Cops & donuts– Match made in heaven, or evil twins? Film at 11…

Posted on March 27, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Today we are happy to welcome the advent of a heretofore long-standing non-existent state of being, which, given its long absence, may or may not be entirely welcome…. There, is that obscure enough for you? I think it’s a cool bit of literature, myself, sort of teasingly compelling, but, then, that’s to be expected from me, as the author. Regardless of that, though, it’s still a real-time, official announcement, though not fully sanctioned by the PTB, due to my not telling them about it…. You see, I just found out a short bit ago, so, I didn’t have time to register… I’ll get around to it one of these days, if it ever happens again…. Can’t tell right now how long it’ll last…

Okay, so now that we’ve gotten to the second paragraph, I’ll clue y’all in to just WHAT THE HELL I’M TALKING ABOUT….. Basically, this is it… we, or rather I, am in an entirely unaccustomed, and completely unfamiliar state of mind, induced by the application of NINE straight hours of sleep…. Yep, nine…. I was not just amazed, but completely flabbergasted, one of the language’s finest words, if not our favorite condition to encounter in ourselves. Nonetheless, paranoia aside, I awoke, looked at the clock, & laughed out loud in joy…. once I’d cleared my head enough to calculate how long I’d been asleep….

It’s an astounding feeling, one I vaguely recall from those halcyon days of my youth, to actually arise feeling as if one has had enough sleep, fully able to throw off the perfectly natural impulse to go back to bed, with ease…. Though I don’t find myself any more clear-headed than I achieved when calculating my downtime (obviously, if this introductory section is any clue…), I FEEL wonderful, physically speaking, at least for the moment…. I’m sure gravity will have its usual effect on me over time, but, for now, I’m happy with how it feels to get this far into the day without suffering too much pain….

Okay, enough crowing… boasting becomes ugly quite quickly…. It would be easy to go overboard in my joy at having done what the rest of the world gets to do on a regular basis, so, I’ll cut this off right here…. Instead, I’ll try to figure out a way to get from here to the first section, without making too big of a mess, or disrupting the flight holding patterns of all the other pilots in the air… I know it makes the controllers nervous when I change course over the airport, but, on a day like today, they’ll never catch me anyway, so we can pretty much do as we like…. at least, until they catch us, which they haven’t been able to do yet…. Our chances are good…

Shall we Pearl?….

“Clear the laundromat!! This whirl-o-matic just had a nuclear meltdown!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Yow!…..
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“It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.” — Galileo Galilei

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Officials-Senate-considered-phone-company-option-5349450.php

As predicted in yesterday’s rant, the pundits in the House and Senate are now showing us the expected waffling and discord around the subject of data storage, all of which assures me I was right to say they will accomplish nothing other than producing a lot of hot air and paper, all without actually changing ANYTHING…. Any bets?…. I’m willing to wager just about every penny I can scrape together on this one….

In truth, I hate to be right in instances such as this…. What I related yesterday in my politirant can now be seen to be a perfectly accurate assessment of how the tactics of the White House would play out on this stage, according to the script they are trying to establish, as the one they want us to believe as the truth…. I mentioned how Congress would take up the challenge of reforming the NSA regulations on phone tapping and data collection, whereupon the bickering would begin, and nothing would actually get done… Read the article above, then tell me I was wrong…. Can’t do it, can you?….

Nope, they’re fulfilling my prophecy perfectly, which means, the next event to be staged will involve some sort of faux crisis, or as close to one as can be managed on short notice, to pull the attention of the media, and thus, the public, away from the spying issue altogether…. I’d rather not say I expect to see another school shooting, or some random college nut case who goes wonky during exams and takes a rifle up to a tower, where he starts picking off his co-sufferers…… but, that sort of event is usually what happens to draw our focus away from where the administration doesn’t want it to be….

SIGH, as I said, I hate being right like this, because it all seems so damn SORDID and CHEAP…. The American public is so fucking EASY to FOOL, it’s like taking candy from a baby, which politicians have been known to do. It is, to my mind, simply disgusting, and makes me want to puke when they feed us this sort of bullshite, expecting us not only to believe what they say, but support them in what they do…. the assholes. They haven’t the slightest clue that there are a great many of us out here who DON’T BELIEVE A FUCKING WORD of what comes out of their mouths….. In fact, it is my not-so-humble opinion there is a sure way to tell when they lie to us, by simply watching their mouths… if it’s open, and words are coming out, they are lying…. Be sure of it….

On that note, I am done ranting, for now…. I’m too angry to write well, or, for that matter, to think objectively, both of which are preferable in ranting mode… So, the rest of this section will be an old-school pearl, with the guiding parameters set to take shots at the BRC, or the Asininnies, whomever comes first into the cross hairs….

Honest politician — Oxymoron

“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.” — Lao Tzu

(This is included to show the 180º, completely opposite philosophy of the one held by ALL our elected officials…. To a politician, enough is never enough…. it is in the nature of the beast….)

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences.” — Robert Ingersoll

(I can only wish more of our pundits knew this….or, at minimum, acted as if they suspected it to be true…..)

“Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.” — Walt Kelly, Potluck Pogo

“If someone tells you he’s going to make a “realistic decision, you immediately understand that he’s resolved to do something bad.” — Mary McCarthy

“Oft hath even a whole city reaped the evil fruit of a bad man.” — Hesiod (c. 700 BC) — Works and Days, Line 240

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

All things considered, not a bad set of charges…. I think any reasonable grand jury would vote for indictment….
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“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Sometimes, prose can almost feel like poetry…. such as the above line from Mr. V…. Words are powerful, aren’t they? Other times, it almost seems as if a poem is a discussion, more prose than poem, yet, fills the mind with more than just the meaning of the words used…. I love language, it’s just so…. so… so COOL!….. Here is an example of the phenomenon of which I speak…. Enjoy!….

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

~~ Robert Frost ~~

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Just for fun, here is an excerpt from an old Pearl, on the subject of poetry, that I think will make a nice bonus to today’s poetry section…. It might also be a surprise, for those of my Gentle Readers who know my opinion of Will S…… It fits well with my comments above, regarding how I feel about words…..

From 12/10/2011:

Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Romeo and Juliet — Act ii, Sc. 2

First, let me say that I’m not Willie’s biggest fan. Oh, I give him his props; he is arguably the best author of his, or any other age, as well as one of the most prolific. But, being somewhat lacking in expertise, in the area of Middle English slang, reading his work takes on a more forbidding aspect….. I get bogged down trying to struggle through the admittedly beautiful, but barely transparent language he used. I have a hard time reading it, as I have to stop frequently to puzzle out his meaning before I can go on with the story. It must, however, be admitted… he was, indeed, most incredibly talented at painting wonderful pictures of his time’s culture, using an incredibly extravagant number of words, strung together with great beauty. He did it a lot, too….

I’ve included this couplet from Romeo and Juliet, mostly because it is what I consider to be a ‘perfect’ example of the art of poetry. Perfect rhyme, perfect cadence, perfect illumination. “Sweet sorrow”. What a wonderful pair of words to have found each other in his play! Everyone alive has felt just that, no explanation necessary. These are words of such power that they still carry the same sense of rightness today, the same emotional content, as they did when they were written.

He wrote these lines so well, that the couplet has been preserved through over four hundred years by word of mouth, not by being transcribed to paper; even people who are completely illiterate have heard these lines; even as non-readers, they know who wrote them, and most even know the play it is from. Now THAT is is some powerful poetry……
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Here we are, finally, in section three; naturally, since it has gone so smoothly, I haven’t a bloody clue as to what to put here…. I’ve already ranted, complete with an old-school pearl… The poetry section had a bonus, so this Pearl is already fat with material…. Anything more would be gilding the lily, to be sure…. But, what the hell, I’ve always enjoyed that procedure…. Futile as it may be, in the most real of senses, it sure does make some nice looking lilies, you know?

So, without further ado (or any more crap….), here is a seven-star, randomly chosen, harlequin pearl, with duly-executed side-comments, for your enjoyment, elucidation, delectation, and/or disbursement to the farthest reaches of your recycling bin….

“A proverb is the wisdom of many and the wit of one.” — Lord John Russell

“There are so many ways that we sabotage our own divinity, our own possibilities. and the mythologies of race and gender may well head the list.” — Callan Williams

(Oops…. How did that get in there? Oh well, it’s quite true, so, it can stay…. just don’t try to make it fit in with the others, okay?…. I wouldn’t want anyone to hurt themselves…. Just file it for later perusal, and you’ll be fine….)

“Is it clean in other dimensions?” — Zippy the Pinhead

(THAT’s more like it…. Okay, we’ll finish strong….)

“If a person offend you and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures. Simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick.” — Mark Twain, Advice to Youth Speech, 1882

“Although most cowboys are not politicians and most politicians are not cowboys, they share the common experience of being able to do a fairly decent job of throwing the bull.” — Smart Bee

“I believe everybody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn’t trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string.” — Scott Adams

And here I wait so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all of these things twice

— Bob Dylan, “Memphis Blues Again”
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As I thought, this one kind of got away from me a little bit…. It doesn’t seem to have caused itself much harm, though, and I don’t see any particularly large fields of debris on our back trail, so, my guess is, we’ve go a winner here… It’s good enough to float, and fly, so, I’m launching it just as if it mattered….. As for y’all, well, I’ll see y’all tomorrow, yes? Yes…. 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

Softer explosions seem to be our only option….

Posted on March 26, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

It’s odd, getting enough sleep….. It is, sadly, an event that has been mostly absent from my life for years, and I thought I’d learned to do without it…. which is what we humans do when we give up fighting against our fate, becoming resigned to whatever it is we have in life that brings us our own brand of pain and/or misery….. We reach a point where the effort to mitigate our lot, becomes more painful than simply enduring, whatever it may be that troubles us…. It isn’t particularly the most logical, or most effective method we have of dealing with life, but, it certainly can be described as typically human….

Since my humanity is no longer in question, I suppose I’d best turn my hand to putting some pizazz into this introduction…. Yesterday, as you know if you stopped by, I went with a fictional opening comprised of a series of nonsense statements tenuously connected to each other by dubious associations and/or completely oppositional connective linguistic methodology…. You know…. gibberish, as it used to be called back in the day, on the streets…. You know me, I’m not afraid to stuff conventional English in the dumpster, and set off into the wilds of illogic and/or irreverence…. As long as what I’m saying comes across with the correct message, I’m good with however it looks, or sounds, for that matter….

That being said, it still doesn’t get this one done…. Of course, I’ve now blathered for going on three paragraphs, which is NEARLY enough to call complete, but, I don’t believe that’s going to quite fill the bill, even with the prior dispensation certificate I managed to score from the last Inspector who came by….. The whole lobby was torn apart, and we had to operate all day without any bladder-relief facilities closer than two blocks away, at the neighborhood gas station/mini-mart, so I think he felt sorry for us…. I don’t care, I’ve got the certificate in hand, and I think we might have to use it today, if I can’t think of anything else to do….

Oh, wait, I don’t have to do that…. I can use Emergency Technique #4, I forgot…. Okay, we’ll go with that for now…. I know, it’s not my favorite either, but, it ALWAYS works to get the intro section done in a timely fashion…. Therefore….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.” — Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’s “Time Enough For Love”
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“If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is WITH representation.” — Smart Bee

http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Obama-to-propose-ending-NSA-s-phone-call-sweep-5345715.php

So…. I’m feeling GOOD! (Odd, but true….) Shall we rant?…..

