. It’s really too bad, too, because I’d hoped to spend a bit of time today visiting a few of my regulars, to let them know how much I appreciate seeing them at my site each day…. That will probably have to wait until, at least, later in the day, if I can manage to get some relief… In the meantime, here is a fresh, old-school pearl, with parameters set to let SB pick today, as I don’t have the patience to sit that long…. Hope it comes out okay….

“The more you know, the more confusing everything becomes.” — Smart Bee

“Man, were he not corrupted by Governments, is naturally the friend of Man, and that human nature is not of itself vicious.” — Thomas Paine

“It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.” — Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)

“Following the Noble Path is like entering a dark room with a light in the hand; the darkness will all be cleared away, and the room will be filled with light.” — Buddha

“It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what’s cool.” — Calvin & Hobbes

“His own character is the arbiter of every one’s fortune.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 283

“I may not understand what you say, but I’ll defend to your death my right to deny it.” — Albert Alligator, in Pogo, 26 September 1951

Hmm… a little obscure, but, all in all, not bad at all…. I’ll take it.

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

As well, since I have little choice in the matter, at least, none uninfluenced by the level of pain I’m currently living with, I’ll take whatever is above, as is…. No matter how many potential typos it has, it’s going out sans editing or proofing, other than what I’ve managed to do while trying to swim this horse across the Rubicon, or the Styx, or whatever mystical, metaphorical river you choose to call it…. Me, I’m calling it done….

See you tomorrow, ffolkes, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise…. (Pido disculpas por la blashpemia, pero, es necessario para mantener mi dignidad, si no otra razón….) (I know, it’s probably well mangled Español, but, I don’t claim any particular fluency, just basic comprehension, suited to my purpose… Plus, as an obsessive type, I looked up the words I’d forgotten….) Ta ta, then….

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

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Which is Why….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.

gigoid the dubious

gigoid

Ned Moore, aka gigoid, is a 70 year-old, (!!!… When did that happen?….), retired dilettante, who would rather read than eat, most days. His first blog, "gigoid’s folly", has been emailed out to folks he knows for about 18 years now. He still considers it his best defense against angst, and the ever-present specter of sheer insanity..... Due to rigorous curmudgeon training requirements, he has discontinued his Facebook presence, but still indulges in the occasional Twitter session... In essence, he's socialized, but, not overly sociable; all labels and stereotypes are forbidden in his presence... and he doesn't care what anyone thinks about that..... In fact, he doesn't want to talk anymore.... If you feel you MUST contact gigoid, his email address is: alphagigoid@gmail.com You can go read now.... Go on, beat it.... gigoid, the dubious

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gigoid

Exploring Consensual Reality

Tag Archives: Death

Bursting with possibility, the newest day dawns, as ever, in shades of grey….

Further remonstrances should be unnecessary….

Precious moments of subtle grandeur…..

That’s right; now sprinkle thoroughly with the powdered milk flakes….

It’s just like the other one, mate…..

An Andorean warrior, curiously in mufti, stares in wonder….

A schlemiel, or a putz?… Not an easy choice….

Distracted by a classic diversion…. cinnamon-glazed potato cakes….

Safely beyond the reach of the corporate myrmidons….

Naturally, the investment of prior absolution for future transgressions received gratis by agnostics causes catechism envy in devout Catholics, and numerous Episcopalians….

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