If I’m to believe this article’s headline, Barry says he wants the NSA to stop being bad boys, and play nice with the rest of us….. I believe I’ll wait to see if any of this really happens before I break out the champagne…. This president, I’m sorry to say, has developed a particularly nasty habit, over the course of his time in office, of playing fast and loose with the truth, a tendency which, when observed in the past, in EVERY other psychopathic resident of his position, only becomes worse the longer the perpetrators believe they’re getting away with it…. When action is overdue, talk is cheap…

Due to my intense disappointment in his actions thus far during his administration, I’ll save my trust for later, when… no, IF I see ANY of his statements come to pass, in truth…. If, as I suspect, all goes according to historical example, we’ll see some superficial posturing by the White House pundits, that might eventually get around to SUGGESTING some changes that should be made….. But, none will actually occur in reality, and any real discussion will get bogged down in committee…. Meantime, the media will find some other outrageous issue to distract them from ever following up to see if anything happens along the lines of actual reform…

Now I’ll finish reading the article, & see how my prediction fared…. Ah, I see now…. Upon reading it through to the end, I came across the key phrase, the one indicating the real strategy behind the White House announcement…. to wit: “The president’s plan, however, relies on Congress to pass legislation — something that has so far seemed unlikely.”

Immediately upon reading this, my crap detector went off, with a loud “AHA!”, (inadvertently sending the cat flying across the room to hide in the plants, thinking I was about to come after her for something she did, no doubt…. she has a guilty conscience, I’m sure…. Right….. I’d believe that…. if I believed she had one at all….), when I realized I knew, now, just WHY Barry is adopting this stance, at least, if you believe what he says here…. which, understandably, I’m now having a hard time doing….

If he just leaves it up to Congress, it’s a foregone conclusion nothing will be done ….. Not by THIS one…. The current Congress has been, for the last three years, at least, the absolute worst one, EVER, for getting anything actually DONE…. This includes ALL of the past elections of congress we’ve seen in our history… I shit you not, this Congress has passed fewer laws, and had fewer bills presented at all, than ANY previous sitting of that august body, by a factor of about 8….. They’re determined to be known as the newest holder of the title of “Do-Nothing Congress”, formerly held by one in the early, or late, 20th century, I believe….

(Side note: This, of course, can be attributed to the Republican majority in the House of Representatives…. The party’s pundits, all older, white, Christian conservatives, determined, and stated in public, soon after Obama was elected, that their entire focus for the time he is in office would be to ensure that NONE of his legislative reforms ever took place, or made it into law…. It didn’t matter to them whether or not any of his programs would actually HELP the citizenry they represent; they were determined to undermine every reform he attempted….

For the most part, they’ve been successful in allowing NOTHING, or, nothing much, anyway, to get done…. all because of their unstated, but obvious, bigoted fear of the black man in the White House, an affront to their sense of Caucasian entitlement, not to mention the severe blow to their sense of reality…. They hadn’t even noticed when they ceased to be the majority in the real world….)

After reading the entire article, I find my prediction confirmed…. This announcement is just another stall tactic, one designed to give the impression to the public that something is happening, when nothing actually IS happening, or GOING to happen, other than business as usual for the spy agencies, who have continued ALL of the activities of espionage they are accused of carrying out…. The government has absolutely no intention of giving up their new toys, and they will continue to lie their little faces off to keep that from becoming public knowledge….

The NSA is STILL spying on the citizens of every nation of the whole world, including their own citizens, without ever having actually slowed down, or ceased ANY of the programs they’ve begun…. If you actually believe it when they tell you they have, well, then, you deserve to have them in your face…. Sorry, ffolkes, but, it’s just plain STUPID to believe these people are going to tell us ANYTHING they don’t WANT us to know….

Oh, every once in a while, we’ll see in the news they’ve sent one of their lackeys chiefs to Congress to discuss issues, or make statements, none of which actually address anything relevant…. they’re just making more smoke….. In the process, nothing is actually being done to stop them at all, not by Congress, not by the Courts, and certainly not by the White House…. No, it’s all just smoke, ffolkes, sent up to get in your eyes, trying to make you think they’re listening to your concerns…..

Right…. sure they are….. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but, to these myrmidons of the shadowy corporate masters, your concerns are something to be used against you, to fan your fears of the “unknown other”, while simultaneously listening to your every spoken word over the airwaves…. Whatever they tell you they aren’t doing, or can’t do…. well, ffolkes, the smart money says they are not only capable of everything we suspect of them, but are already beyond that level, and are capable of far worse…. Count on it…. Not only are they lying about what they are doing, they are lying about what they CAN do…. which we will ONLY find out when we find the police at our door…..

Think about it, ffolkes!….. When you break down the walls between yourself and the truth, and really THINK about their purpose, the bottom line concept of their given task as spies, LYING, especially about what they are doing in the dark, away from the public eye, is an important part of their JOB!…. And, guess what? They’re good at it….

I hate to be such a curmudgeon about all of this, but, the evidence just keeps pushing me back into that mode, pissed off and ready to start picking off real targets, instead of merely suggesting them…. If you couldn’t tell, I think I pissed myself off…. I’d better go now, before I get REALLY worked up, and can’t find my way out of this rant…..

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” — Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address January 20, 1953

“I don’t mind being in touch with reality, as long as I don’t have to live there.” — Smart Bee, channeling gigoid again
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This poem is a new one to me, though I’ve heard of this poet…. I like it, if for no other reason than it rhymes well…. Since my pleasure is the only real requirement necessary for inclusion…. Enjoy!…..

A Grain Of Sand

If starry space no limit knows
And sun succeeds to sun,
There is no reason to suppose
Our earth the only one.
‘Mid countless constellations cast
A million worlds may be,
With each a God to bless or blast
And steer to destiny.

Just think! A million gods or so
To guide each vital stream,
With over all to boss the show
A Deity supreme.
Such magnitudes oppress my mind;
From cosmic space it swings;
So ultimately glad to find
Relief in little things.

For look! Within my hollow hand,
While round the earth careens,
I hold a single grain of sand
And wonder what it means.
Ah! If I had the eyes to see,
And brain to understand,
I think Life’s mystery might be
Solved in this grain of sand.

~~ Robert William Service ~~

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Many mornings around here I try to vary our usual routine, as much as possible, lest it become stale, or begin to decay, thus becoming difficult to use due to the smell…. Today, I’ve stuck to the norm, so far as there is one, so it becomes obvious that here will be an old-school pearl, because that’s the way we do it…. No other reason would do as well, so it’s fortunate we have it, now, isn’t it? You bet….

I can’t yet say that I know what the parameters might be…. I’ve managed to get this far into this Pearl without really waking up fully, or achieving anything resembling a normal train of thought…. Much of the above rant was composed yesterday, when I first found the article; this morning all I had to do was punch it up, and add my newer thoughts and comments…. Of course, we NEVER DO board any train of thought without first having gone well beyond the boundaries of decency, so, what the hell…. I’m going for it….. Wish me luck, I think I might need it more than I’d hoped….

“I’m a GENIUS! I want to dispute sentence structure with SUSAN SONTAG!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

“The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant.” — Epictetus (c. 60 AD) — How Nobleness of Mind may be consistent with Prudence, — Discourses, Book ii, Chap. v

“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.” — Segall’s Law

“The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.” — Charles Eliot Norton, True Patriotism, 1898

” When two tigers fight, one is certain to be maimed, and one to die.” — Master Funakoshi

“The wise man learns more from his enemies than a fool does from his friends.” — Chinese Proverb

“He that plants thorns must never expect to gather roses.” — Pilpay (or Bidpai) — The Ignorant Physician, Chap. iii, Fable viii

Hmm…. parameters or not, this came out rather well, I think…. Time will tell, I suppose, as it always does….
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Having thus disposed of another day’s worth of built up mental dross, thus lending strength to the street definition of “mental”, I shall bring this to a graceful, elegant close, with the sincere hope that nobody received any injuries that need treatment, or undue, excessive blotches on their clothing…. sarcasm can be hard to wash out….

I trust anyone who DOES have a complaint will take it up with the local authorities…. Tell them, this time, send a bigger constable…. my garden needs fertilizer…. See ya tomorrow, ffolkes, provided I haven’t offended anyone official….

In my defense, I do try to stick to the verifiable truth, so, if they wish to see themselves in what I write, well…. so be it… gigoid has spoken, again… 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

Sifting through arbitrarily discarded feathers……

Posted on March 25, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

While attending the unveiling of the newest polynomial bathysphere, I noticed a very fine example of meritoriously painted perfluffle, which I took as an indication of the ever-expanding influence of the Veil of Langerhans, prior to manifestation of any attendant mystery. Why that should have prevented us from getting to the Governor’s palace for tea will always be a bone of contention for the participants, even though several gratuitously engendered therapy sessions were severely instrumental in ensuring there would be no effluence before its time. All such diploid expenditures in the arena create insidiously small ripples in the futures market, otherwise the Minister of Ducks is required to intervene, lest there be any breakout of empathy ordered erroneously, or, for that matter, secular bread balls in aspic….

Whew! I feel better now….. So would you, if you had to get THAT sort of thing out of your head, prior to any real work getting accomplished. Since the alternative has been known to cause seriously dangerous wobbles in space/time, it’s just as well I got it out, don’t you agree? Well, whether you do, or not, is immaterial in the final analysis, because, hey, it’s a done deal…. We’re already here, in the SECOND paragraph, where we are legally free to make any and all assertions, evidenced or not, without any fear of retribution from any legal sources…. Of course, it doesn’t preclude a reaction from illegal sources, but the 12-gauge Winchester over & under we keep under the table always comes in real handy in those cases….

In case it isn’t clear yet, I’m sitting a bit on the odd side of my chair, having been unceremoniously awakened at 0144 by the resident furry asshole, who proceeded to get me up, & then disappear altogether, leaving me weeping in my chair…. I have no idea why the weeping is taking place; a leftover gift from my PTSD, no doubt…. But, sitting in one’s chair, weeping without reason, at 2 AM is NOT my idea of a restful night, especially when I stayed up as late as I could, so I could sleep in a bit….. I should know better than to make plans, shouldn’t I?…..

Anger, frustration, and emotional lability thus conspire to cause me intentional harm, thus miserablizing my morning (Wait…. is that a word? Spell Check doesn’t like it, but, I do…. I think it’s a great new word…. If people can make a verb out of the noun, such as when the word “impact” became “impacted” (which always puts a picture of a really constipated guy in my head….), why should it be wrong for me to make one out of an adjective? All this, of course, thus pushed my attitude, and the day, beyond any hope of redemption, save that which comes from fulfilling a duty…. Hence, paragraph one….

I know, it’s probably more than just a little bit odd, to require such a complicated method for relieving angst that occurs naturally; I could, no doubt, find a simpler, more effective way to get this stuff out of my head, without feeling the need to subject the rest of the world to my weirdness. But, what fun would THAT be? None at all…. So, I do what I do, and to hell with the consequences…. To hell, as well, with anyone’s ill will for doing so…. We have this great idea here in America, called “choice”…. and they can always choose to read somewhere else, if they can’t take the heat around here….

As long as we are all allowed to make our own choices in such matters, without undue influence from our beloved ruling class, we have a chance at being fairly happy on this old ball of mud…. Of course, they’re never going to allow that, not OUR BRC….. They’ve much too long of a history of never doing so, to ever think they’ll change…..But, hey, we have hopes…. Unreasonable, and with poor odds in favor of ever coming to fruition, but, we do have them…. Which is, in and of itself, an encouraging note, I suppose…. On that note….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.” — Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) — Natural History, Book vii, Sect. 4
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Since I’m up so early, I’m going to fool around a bit before getting serious (if that ever DOES happen today, be sure to make a note of it, in case I need the evidence later, for the lawsuits that are no doubt being researched as I write….)….. Rather than either an old-school pearl, or a rant, here is a short discussion of a concept few people think about as a rule…. which makes it fine grist for my mill….. Comes out tasty, too….

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From 12/10/2011:

“A map of the world without Utopia is not worth glancing at.” — Oscar Wilde (1854-1900

A lot of people will tell you that there is no such thing as perfection, that it only exists as a concept, but has no physical reality. These folks will challenge you to point out something that is perfect, and delight in pointing out the flaws of anything you might come up with. But there is an answer that will shut them up, one always available for pointing. Just lift your hand, put a smile on your face, & point right at their heart….. then, say to them, “There you are. A perfect example of imperfection…..” Then duck, and run quickly out of weapon range, because the reaction can be somewhat explosive. People who act superior, especially when due to a sense of false entitlement, don’t much like it when you make them look and feel ridiculous…. but it’s their own fault, for exhibiting their stupidity in public, eh?

There is a Utopia. Perfection exists. If it doesn’t, where did the concept come from? We don’t just make up words for stuff that doesn’t concern us; the words we use have a meaning. The meaning may change over time, but the concept it describes does not cease to exist because the meaning changes a bit to reflect the passage of time, or the changes in society and/or culture, both of which cause languages to evolve. Every person alive has a picture in their mind of what Perfect looks like, based on their own perceptions, colored by the meanings they have learned to attach to those perceptions.

In fact, the word ‘perfect’ has a meaning that is clear in everyone’s mind; I can’t think of anyone over the age of oh, five or six, who couldn’t supply an accurate, or at least adequate, definition of perfection when asked. So if they know what it is, how can it not exist? The mere fact that we DO have such a concept in our mind, like with life itself, implies, and proves, its existence….. Don’t worry, it really does…..there are just a lot of folks who don’t like to use their brain long enough to realize that. This reluctance to accept reality won’t hurt them too badly, it just keeps them from growing, and is mildly annoying to the rest of us…….who are busy trying to find our own version of Perfection…..

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

In order to justify, to myself, if no one else, the above departure from routine, I’ll include here a relatively short, five-star pearl to augment and enhance the discussion above, with some comments from history that seem of a similar bent…. Well, I hope that’s how it works out…. we’ll have to trust SB to give us what we need…. Shall we see what we can find?…..

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” — Buddha

“To sit silently, and look wise, is not to be compared to drinking sake and making a riotous shouting.” — Ono No Tabitu

“As a person grows older and wiser, they talk less and say more.” — Smart Bee

“All the problems of the world could be settled if people were only willing to think. The trouble is that people very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.” — Thomas J. Watson

“It is asserted that the dogs keep running when they drink at the Nile, for fear of becoming a prey to the voracity of the crocodile.” — Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) — Natural History, Book viii, Sect. 148
_____________________________

At first, I was going to go with one of Emily’s poems today…. Then, I was struck by a strong wave of egotism, followed by a wave of empathy for the Devil, all topped of with some rather painful denial of reality…. In the end, I decided to once again spare anyone else the shame, and go with one of my own…. Here’s one from 2012, obviously written while heavily under the influence of The Metaphorse….. or some sort of form of literary epilepsy, causing an outbreak of euphemism….

Fatal Supplication

But what becomes of our deepest dangerous dreams?
Does fantasy rescue any part of life’s imperiled favor?
Reality becomes but silvery pairs of mismatched teams,
Dining with affable elegance, such diffident waste to savor.

Who decides what sorrows to carry bravely to term?
Will fragrant moments of sanity make hasty manifestation?
Only Time’s patient mutability sends messages so firm,
Yet salient impersonal vexation lends credence to ripe imagination.

Can folly bring out sadness and rampant visions of beauty?
What kindness can be found in distant open relations?
With countless faces the dead disturb with dire impunity,
From separate caches of wisdom come simple stylish privations.

Shall shallow emotion serve to provide such explanations?
When does avaricious intensity assume primary focus?
Plain answers slide softly through with multiple mitigations,
While conceptually indignant concepts engage a fatally personal locus.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

Over the last couple of days, I’ve managed to find, and collect, several excellent pearls, all directing one’s attention to the same general area of contemplation, that of the ongoing, life-long quest to discover how to live our lives well, according to our own desires and dreams…. Each of the pearls included in this pearl is one whose truth and relevance has withstood the test of time, and/or my own examination; you can regard them as the rules I use myself to guide my steps toward the place I wish to be, to become the man I wish to become…..

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures has not been to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.” — George Bernard Shaw, _The Devil’s Disciple_ [1901]

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” — H.H. the Dalai Lama

“A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.” — Buddha

“It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven and the redeeming drops of blood: but even these sweet and dismal poisons they took from the body and the earth!” — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885).

‘I have seen soldiers panic at the first sight of battle, and a wounded squire pulling arrows out from his wound to fight and save his dying horse. Nobility is not a birth right but is defined by one’s action.” — Kevin Costner, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, 1994

“A wise man first determines what is within his control; all else is then irrelevant.” — Epictetus

“Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.” — Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense (1946)
_____________________________

I KNEW this would happen…. It is now just 4:20 in the AM, and this Pearl, except for a couple of minor items, is done…. This means I have to figure out what to do about this f___ing cat that is still demanding attention, until my lady gets up, when I’m hoping she’ll agree to give me a break from this hostage situation…. It’s tough to be held captive, cat-sitting to prevent chaos, when all you really want to do is go back to sleep….

Ah well, at least the Pearl for today is done…. such as it is…See you mañana, ffolkes…. Well, I’ll see you then, as long as Time continues to pass, beckoning us ever onward toward our destiny, in a random state of confusion, unless and until we realize, we always make our own…. Which, you ask? Both…. We make our own state of mind, and our own destiny….

So be it… gigoid has spoken….

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

1000? 1000? You let him get to 1000? Oh, DAMN!….

Posted on March 24, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Provided I can manage to complete this Pearl of Virtual Wisdom today, including the act of posting, I will have reached a significant milestone, for a project that has long since achieved its original goals, ultimately growing past all suspected intent…. That is, it’s significant to me, in my life, having been the focus of my existence every morning now since August of 2011…. This will be my 1000th post on WordPress….. I know, I said that before, but, I checked this time, twice already…. I specifically noted yesterday’s post, #999, when the editing page uploaded it to my domain, before closing the sidebar summary… Last time I looked, 999 + 1 = 1000…..

Oh, yay….. I’m so proud and happy, I could just bust a button…. Sort of….. I mean, other than the way I’m busting them now, from having gained too much weight on those parts of my corpus where my buttons serve some purpose…. If I weren’t so excited and discombobulated by the emotions that aren’t reverberating through my soul, I’d probably think about letting out a really loud cheer, but, since I don’t want to scare Patricia, or the cat, I’ll pass on that, too….. Y’all will just have to take my word for it…. I’m jazzed….

I thought about fireworks, but, you can’t see them, so there’s little point in that…. I suppose, if I were a true geek, I’d spend the time to figure out how to show some fireworks on the site today, such as with an animated .GIF file, or a short video, You Tube style…. Or, maybe in the background, like a few sites I’ve seen…. Unfortunately for you, though not for me, I have yet to take the time to learn how to do any of those things, so I’m safe from that, and so are you. Besides, all the neighborhood dogs hate it when I set off fireworks….

I also thought about some other sort of celebratory activity to offer the Gentle Reader today, but, how much interaction can one stimulate on a once-a-day blog? A chess game in the comments? Boring. Some sort of contest? I suppose, but, Bitcoins are dead, and I’m not funded well enough to have very many winners show up. I COULD announce the QUIZ, and, since it would be coming AFTER posting the 1000th Pearl here on WP, nobody could say they hadn’t been provided with enough material with which to work, or time to study up on the archived material, with or without healthy, delicious snack foods…. But, if I do that, what will I threaten anyone with from now on?…. Graduation won’t be for another 9,000 posts, so it’s way too early to think about the final….

Wait a minute…. Stop typing, damn it….. Okay, shut down, I hear something……. Cheese it, it’s the cops!….

“Here pigs will fly, lightning will strike twice, hell will freeze over, and eventually, things will get really interesting…”– Smart Bee

Maybe not, but, that’s probably how it will feel to anyone silly enough to be here when we hit the ground…. You see, all the above, everything above this line, was written yesterday…. Well, actually, so was this line, but, hey, I’m TRYING to get back to real-time…. give me a moment, okay? I had to go get the correct tool for this…. Okay, success…. one last turn, and…. okay. There…. THAT won’t be happening again…..

Sorry about the hijack, there, ffolkes….. My evil twin, Judas, the Faithful, tried to fool y’all into thinking he was me…. To look at what he wrote, he seemed to have been doing pretty well at it, too…. But, it’s over now, and it really IS my 1000th post on WP, so, we have some good stuff lined up for you today…. What that might be, I haven’t a clue, but, we’re hoping anyway….

You probably won’t believe me, but, this line is the first one I’ve actually typed today, on Monday, the 24th of March….. Yep, we are now officially, and actually, back in real time, ffolkes…. and today will be the 1000th time I’ve had to complete one of these silly introductory sections….. I have to say, it’s been a long road to here, with a lot of poorly written stuff before getting to this, which may, or may not, be any better. In any case, we’re finally up (it’s actually 5 AM already….) and we’re good to go for our celebration today…… whatever form that might take….

You see, I deliberately didn’t think about anything like that, to keep from breaking tradition; we’ve gotten this far without showing any real intelligence, I don’t see why I should start today…. Not that acting intelligently would help, or anything, it just might make it SEEM more worthwhile to anyone viewing it from the outside world…. Since that’s out of the question, we’ll just trust to luck, like always….

Shall we Pearl?…. I think we should, this has gone on far too long already, don’t you think?….

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorred shears
And slits the thin-spun life.

— John Milton (1608-1674) — Lycidas, Line 70
_____________________________

I’m going to switch things around a little today, & put the old-school pearl first; most days I put the rant here, to get it out of the way so ffolkes can get to the rest, which is often lighter, and mostly, less hard to chew, either figuratively, or metaphorically. Putting the rants here seems to be a habit, though not one ever examined, or thought out, so, I don’t think we’ll be trampling on a time-honored tradition or anything like that. No, we’re just randomly screwing with things, just to see what happens….. Hopefully, once I take this all apart, I’ll be able to get it back together again…. If not, well, here are some thoughts on Love, & so on & so forth….

“He is not a lover who does not love forever.” — Euripides

(I like that one….It happens to mirror my own feelings on the matter….)

“Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense” — E. E. Cummings (1894-1963)

“A person should take a bath once in the summer, not so often in the winter.” — from Kids Say the Darndest Things

“Communications are the lifeblood of a relationship, carrying the nutrients.” — Smart Bee

“God help the man who won’t marry until he finds a perfect woman, and God help him still more if he finds her.” — Benjamin Tillett

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

“Be not careless in deeds, nor confused in words, nor rambling in thought.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, viii, 51

Hmm…. It seems the pearl’s contents settled during shipping, causing some alterations in direction…. this appears now to be more of a set of rules, or advice, for married men, or men in a long-term committed relationship, anyway….. Same thing from this end…. Believe me, I know….

In light of that, it’s probably just as well I found this last pearl, as it is the perfect ending for any man who is considering the ancient traditional method of destroying a perfectly good relationship, to wit: marrying their lover…. Having been there, done that, a number of times, I can say with complete confidence that it isn’t a particularly good decision in today’s world…. Better to maintain a healthy cynicism, and keep the following in mind….

“From stupidity there is always something to be learned, but it’s always the same thing: don’t be stupid.” — Robert M. Adams

Bitter? No, not at all, why do you ask?….

😆
_____________________________

Since today’s Pearl is a milestone, it will probably be best to include a poem of my own…. I COULD try to bleed out a fresh one, but, I’m not sure it would meet my standards today, so, we’ll just go with one of my older poems, and let it go at that…. At least you can’t blame anyone else for any of this, right?….. Since the first section dealt with an aspect of Love, here is my take on the emotion that, perhaps, defines us as a human being….

Beyond Agapé

Passion burns and shines like iridescent paint
yet solitude stands mocking such mundane complaint.
Schemes and dreams promise to tempt attraction
never ending effort spends wit in perverse reaction.

Hale and hearty reports of honor and love
draft recruits to collect manna from above,
while searching each soul for that which will serve
to bring pure sensation to each expectant nerve.

How simple to fall into complete helpless hope
of two hearts bound in tradition, with cultural rope,
living a simple life, shared, in joy and in grief
promises consummated, in consensual belief.

Reality dictates our degree of control over its state
insisting on changing whether or not we can wait.
Love will be present when we are completely at peace,
allowing ourselves, to give of ourselves, without cease.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

I had hoped to be able to produce a fresh rant today, but, the political arena is currently quiet, as the professional pundits prepare their next set of egregious lies, in their ongoing campaign to maintain the level of societal fear they require to control the populace. Since they won’t give me anything solid to chew on today, we’ll go with an old-school pearl, with parameters that SHOULD produce a set of pearls that will poke fun and/or ridicule at our Beloved Ruling (Cl)Asses, essentially the same effect my ranting would create in the audience…. Well, we’re hoping…. It’ll be fun, if nothing else….

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency… Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.” — General Douglas MacArthur, 1957

(Note: this seems to be a corollary, or, perhaps, a codicil, to the opinion of Hermann Goering, the WWII German Reich Marshall, who just “happened to be” the counterpart of General MacArthur, on the opposite side of the war….. However, the quote by General Mac shows how the theory was applied in our country, AFTER WWII, by our own elected officials, right here in the good old USA….. see below….)

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY.” –Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

hardcore signature virus: “As a juror in a Trial by Jury, you have the right, power and duty to acquit the defendant if you judge the law itself to be unjust.” — John McPherson, mcpherso@macvax.ucsd.edu

(Mr. McPherson is quoting, I believe, Alexander Hamilton, if not Thomas Jefferson….. Y’all know him, right?…. He was our first Treasury Secretary, the one our Founding Fathers trusted with the money?….) (This quote may not fit EXACTLY, but, I find it is always a good idea to remind people of this concept, as it is patently one of our most important rights as a citizen….. especially if we must consider our law MAKERS to be corrupt…. If you’ve been paying attention lately, you’ll know whereof I speak….)

“America!! I saw it all!! Vomiting! Waving! JERRY FALWELLING into your void tube of UHF oblivion!! SAFEWAY of the mind –” — Zippy the Pinhead

“Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action.” — Robert Hugh Moore (1912-1984), given as advice to his sons

Please note the name of the author of the last pearl…. It is the name of my father; his words are a piece of advice he gave me, and my brothers, on more than one occasion, before my tenth birthday…. I’ve included his words to me and my brothers (don’t know if he gave it to my sisters, but, it was part of OUR lessons from him, for sure….) because the words he gave us are the perfect ending to this indictment of the BRC.

Actually, in my mind, the last two pearls are perhaps the most powerful of the group, in terms of the proper viewpoint to maintain when thinking about our beloved leaders (yes, “beloved” is VERY sarcastic in this instance…. 5 points for Gryffindor….)

In fact, the whole pearl is one I would classify as a very powerful faux-rant, addressing how little we can afford to trust the elected officials in our government…. In fact, it cries out for one final pearl, to advise us exactly how closely we should be paying attention to what they are up to, especially since they claim to be doing it in our name, and for our benefit….

“This is a wise maxim, “to take warning from others of what may be to your own advantage.” — Terence (185-159 BC) — Heautontimoroumenos, Act i, Sc. 2, 36, (210.)
_____________________________

I was up a bit late this morning, but, since I slept for eight straight hours without any significant breaks to deal with pain, or cat, I don’t much care….. Plus, this is one Pearl I want to be RIGHT, so I’m taking some time to try to make it so…. Having done so as well as I can at this point in the day, I’m going to trust my instincts, and let if fly…. See you tomorrow, provided ennui doesn’t set in so badly I fade away….. I’ve managed to avoid it so far, so, I’ll be positive, & just say…. 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

They want that oil FULLY hydrogenated….

Posted on March 21, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Thanks to the Word Press bot monkeys, who blithely collect and display all of our site stats, posting them where we can see them, if we are brave enough, I know that there were a total of four views of my blog yesterday…. That’s pathetic, even though the people who DID come by are not …. I know them both… the other two visits were from me, as I checked the site during the day…..

People, not even folks, much less ffolkes, but, people at large, are, as I’ve heard said so elegantly, “staying away in droves”, and I’m pretty sure I know why…. It’s the subject matter, and the ranting, that is making it hard for people to get into my writing, I think…. I tend to rant a lot, and my subject matter, while sometimes of interest to all, more often probably just gets old…..

Since it’s been around forever, I can’t see the poetry I include as the most likely cause for the absence of readers…. and, the old-school pearls, while perhaps obscure at times, generally have enough good quotes in them to make them worthwhile to read…. as well as more often containing a modicum of humor…. Levity always plays better than angst…. They’re shorter, too, as a rule…

That leaves the ranting as the major reason people might avoid reading this material…. It’s generally longer than most folks want to read, and I do tend to get a bit vitriolic, I know, in describing some of the public figures that many people admire…. This may tend to cause some ire, as well, because, as I’m aware of, people don’t like to have their icons attacked, especially in ways that show them to be less than admirable people, thus taking away some of the shine that goes with being one of their admirers…..

To this handicap, add also that I tend to repeat my subject matter frequently, according to whatever articles in the news have arisen to stimulate one of my outbursts of outrage…. Considering these factors, one can see why many people might get tired of reading about the same old stuff, even if the insults are fresh, and my complaints are, at minimum, justifiable only in my own eyes… In addition, the mere fact of the truth of what I may say doesn’t seem to matter to some folks, as they don’t want to hear it anyway…. Them, I don’t really give much of a shit about, since they’re already dead, in regards their ability to reason….

But, the people who do come by who NEED to see what I write aren’t going to stay long, once they’ve been exposed to my style of expressing my outrage, as I tend to be rather forceful in my insults of a number of conservative, and liberal, iconic heroes, who, to me, are all the more villainous for their apparent harmlessness…. Their image as smart, caring individuals, with the interests of the common man at the forefront of their concerns, (which is what they WANT folks to believe about them….), gets punctured rather quickly around here, and their avaricious, self-serving, dishonest NASTINESS is exposed, by unassailable evidence (often out of their own mouths….), to show them as the selfish assholes they really are, behind the smarmy smiles, and mouths full of lies….

Ah well…. As I’ve said before, I write this mostly for my own benefit…. If I leave all this angst-filled frustration inside my head, it rots, or percolates into a mishmash of thoughts and ideas that would make anyone ill….. Instead, I write, & get all of it off my chest, into the public marketplace of ideas, the human cloud of common experience, if you will, where there is at least a small chance that someone will see it, & be thereby inspired to think…. It’s a bit frustrating at times, to know that so few are seeing it, especially since I KNOW FOR A FACT there are MILLIONS of ignorant fools out there who NEED to see the information I share every day….

But, I can live with the frustration, because I know that getting this OUT of my head is doing me more good than I could ever get from psychotherapy, or from trying to live the lie so many people fall for…. I know THAT for a FACT….. So, if folks want to keep ignoring what I write, that’s okay…. Maybe a few more of the over 440 ffolkes who signed up to follow my blog will stop in to read, be inspired, and share it around the web…. If even a few people see my words, it could conceivably make a small difference…. and, in the final analysis, isn’t that what we all want?….

Shall we Pearl?

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” — Max Planck, 1858-1947

“And waste their music on the savage race.” — Edward Young (1684-1765) — Love of Fame, Satire v, Line 228
_____________________________

As is often the case, you’ll need to at least skim these articles to get the full effect of the following material…. Don’t worry, I’ll wait….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/medical/article/Arkansas-court-tosses-1-2B-judgment-against-J-J-5334330.php

http://www.sfgate.com/raiders/article/Feds-end-Raiderette-wage-probe-with-no-action-5332287.php

P. What riches give us let us then inquire: Meat, fire, and clothes.
B. What more?
P. Meat, fine clothes, and fire.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Moral Essays, Epistle iii, Line 79

Is there any doubt left, in anyone’s mind, that in this country, if not the entire world, the courts, and the federal government in general, are completely under the control and influence of corporate entities? There is none left in mine, let me assure you, not a dram, nor even a drop….. The links above lead to articles of note on the subject, both of which are merely the reports of two more instances of corporate influence on legislation, just a small piece of a long list of occasions throughout history, where the corporate interests of a large company were protected by a court decision, or, as in the second case, by federal lawyers (?….!!!) from the Attorney General’s office of investigation…. What a crock!

In the case of the Raiders cheerleaders vs. the NFL bullies, what do you want to wager that the law, regarding “seasonal” businesses being “exempt” from the laws the rest of us must follow, was already very familiar to the company before drawing up the contracts for anyone they might hire, such as the cheerleaders, thus saving themselves, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars in operating expenses, from not having to pay for such operational items as oh, say, a living wage for the people who work for the company? (By a living wage, I refer to an amount of money earned that one could actually LIVE on, not what some shark of a CEO thinks is “reasonable”, an amount that is generally minuscule, compared to even the minimum wage now in place; thus, it becomes a figure which protects the bottom line….)

Not only was the company probably aware of the law, I would also wager serious money the lobbyists for the NFL in Congress were instrumental in setting the regulations that are part of the law, when the law was first written…. There is no safer way to protect one’s interests than to be able to say what goes into a law that one’s company will have to obey…. Why not write the law the way they want it in the first place?…. It’s a simple matter of paying ONE, or perhaps a few corrupt politicians in the present, thus saving millions of dollars of future costs….. This, of course, enables the corporation to pocket those millions, since all that money won’t be going to the cheerleaders, or back to the consumers…

As for the J&J decision, well, I guess that one got fixed way back in the mid-eighteen hundreds, when corporations were awarded their “personhood”…. In this case, that protects them from being confused with a “medical facility”, you see, thus making them, once again, “exempt” from any of the laws pertaining to what they actually do as a business…. They are free to do pretty much whatever they want, as long as they remember to set aside enough of what they’ve stolen to pay their lawyers, and the occasional congress person, or judge…. Easy money, from where they’re sitting, wouldn’t you say?…..

(Note: after finishing, a thought…. How many of the lawyers involved in all of the cases in the two articles went to the same law school? Bet it’s more than just a couple…. Between the judges, & their lackeys, lawyers on both sides of the issues, and the politicians, who are what lawyers become after they leave the larval stage, I’d bet one could find a LOT of collusive interactions from past involvements by the players…. but, who’s going to notice, or question that sort of thing, besides ffolkes like me?….)

I began this rant yesterday, when I first read the two articles…. Actually, it only took the first one to piss me off; the second article just made the rant imperative, while adding more fuel to my outrage…. The NFL corporation(s) (along with other massive conglomerates of assholes who exploit games theory, such as the NCAA, the NBA, the NHL, the NTA, and MLB, WBF, WWF, just to name some of those in THIS country…. In the rest of the world, think Rugby, Cricket, Soccer/Futbol, tennis, etc…. Oh, right, and some for the richest gamesmen, sailing races…. Think, literally (look it up…. I did….) billions upon billions of dollars of income from EACH sport, for EACH of those corporations, EACH year….. not counting TV income….) has to be one of the most egregious examples in modern society of how corrupt our government has become, and how that corruption extends into all reaches of Society At Large….

Here is a corporation whose sole purpose is to provide the public with a whole range of time- and money-consuming activities/pastimes that involve the participation and, more importantly, the focus, attention, and MONEY, of literally hundreds of millions of fools, who are thus kept from using a large part of their brain for thinking…. Of course, these are the brains occupying the middle and lower end of the human bell curve of intelligence, but, hey, there are a LOT of these people out there, who provide the massive inertia that makes society so hard to change…. Why? Because everyone is busy watching a GAME, or betting on a game, or waiting for a game to start…..

In addition, and perhaps more significantly, it encourages those millions of people to spend a large part of their income (and thus, the time and energy spent to obtain that money….) in paying for the ‘privilege’ of watching these GAMES, and to buy any number of otherwise USELESS articles that show how engaged they are in supporting their vicarious heroic icons…. Add to this all the other sports leagues in the world, each one controlled by some VERY RICH assholes with no concern for anyone who can’t do something for them, and we see just one of the numerous ways in which the shadowy corporate masters of society have asserted their control over the ignorant, and the greedy….

Billions and billions of dollars are spent each year by the public, to watch their icons bang into each other, or toss around a ball, or in some way compete in such a way as to arouse the same vicarious feelings in the watchers that they felt when personally engaging in those activities, when they were young…. In short, it’s a drug, which soothes the public mind by allowing them to repeat good feelings as many times as they wish, thereby giving up all their individuality, their time, their money, and all of their self-respect (in my mind….), just so they can be part of a crowd of others, all with the same goal of wasting precious time watching other people PLAY A FUCKING GAME!….

I think, if I was asked to do so, I could come up with at least a dozen other ways to spend all that time and money, any one of which would help the world find its way to a better place than we are in now…. and so could you. Almost anyone could…. But, it will never happen, because the Powers That Be like things just as they are, where they have the control over society to do exactly as they wish, and the major portion of humanity will never even know they are being enslaved…. not as long as the Forty-Niners play on Sunday, or the Giants are in the World Series….

Basta…. Everything I’ve said here is true…. y’all KNOW it is…. All the evidence for all these assertions I’ve made is right there in the headlines of the news, every day, if one is alert enough, and clever enough to see it…. The masters of society have enslaved mankind for over five thousand years now, from shortly after the time they convinced everyone else that money was a better thing to use than barter, (It’s not, for a number of reasons, but, that’s a talk for another time….), while the rest of us have the choice to ignore our enslavement, go along with it, with or without ill-grace, or, to know about it, hate it, & complain, loudly, even eloquently, but, to little or no effect (I’m doubtless guilty of the latter….) (…. guilty of complaining to little effect, not of doing so with eloquence….)

At this point, unless there are enough concerned people to band together to expose this issue, which would doubtlessly prompt everyone else to DO something to stop them (they WON’T stop on their own, count on that…), then, by golly, ffolkes, we’re all going to pay the price for THEIR ignorance, when the planet steps in to cleanse itself of all the crap we’ve thrown around during our short tenancy….. Won’t THAT be fun?…. Well, you’re probably right, it won’t be….

“The truth cannot be tidied up.” — Hugh Prather
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It’s a long rant today, I know…. Sorry, but, that had all been building up a while, & needed to be lanced before it got infected, or festered, as we like to say on colloquial side of the street…. Besides, it’s all true, and needs to be told, so, I’m not going to apologize for doing what I consider to be my duty as a citizen of this country, one who is free, educated, and patriotic, without being blinded by sentiment, or faith-based nonsense.

That being said, I would normally use one of my own poems here, so all of this doesn’t sully the name of some other poet by people’s unfortunate tendency to form associations that aren’t real, merely due to circumstantial presence, rather than any similarity of thought…. But, I decided that I wasn’t going to give in to that sort of ignorance today, because I WANT something good here, and my own stuff can’t necessarily be judged so, not without giving up all objectivity….

So, in order to indulge myself, I’m going with a classic poet, whose reputation is such that mere association with MY work could never adversely affect HIS reputation…. It’s been too long in place, and is too accurate, to ever change…. Society will always admire this man, in spite of himself…. In a race of creatures whose one major claim to fame is that each is a unique individual, this man stands out, and always has…. Enjoy! I intend to do so….

My Voice

Within this restless, hurried, modern world
We took our hearts’ full pleasure–You and I,
And now the white sails of our ship are furled,
And spent the lading of our argosy.

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow hath paled my lip’s vermilion,
And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

But all this crowded life has been to thee
No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

~~ Oscar Wilde ~~

_____________________________

Oh boy…. I can relax now, and have a bit of fun…. I’ve been so focused this morning, on getting the rant just right, as well as, I admit, making a complete mess of the intro, that I lost track of the fun button, so my blood level is running a bit low….. Since I’m so sober, I’ll try to bring a bit of balance to the Metaphorse, and use a simple, single parameter for the following pearl, to wit: the following quotes have all been determined to display the essence of bozoid tendencies in some fashion, to be determined at the time of consumption…. Enjoy them, please…. if you don’t, I’ve failed, again….

😳

“I think a good gift for the president would be a chocolate revolver. And since he’s so busy, you’d probably have to run up to him and hand it to him.” — Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey

“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

Born Again Christian = “I guess I myth’d again.” — Smart Bee

“Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing, right in your ear.” — Dave Barry

— How many Canadians does it take to change a light bulb? Twelve. Four to form a Parliamentary study committee to decide how to solve the problem, one Francophone to complain that I didn’t translate this joke into French, one Native Canadian to protest that the interests of Native Canadians have been overlooked, one woman from the National Action Committee On the Status Of Women to say that women have been underrepresented in the process, one to go over the border to the Niagara Falls Factory Outlet Mall and buy a new bulb and not pay duty on it on the way back, one to actually screw it in, one to collect taxes on the whole procedure so the government can afford it, one to buy a case of Molson for everybody to drink, and one to drop the puck.” — Smart Bee, eh?

“If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.” — Wittgenstein

“Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, iv, 50

Oops! Sorry…. it took a kind of radical turn at the end there, didn’t it? Oh well, it kind of works, and I have a special contract with Marcus Aurelius…. his quotes ALWAYS stay, no matter what the parameters, just because, for being over 1800 years old, they are consistently the most correct, insightful, and relevant statements that can be found…. Seriously, he never seemed to miss, not if it got written down…. and, if you do stop to think about it a little, it even fits into the group it is part of, as a sort of closing, summarization sort of thing…. sort of…. Hey, even if not, it’s still a brilliant thought, right? How can you lose?…. Right…. you can’t…. Even the darkest cloud can have a silver lining…..
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Well, that took forever, it seems….. a feeling the clock confirms, as I’m two entire hours later than usual getting this done…. That might have something to do with not getting up until almost 0500, which has to do with consuming massive quantities of sleep aids in various manifestations, so it isn’t necessarily surprising, or alarming….. just different, I suppose one could say, and be correct….

There, a quick hundred words or so to say a bit more NOTHING, and we can bring this mess to a close….. I tried several new techniques today, behind the scenes, & I’ll let y’all know how they worked another time…. For now, I suppose I’ve held you captive to my whim long enough, and should let y’all be on your way into the day…. SIGH…. Okay, but, this power over others stuff is addictive, y’know….. See ya tomorrow….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

Would chartreuse fill the bill?…

Posted on March 20, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

I remember fire, and fear, and the smell of blood. Blurred, confused images pass behind my eyes, unheeded, as I try to separate all the conflicting perceptions clamoring for my attention from all directions…. Panicked, I open my eyes, only to close them immediately, as the smoke and heat fly into my awareness, and into my lungs. Coughing madly, I start to run, anywhere….

Crashing into walls, screaming in abject, unreasoning fear, I run blindly down the hallway, with flames and smoke pulling at me, reaching out to caress with seductive, lethal fingers, as I flee past the open doors, all with more flames and smoke pouring out…. As I near the window at the end of the hallway, the glass bursts, sending millions of glittering sharp needles raining down at my face….

So, I ducked, grabbed a fire extinguisher, & put out the fire….. Actually, what I actually did is stop writing, because I couldn’t decide whether to kill him off, or save him, & it was getting close to the point where I’d have to do one or the other…. Rather than make up my mind, I decided to just give up, and bring y’all into this paragraph, where a taste of real-time will bring us right into line with our agenda for today. Well, that’s the plan, anyway. Given the general state of affairs around these parts, there’s really no telling what will ACTUALLY occur…. That’s just fine, though, we like it that way….

That’s what we keep telling ourselves, anyway…. that’s our story, and we’re sticking with it. (As you can see, we are also using the royal “we” today….) Besides, what with the way that Reality generally treats ALL of us, I’ve found it’s best to go along with whatever happens, without argument. Trying to make things work the way I want is not what I’d call a lucrative occupation, not for a person who claims to be a realist…. Reality seldom asks us for our opinions about how things should go; it just lets the shit fly, with no worries about what it sticks to…. No nose, y’know?…. the smell doesn’t affect ’em….

I’d claim it had one, (a nose, that is….), but, the anthropomorphizing of inanimate forces of Nature seldom results in anything other than a black eye, or a bloody nose, with the ubiquitous Murphy being both the obvious exception that proves the rule, and, the perpetrator of Reality’s sardonic attentions…. Besides, y’all are probably aware by now of what is going on here…..

No doubt, the regulars among you have tumbled to what I’ve been doing for the past five paragraphs, as they’ve seen this sort of trickery before…. Yes, we’re deep into the depths of another of my famous meanders, and it’s too late now to say we’re not…. Not only is it too late for that, but, we’ve also lost our way to the end….

But, we have the means to deal with that, no worries…. I’ll just open up this little cupboard right here, and pull out this little package, containing all the denial I’ll need to deal with the reporters later, while I surreptitiously apply Emergency Method #4….. otherwise known as the sudden complete stop…..

Shall we Pearl?

“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. ” (Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.) — William of Occam, Occam’s Razor

Aha! I KNEW there was SOMETHING I was doing wrong!….. Ah well, it DOES add more to the arguments explaining why using EM #4 is a good idea on mornings like this one…
_____________________________

I’m in a strange place today…. I suppose, coming from me, that isn’t saying anything particularly unusual, but, it still holds true; even for me, I’m feeling weird…. I read the two articles below yesterday, during the short period of time I was able to sit and read news-type stuff….

The first was added to the evidence in my mind regarding the imminent world-wide environmental crisis that Mankind has to face in the coming years, while the second offers at least a small bit of philosophy that could be of help to us in our struggle… by which I mean, the article by Mark M. has some very rational points to bring out, points which, if heeded, can’t help but make things better for a lot of people…. But, who listens to a smart-ass, semi-millennial, faux hippie with a big vocabulary, except ffolkes like me?….

I could conceivably, and quite easily, I’m sure, rant on the first article, about society’s pending demise, thus proving it fits into the prevailing theory of civilization to which the article refers, a theory which delineates how cultures age over time, until their predictable, eventual, inevitable collapse, destroyed from within by corruption, and the weight of its own folly. Our society is a perfect fit for this theory, for which there exists a LOT of evidence, all provided from our own history. But, I’m still a bit tired, and not able to sit long enough to do justice to such a critical, complex subject….

Instead, read the two articles, to get a good idea of where we are today in the World at Large… For your reading and cogitative pleasure, I’ve followed these with a religirant from the archives, just for fun….. Enjoy, ffolkes, as much as you can, considering the subject matter….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/NASA-funded-report-says-society-is-trending-5328327.php

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2014/03/18/is-work-life-balance-a-lie/

The following rant is one of my best, all in all, as it didn’t start out with the intent to rant, but just grew naturally….. Abondanza!….

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

From 11/24/13:

The following religirant is from June of 2012; in my opinion, it remains as cogent as the day it was first written….. Thank goodness, as it gives me a reason to use it now. (Note from 2014: It’s as valid today as it was last November…) My advice is to take it with the usual grain or two of your favorite flavored salt….. Myself, I like a mixture of onion and garlic salts, with some cracked black pepper, and a touch of chili powder, for interest, and balance…. Metaphorically speaking, you could think of that as Reason, Doubt, and Imagination…. apply them to any subject, and they’ll come out a lot better than merely using Faith and/or Fearful Denial….

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

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“History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.” — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1972)

There are many folks out there who, when reading my material for the first time, might get the impression that I am an atheist, and an anarchist. The stuff I write would tend to give that impression, I have no doubt. But, it really isn’t the case, and just goes to show that not everything is always as it seems….

I’m not an atheist, at least not in a classical sense. I would more accurately be described as agnostic, as I believe strongly in a spiritual component in the universe. But, the very concept of omnipotence, and omniscience, implies that one cannot define God, or whatever entity one considers to be the ultimate authority. A finite mind cannot comprehend an infinite mind; anything we can imagine cannot, by definition, be accurate or complete, as our minds are not infinite in scope.

It could be said that our imagination IS infinite. We can, at the very least, comprehend the concept of infinity, even if we cannot touch it, or see it, or count that high. But, to actually think that what we imagine about God is the same as reality is not only arrogant, it is foolish. Yet a large percentage of the human race not only believes they know what God looks like (ironically, God always looks suspiciously like the folks who are claiming Him as their deity….), but, also have the temerity to say that they know what He wants. To my way of thinking, this is sheer self-aggrandizement, and unjustifiably arrogant….

I suppose it helps them in dealing with the everyday stresses of life to think that they are special. It must be comforting to think they are beloved of God, and what they do is important to Him. This sense of belonging is important to a lot of folks, in reaction, I think, to their own fears about their ability, or, in their eyes, their inability, to deal with reality as it exists. It gives them a sense of entitlement, and justifies their actions, no matter how immoral or unethical they may be. It allows them to act upon their impulses without restraint, to lie, to cheat, to steal, all in the name of the Lord. And, if they should happen to feel a tiny shred of guilt about what they are doing to other folks, why, they just confess their sins to Jesus, and all is forgiven!….

Sorry, ffolkes, but I could never buy into the whole scenario, from my earliest days on this planet…. All of my experience, and all of my reasoning has led me to a different view of reality than what is described by any religion. I have observed the behavior of most people of a religious bent to be, as a rule, hypocritical, cruel, bigoted, racist, and, for the most part, unrelated to any moral or ethical system of any depth. Those who claim to be the MOST religious in society go so far as to threaten violence toward anyone who disagrees with their beliefs, justified by their own self-proclaimed right to spew their hatred on anyone who differs.

I believe in compassion and kindness. I believe in love. I believe in protecting the vulnerable, and helping the less fortunate. I believe in beauty. And, I believe in reality, whatever that may be; it’s purely subjective for the most part. I DON’T believe in the divinity of Jesus, or Buddha, or Lao Tzu, or Mohammad, or any other religious prophet. I don’t believe there is some white haired, bearded old guy sitting on a throne of gold up in the sky somewhere, looking down and getting his shorts in a bunch because I didn’t salute his graven image first thing after I got up.

That whole graven image thing, and the idea that God wants, or needs, our worship has always been a thorn in my side. I mean, can’t these zealots understand the irony of worshiping an image of Christ on the cross? Don’t they know that the cross is a graven image? And, most importantly to me, why would an omnipotent being NEED to have MY worship? It makes no sense. None. I cannot imagine of ANY reason for a God to care at all about such petty bullshit; I don’t care to be worshiped, why should He? Having someone act that way toward me makes me uncomfortable, so I can’t see why a God would even want to go there. What purpose does it serve? In my opinion, it debases the worshiper, AND the one worshiped.

One of my computer alarms just went off, and made me realize I was ranting, which I had not started out to do. I think y’all can get the gist of my arguments by this time, and, since those who are in disagreement with what I’ve written aren’t going to be persuaded away from their long-held delusions by my words, further soliloquy would be futile.

I’ll just finish by saying this…. until Mankind grows up enough to be able to put aside the crutch of religion, until the species as a whole learns to stand up to reality as it exists, without the delusional imaginary friend to intercede on their behalf with the universe, then our path to extinction will remain clear…. It’s too bad, really, because we do show a lot of promise, at times, and under the right conditions…. It’s too bad we will never be allowed to explore our limits as an adult species, because we will have killed ourselves off before we ever got out of childhood….

“There ain’t no devil, there’s just God when he’s drunk.” — Tom Waits, Heartattack and Vine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There you go…. Now, I COULD continue ranting on this theme; it’s one I can pick up in a heartbeat. But, I’ll be nice, and get on with the rest of today’s effort…. See, I CAN be disciplined…. and compassionate, as well…. it just takes a while sometimes……

“It is in changing that things find repose” — Heraclitus
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On days such as this one is turning out to be, I try to NOT let any of what takes place here splash onto other people…. In that vein, here is one of my older poems, just to fill up this space with something that rhymes….

A Dubiously Soft Morning

Idiosyncratic images, clamoring for regard,
fill up the white, bright, empty 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 ~~

_____________________________

Fiddle de dee, fiddle de dum….. I smell the blood of an English mun…. I always hated that rhyme; it isn’t QUITE right, and, thus, hurts my obsessive sense of order…. But, it’s a nice little phrase to indicate the passage of time, with the added attraction of being thoroughly nonsensical…. As such, it’s handy for those of us who rely on literary tricks to get by…. Patently, it’s useful, if only to get us where we needed to go, which, oddly enough, is right here….. Fancy that!…..

I COULD get really silly, and go for Monty Python style in this next section, but, I’m not terribly expert in the Silly Walk. I CAN do a decent “Ni ni ni….”, but, how many times can one fall back on that? Not too many, I can assure you…. No, we’ll stay with what we know best, which just happens to be an old-school pearl, with parameters unset, to give it that random, harlequin look… It works for me, as it will for you, if you give it half a chance…. that’s all we’re asking for, ffolkes, just half a chance….

“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” — Albert Schweitzer

“Regrets and complaints about relations are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but for someone with the opposite deposition, youth and old age are equally a burden.” — Plato,_The Republic_, Book 1

“And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the bible were used to beat plowshares into swords…” — Alan Watts

“Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man,–yesterday in embryo, to-morrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hair’s-breadth of time assigned to thee live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, iv, 48

“Nature does nothing uselessly.’ — Aristotle

“Extinct is forever.” — Smart Bee

“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you please unless it causes others harm. With it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.” — P.J. O’Rourke
_____________________________

I seem to be incapable of reaching any sort of conclusive resolution regarding the nature, and/or disposition of this Pearl; some time during the creation of today’s piece, my mind took a hike, and hasn’t returned all the way…. Something out there in my subconscious is drawing a good portion of its focus, so, I guess I’ll have to finish this without benefit of being 100% present…. and if anyone makes a comment as to that being a normal state, I WILL be hurt….

Not really, cuz it’s perfectly true, and I try not to let true stuff hurt me…. (see the last pearl in section three to see why….)…. Actually, I’m all here, I’m just not ALL here, if you catch my drift….

Now that I’ve gotten to the point of deliberate obscurity, I’d better bring this to a close…. It’s true, though, I don’t know what to think about today’s Pearl; it felt strange while putting it together, and still defies my complete comprehension…. I’m a little worried about how that will affect others, but, hey, we all take a risk, every time we try to use whatever it is we keep between our ears, so, like me, and everyone else, y’all are on your own in that respect…. I don’t think any of it will actually HARM you, unless, of course, you try to use it as REAL wisdom….

See ya tomorrow, when things will be different…. None of us has much of a choice about THAT, do we?…..

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

May I see your license to glean, sir?….

Posted on March 19, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

I know it’s going to be a tough morning when I get up….. That’s it…. When I get up…. THAT is the point in time when I know I’m about to make a mistake, again…. Yet, each day, I drag my sorry ass out of my nice, warm, comfy bed to come out here and go through all this, just to clear out the excess of corrupted files in my head.

I mean, it’s not as if anyone is paying me some huge amount of money to do this, nor am I, apparently, taking the blog world by storm, as my site traffic still isn’t what I’d call heavy, or even moderate…. In fact, I’d say it was pathetic, but, the few ffolkes who DO make it by each day are anything BUT pathetic, so that wouldn’t be appropriate, by any means….

Nor, it seems, is yet another attempt at a chatty, intimate, conversational opening going to cut it for long; I can feel this going wonky at me as I type…. Too many assumptions of real-time connection, without any actual control modules being hooked in, thus preventing many of the really neat things we COULD be doing if they were….. like graphics, and many other artistic flourishes, that often go missing in what we see happening around here….. I suppose it would help if I possessed even a smidgen of real artistic talent, but, the best I’ve ever come up with is a stick figure and stick trees under a pale blue sky…. and that was using Photo Shop!

Now, I know y’all can tell when I’m being facetious…. the lights automatically dim three times before each planned occurrence (when it happens inadvertently, we’re all on our own….). But, even with that, I don’t think we’re going to be able to salvage much from the wreckage of this opening. It’s gone pretty well off the rails already, and we’re only three paragraphs in…. I’m fairly certain, if I try to continue to beat it much longer, this dead horse is going to rise up and turn zombie on me…. Y’all KNOW how much I dislike having to deal with zombies…. It reminds me too much of watching televised Congressional hearings…. sheer torture….

Before I get any weirder, or become even less comprehensible, I’m going to abandon this mess. I don’t know exactly what happened, nor do I care much….. It’s over, which, as far as I’m concerned, is all I need to know right now…. We’ll go on, just as if we’ve had a regular, chatty little opening conversation, just like we do every day, thus putting the lie to our insistence on having reality match our description; today, it ain’t gonna happen, so we may as well get used to that…. However, we do have one saving grace remaining to us….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.” — Mark Twain

A school board member, it should be noted, is the larval stage of a politician…. It’s the lowest, most local level of elected official in this country, and, as such, Mr. Twain’s description, labeling them as idiots, was far more accurate than he knew; to be an elected official, one must be, at minimum, a proven psychotic, so, as idiots, they fit right in….
_____________________________

My ranting skills, while not ‘faded and gone away’ for good, are most definitely not in evidence today; I’m actually pretty fatigued in my head, all in all, from the events of the past two days, during which I waged a moderately tough battle with pain, with a large portion of my time spent in a happily-drugged stupor…..

Now that the pain is receding a bit, I’m still feeling the aftereffects of the battle, which can be more extensive than might be surmised….. It’s a tough row to hoe getting past such episodes; they require some rather strong applications of will power to ignore the pain at times, until the drugs can take full effect, and fatigue builds up rapidly, after a certain amount of time spent exercising that will….

Thus, I’m using another rant from the archives today, just because I can… This is from the period AFTER the last presidential election, in 2012…. It was beginning to become clear that though we had chosen the LESSER of two evils at the polls, our choice was still evil, as more and more evidence of cover-ups and lies began to emerge, lies that decried Barry’s promises of “transparency” in his administration. That lack of transparency has now been confirmed as a huge lie, so, this becomes even more accurate in its generally non-specific accusations of chicanery among the ruling classes…. Enjoy!….

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

From 12/30/12:

“History is a lie commonly agreed upon.” — Nietzsche

I often wonder how people in the future, (if we have one…), will view these times, it being a given that the fabric of our society is based primarily on lies and/or delusions.* Which ones will stand the test of time, and end up in the books as being the one everyone agrees upon? It has also been said that history is always written by the winners, and that seems to me to be fairly close to the real truth of the matter. It would be a bit more acceptable to me if it weren’t so bloody predictable, and that there was at least a small chance that the events we experience would be reported truthfully. Alas, I am not hopeful that will ever be the case…..

* (Note the use of the technique of the positively stated assertion, using the assumption of its truth as PROVEN, the very same technique of verbal argument used by ALL religious doctrines as the basis for their truth and relativity…. Just thought I’d make it clear at the outset, this is real, serious stuff, just like their stuff is….)

In all honesty, I’m not convinced that we, as a species, will HAVE much of a future. Given the current state of the environment, I can’t see us lasting more than a couple hundred years more, without some major changes to society, changes that are neither imminent, nor under consideration.

When I first started this blog, over a year ago, I posted a link, to what is called a World Clock, at Poodwaddle.com ( I love the human imagination!…..What a great word, eh? Poodwaddle…. I like to say it out loud; it’s even more exciting that way…..). You can find that clock here: http://www.poodwaddlecom/clocks/worldclock/

The clock has a number of faces, one of which shows exactly how much carbon-monoxide (CO), and carbon dioxide (CO2), along with unnatural amounts of other toxic substances, are being pumped into the atmosphere every second, by industrial and manufacturing facilities, and by cars and other vehicles. Other faces give real time statistics on other subjects common to the theme of the site, to wit: environmental activism…

I am a scientist, first. I chose the path of the scientist in my youth, before my tenth birthday, even before setting my feet upon the warrior’s path I chose to include as part of my later life. In essence, scientists ARE warriors, and vice versa; battling the universe requires study in order for one to be effective in coping with whatever happens….

In addition, the acquisition of knowledge requires the curiosity and courage of a warrior, in order to find, and face, the Truth, in all its many guises. Each path complements the other, and, in my time, have combined to lead me on a journey of great beauty and wonder. My journey, though, is in danger of being ended before its time, by the mundane asininity of the human race….

There are some scientists who believe that humans do not have the power to harm the planet; nor do they believe the danger is as great as the evidence might indicate. In one respect, they are right…. I don’t think the planet ITSELF is in danger from what we are doing, though I’m sure it is suffering pain from the symptoms we’ve managed to saddle it with in our time. (Why WOULDN’T a planet have consciousness?… It’s large enough, and complex enough, and we don’t know, or perceive, all there is to know about the universe, or consciousness, for that matter…. Answer that first, before asking me why it would suffer pain….)

No, our activities, such as polluting the air and water, wasting resources, and indiscriminately killing the other creatures with whom we live, only endanger US, and the other life forms on the planet. Once we are gone, the planet will easily clean itself of the trash we deposited everywhere, and move on to the next evolutionary step in the parade of Time.

“Where man walks the earth hurts.” — Smart Bee

Many years ago, I used to believe in the ingenuity of scientists, to overcome the technological difficulties we’ve created, and find a way to keep us alive, perhaps by colonizing other planets in space, leaving the Earth behind. But, the figures don’t lie, and the figures say we don’t have the time to fool around waiting for space travel to solve the problems we have. By the time we could achieve any kind of significant progress there, we would be forced to live in domes, to wear protective gear to go outside, just to walk on the surface of our own world. That is, IF there are enough remaining resources to build the domes, and to power them sufficiently to survive.

Another, though less likely possible solution is for the ruling classes of our species to come to their senses, to reverse their moral compass, such that they start acting in the best interests of everyone, instead of just themselves. The entire problem with pollution we have today exists solely because the ruling classes, the people who control all the resources, don’t have any moral compass, or, choose to deliberately ignore its influence.

They choose, instead, to structure society in their own favor, so that they, and ONLY they, have the power, and the control over what society produces, while the rest of us try to survive on their leavings. It is the same picture that history has seen portrayed for all the millenia since we came out of the caves to live in cities; the 1% of mankind who are in control are not interested in helping anyone else, unless and until they have fulfilled their own desires….

Even the lies upon which we all agree, in all of our written history, show this to be true, so I don’t think there is a huge chance that we will see any significant changes before it is too late for them to matter. I just don’t see those in the beloved ruling class, all of a sudden, suffering a change of heart, reversing the entire course of the history they’ve chosen to write in their name; it is not in their nature to be altruistic to even a small degree. We are either going to have to rise up and throw them out on their asses, or suffer an ignominious death, when the air we can no longer breathe begins to choke us, as we walk down the street toward our destiny….. a destiny which, at this point, leads us straight to a coffin…..

“I can’t decide which WRONG TURN to make first!! I wonder if BOB GUCCIONE has these problems!” — Zippy the Pinhead
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What often amazes me when I read poetry by one of the classical Chinese poets, such as Li Po, is how beautifully the translations were written…. It takes a high degree of insight to be able to not only create a poem in translation from one language to another, but to make the translation as beautiful to read, or to hear if read aloud, as was the original piece…. It makes me want to learn to speak Chinese, if only to gain some understanding of the process involved, in creating such beauty in either language…. Enjoy!….

Amidst The Flowers A Jug Of Wine

Amidst the flowers a jug of wine,
I pour alone lacking companionship.
So raising the cup I invite the Moon,
Then turn to my shadow which makes three of us.
Because the Moon does not know how to drink,
My shadow merely follows the movement of my body.
The moon has brought the shadow to keep me company a while,
The practice of mirth should keep pace with spring.
I start a song and the moon begins to reel,
I rise and dance and the shadow moves grotesquely.
While I’m still conscious let’s rejoice with one another,
After I’m drunk let each one go his way.
Let us bind ourselves for ever for passionless journeyings.
Let us swear to meet again far in the Milky Way.

~~ Li Po ~~

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Oh, yay…. I am filled with enthusiasm and excitement…. NOT….. I am, however, mildly pleased (about as strong an emotion as I’m capable of just now, I think…) to have reached this final section, where I can lay down my insane need to appear normal, at least for long enough to put together an old-school pearl to finish off today’s effort…. which has, indeed, been an effort…. I’ll keep the parameters simple, as well as hidden, so the point of all of this may, or may not, be immediately obvious… So, what else is new?….

“Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) — The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, i

“Invincibility depends on one’s self; The enemy’s vulnerability on him.” — Sun Tzu

“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

“You speak truth,” said Themistocles; “I should never have been famous if I had been of Seriphus;” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Life of Themistocles

“What we do is as American as lynch mobs. America has always been a complex place.” — Jerry Garcia (1942-1995), Musician, the Grateful Dead — Rolling Stone magazine, (November 30, 1989).

“Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.” — Muad ‘Dib

“I’m a GENIUS! I want to dispute sentence structure with SUSAN SONTAG!!” — Zippy the Pinhead
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I make no apologies, nor do I make excuses, even though the process of making them up can be a lot of fun…. (My dog pooped on my homework after he ate the cat…. you know, like that….). But, when one has taken on the creation of a daily Pearl of Virtual Wisdom as a personal Duty, in spite of all the advice and counseling, in spite of all the urgings of his family and friends, in spite of the obvious humiliation and embarrassment he causes to others, as well as himself, well…. there isn’t a lot of wiggle-room for getting out of it, so making either apology or excuse becomes undignified, as well as counter-productive in the sense of maintaining one’s self-esteem…. whatever THAT might be!….

In spite of the tone and tenor of the intro section, I’m a bit disappointed this is already done; I’ve had more fun than I thought would be possible when I began…. About half-way through getting this completed, my brain woke up for real; as a happy result, the latter half of this process has been much smoother than the first half could possibly have been, given the handicap with which I started the day…. I was pretty mushy-minded at first today…. Truthfully, I’m kind of pleased with myself for showing the grit to get this done the way I did…. Now that I’ve strained my shoulder, patting myself on the back, I’ll go put on some of my magic cream, so I can make breakfast…. 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

Balderdash! A jury won’t convict without that mango….

Posted on March 18, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Now that I’ve been sitting here for more than 45 minutes, with nothing that comes close to resembling a coherent thought having passed through my brain, it might be time to start to panic…. First, I was sleepy, so I sat and dozed…. Then I stared at the screen a while, just letting my mind wander, which it did, far enough I had to spend the money for a bus to go find it….. When I got back, I was still sitting there, staring….

At that point, I came to the realization that I might just be having a bit of a problem here this morning…. In order to avoid the sort of issues that can arise on such occasions, I closed off the partition between the cockpit and the cabin, which will at least keep the stewards, stewardesses, and the rest of the flight crew from catching on to what is happening….

Of course, for them to clue in to what’s happening, it’s a point of fact that I need to know first, and, I don’t believe the odds on that are very good, not today….. I’ve always found that keeping them ignorant for as long as I can works better than letting them in on any part of the pre-take-off routine, anyway, so that plays right in to what I planned. I suppose all of this will have to come out at the next board meeting, when the newly-minted policy manual is to be revealed…. I think I’ll just mark it all down on the tally sheets, and get on with whatever else we’ll be allowed to do….

Your guess about that would, patently, be as good as any I could make today…. In fact, I’m pretty sure that, so far, I’ve been almost completely impenetrable, in terms of meaning…. I ask you… have I said ANYTHING rational, or, even anything coherent, yet today? If you said yes, may your God have mercy upon your soul, because your brain has died ahead of your body…. Nothing, as far as I can tell, of what I’ve produced thus far today even APPROACHES coherency, and, I think we can safely assume that rationality is equally out of the question… unless drastic changes in Reality take place very soon, anyway….

The reason for my cranial fog is easy…. I overdosed…. Well, as far as it is possible to do so on cannabinoids, I overdosed, which is not the same issue as with other drugs…. By this I mean that I just ate one too many of my chocolates, and it’s making it hard to wake up…. my mind would prefer to be asleep, thank you very much, and is rebelling with great stubbornness to the idea of waking up all the way…. Droopy eye lids, foggy mind, lethargic, stiff body, all the typical symptoms of an old, tired crank are present, and no matter how hard I try to cudgel my mind into working, it doesn’t want to cooperate….

Oh, look at that…. In spite of all this, I’ve again managed to spew out five paragraphs of pure twaddle…. In light of how things are progressing up to this point, I’m going to have to settle for that, and get on with the rest of this…. I can’t say I’m particularly hopeful that things will get straightened out in time to salvage today’s Pearl, but, with the world in the state it’s in, I don’t think it will notice much anyway…. Plus, the traffic here at ECR has dropped off again to the point where I feel lucky to see five visits a day, not counting my own checks to see if anyone has left a comment… SIGH…

It doesn’t matter, though, any more than it ever has…. This stuff HAS to come out of my head, before it becomes toxic, or explosive, so bear with me, while I empty out the crap that built up overnight….

Shall we Pearl?…..

Years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb,
And life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

— Lord Byron (1788-1824) — Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iii, Stanza 8
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Ranting, of course, is out of the question today…. I’d probably end up frothing at the mouth over something I did myself, thus adding weight to the evidence being gathered to have me committed….. So, I’ll stick to old-school pearls, which can only hurt me if I let them…. Let’s see what Smart Bee has for us today…. How about we use the word, “honor” as a parameter? Let’s see what comes up, shall we?….

“Badness, look you, you may choose easily in a heap: level is the path, and right near it dwells. But before Virtue the immortal gods have put the sweat of man’s brow; and long and steep is the way to it, and rugged at the first.” — Hesiod (c. 700 BC) — Works and Days, Line 287

“That which is incapable of proof itself is not proof of anything else.” — Shelley

“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” — Paul Simon

“There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.” — Edmund Burke (1729-1797) — Observations on Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation,
— Vol. i, p. 273

“As some say, Solon was the author of the apothegm, “Nothing in excess.” — Diogenes Laertius (c. 200 AD) — Solon, xvi

“Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.” — George Bernard Shaw

“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the falsehood. One word of truth outweighs the world.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Wow…. sometimes, this process just works really well…. All good stuff, ffolkes, and a damn fine way to spend a few moments of your allotted reading time today….
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Resorting to the use of Emily’s poetry, for me, is an indulgence…. today, I need that indulgence, so, Shawna will just have to deal…. 🙂

I reason, Earth is short

I reason, Earth is short—
And Anguish—absolute—
And many hurt,
But, what of that?

I reason, we could die—
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven—
Somehow, it will be even—
Some new Equation, given—
But, what of that?

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

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Since I don’t possess the wherewithal to produce a fresh rant, here is one from the time prior to the election in 2012…. This is one of my favorite rants, because it doesn’t pull any punches, or make any excuses…. It’s mini, but it’s mighty…. Enjoy….. Oh, if vulgarity offends you, you might want to skip this…. it’s pretty fucking vulgar in spots…. It uses words like “lawyer”, “priest”, and “politician” frequently, all of which offend me….
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From 6/20/12:

“If a lawyer and an IRS agent were both drowning, and you could only save one of them, would you go to lunch or read the paper?” — Smart Bee

Now, THAT’S funny! Some folks think that making fun of lawyers and those of the same ilk, (self-serving, avaricious, completely without compassion….) isn’t nice. They believe that lawyers and IRS agents are sincerely trying to help people with their problems. These are the same ignorant fools who go to church on Sunday, listen to a sermon about the starving children in third world countries, then go home to a table full of food, with no feelings of guilt, much less irony. The same people who rant and complain about illegal immigrants, but won’t deign to work in the fields to harvest the food they eat, or pay their immigrant nanny a minimum wage.

I say FUCK THEM!!! Fuck the lawyers who use the misery of others to line their own pockets. Fuck the IRS agent who sweats some poor slob for thousands of penalty dollars because he made an inappropriate exemption claim on his form, so he could maybe get a dollar or two back on his return, instead of paying twice as much, percentage-wise, as any millionaire.

FUCK the ignorant fools who blindly accept what they’re told, by anyone on TV, or wearing a suit and a flag pin, or in a pulpit…. FUCK all those who refuse to use their own brain for more than carrying their fat ass from table to toilet, and back, or learning to use the remote control…

FUCK the preacher/priest, who doesn’t pay any fucking taxes at all, and counsels obedience to worldly authority. FUCK the fucking politicians, who have set up, and continue to take advantage of, a system that keeps the honest, hard-working citizen on his knees, and rewards lying, cheating, bullying, and stealing from the public treasury….. FUCK the “corporate persons” who control ALL the fucking money and resources, at the expense of everyone else on the planet….

FUCK them ALL, really hard, in the place it will hurt the worst….

Sorry about the vulgarity; all of a sudden, the anger I feel at the world’s situation these days built up beyond my ability to contain, and it needed to come out somewhere….. this was handy. Anger, I know, is often counter-productive, but in this case its underlying cause, the denial of my desire for mankind, can be laid directly at the feet of those I mentioned above.

What I want is for everyone to have a fair chance to be happy. That is what our Constitution was supposed to provide, but those perverted assholes who actually run things have done all they could to see that purpose is not fulfilled. The average Joe today doesn’t have a chance, unless he is willing to give up all of his humanity in the search for wealth and power. IT FUCKING MAKES ME CRAZY!

Okay, that’s enough on that for one day. I could easily write another five or six paragraphs, complete with endless examples of the egregious lying, cheating, and stealing going on in front of us, but that would no doubt end up boring us both. Instead I’ll ask you to go register to vote, to make sure that, for this election at least, there is a chance to push back the forces of ignorance that once again threaten our way of life…..Register, and make sure to vote……
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There you go…. I suppose, at this point, so long AFTER the election, my only remaining hope is that in the NEXT election, we are given something more than we generally end up with, and can actually cast a vote that doesn’t feel as if we are being forced to choose the lesser of two evils…. Fat chance, eh?…. I, like everyone else, apparently, consistently choose to forget that anyone who WANTS to be president is, by that desire, marked as someone who should never be allowed to have it….

It takes a very sick mind to WANT to possess that much power over others…. Alternately, it is also insanely egotistical of ANYONE to think they are capable of handling such power, while still maintaining their own integrity…. History has proven beyond all shadow of doubt that just isn’t ever going to happen; it never has before, and there is no reason to think that anyone alive today is MORE virtuous, or more capable, than ALL of the examples in history that prove it to be impossible.

Now, if y’all have an example, in history, or in imagination, that proves me wrong in this, I’d be happy to hear it…. But, having looked at most of what has happened in Man’s relatively short time on this planet, I feel pretty confident that won’t be happening, even if anyone WAS stopping in to read this….

Enough for one day…. Fuck ’em, they’re assholes, and they’re going to kill us all if we don’t make some radical changes in society…. Too bad it might already be too late….
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For such an ordeal, this came out pretty well… Well enough I can let it fly without feeling overly anxious about it…. In fact, I’m going to tell myself a lie, and believe it is SO good, it will garner the most traffic of any Pearl, ever….. Right….. Like THAT’s gonna happen….. Oh well, c’est la vie, as they say in Paris…. They DO say that there, don’t they? I hope so…. 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

Look, Amelia, it’s a flock of abusive platitudes….

Posted on March 16, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Hardly a day goes by I don’t think about that old man…. I don’t know, exactly, why it still bothers me; I didn’t even know him. But, ever since that day we first saw him, standing there on the corner by the market downtown, waving around that silly old broken pistol, threatening to start shooting if people didn’t listen to him…. Of course, nobody ever did, and he never started shooting; he was just another crazy old coot with a decrepit war souvenir and too many memories…. Who wants to listen to some old guy rambling on about honor and duty and stuff, anyway?

I was only six the first we saw him there, outside the neighborhood store on 114th & Linden, when we came out from the weekly shopping…. I recall him standing up on that old wooden box, shouting and yelling at whoever walked by….. I remember, even then, in the middle of a New York winter, he didn’t have a coat….

I think that’s what bothered me about it for a long time…. At six, I still worried about people, and how they lived, so it bothered me to see this old man out in the cold with no coat…. I asked my mother why he didn’t have one, and she told me he refused to wear one, that he was too broken in his mind to understand it could hurt him; at six, this idea made him an irresistible bone for my mind to chew on….

REALITY BREAK: This is a message from normal space/time…. Well, make that, as normal as ever, I suppose…. I’m bored with that opening…. Okay, that’s a lie; I’m not bored, but I don’t like it, and it’s expedient to use boredom as an excuse …..Sometimes I forget, like everyone, that one MUST BE an example of what one preaches in re: honor and truth…. or, it’s just another bunch of BS…. Mama don’t allow no BS around here, so, the truth it must be, for this boyo….

I do get tired of being accused of being a miserable sinner, but, hey, all those hard-ass tightwads (or is that tightass hardwads?…) need to have somebody to pick on, and they don’t bother me much, so let ’em talk…. Now, where was I, before I so rudely interrupted myself?….

Ah, here we are…. Me apologia, but, I’m cutting this off here because I don’t like it much, and none of the faux introductions are biting at me to get turned into a full story, though, it may happen some day…. You’ll have to be patient, because it will be a while before I do get any of them completed…. It’s just not high on my list of stuff to get done right now…. Currently, I’m not sure what IS on the list, but, I know I’ve got one around here somewhere…. Maybe it’s in…. nope…. Ah well, I’ll look for that later…. I’m thinking right now I should either throw out another distraction, start over, or just get on with today’s dive for pearls….

As you might guess, I’m leaning toward the latter, as it’s the only one that fits in with the plan I have going…. a plan you didn’t even know was there, did you?…. C’mon, now, ‘fess up…. I managed to keep you from seeing this coming, didn’t I?…. Yep, I know I did, so there’s no point in denying….

Well, if you’re going to be THAT way about it, I suppose I’ll just have to assume control of the ship again, and take us out of here, before I lose track of how much fuel we have…. There’s probably enough, but, we don’t want to have to bail out on the way back because we ran out, now, do we? No, I didn’t think that would go over too well….

Ah, the hell with it…. Screw the Mr. Nice Guy routine…. Fuck it, ffolkes…. hang on, we’re goin’ for a dive!…..

Shall we Pearl?…..

“It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one’s dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality. There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant.” — Clive Barker
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“…when all government… in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1821

Before we begin, please read the article attached to the link below; it contains information that will be necessary to a full appreciation/understanding of the discussion to follow…..

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/FDIC-sues-16-big-banks-that-set-key-rate-5318301.php

After reading this article all the way through, I came perilously close to puking, only resisting the urge, strong as it was, because I wasn’t in a place where it would have been convenient….. However, I WAS able to determine, immediately upon completion of the article, that I would definitely be ranting on this one, for sure and for certain…. This CRIES out to discussed, and, who am I to destroy the wishes of such a plaintive, compelling cry for social justice?

Did you catch the key points in the report on these asshole bankers and their naked avarice? To me, one of the key points in the article, which shows just how ridiculous the whole thing becomes when examined in ANY light, is the sentence imposed on the banks for admitting their guilt…. Essentially, the decision says this: a) the banks were guilty of defrauding their customers (again)…. they admitted it without a qualm; b) they only have to pay back PART of what they stole by doing so, and c) they don’t have to go to jail, they get to stay in business, and keep ALL of the profits they made by this theft.

You know, it makes me wonder…. I’d wager serious money (if I could cover the bet…. I’m not a bank, and I bet with honor….)….. very serious money, that the banks, when they planned out their campaign of theft in this instance, included in their plans a certain amount of money to be set aside to pay the legal fees involved in defending themselves, once they were found out, and sued for the fraud….

I BET they knew before they started that, eventually, the SEC and their counterparts (i.e., government thieves….) in the BRC would catch them in their thievery, and take them to court, so they set aside a percentage of the profits to be made to cover that, and proceeded with the plan to steal from their customers, (i.e. US, you and me, and all the other little investors whose money they steal on a regular basis….), knowing ahead of time that they’d never do any time in jail, and could count on a certain amount of profit on the deal…

I don’t think anyone would take that bet, unless they’re stupider than they look….. Ffolkes, how much more proof is necessary? How many times do we have to let these assholes fuck everyone else in the world, and let them get away with it, before we do something about stopping it?

Personally, I’ve about had it up to here (makes motion at neck…) with their sheer gall, to carry out a scheme like this, in full view of the public, knowing they’ll be able to not only get away with it without ever spending any time in jail for their crimes, but will make a decent profit by doing so…. a profit they, of course, feel is their RIGHT to make, just because they want it…..

It’s not the money…. though, of course, it would help a lot of people if it wasn’t stolen…. No, it’s the sheer effrontery, the gall, the entitlement that gives these assholes the idea they can do this with impunity that bothers me the most…. It’s the kind of thing calculated to piss me off thoroughly enough to take action in a very real sense, even if that action isn’t necessarily the one that will help the most….

No, I’m tempted, almost beyond control, to go buy a gun, and a LOT of bullets that go with the gun, so I could start picking off the greedy bankers, inept and/or dishonest politicians, corrupt judges, aggressive, entitled, police ~~bullies~~ officers, pedophiliac, smarmy, manipulative priests & preachers, and all the other assholes who dump their loads of BS all over everyone else in the pursuit of their own agendas, never caring at all how many others they harm in the process…

Yep, ffolkes, the time is drawing nigh when my patience will be at an end, and I’ll actually DO something that will, if nothing else, make me feel as if I’d helped in a small way to put a stop to the bullshit going on all around us…. It may not change society, but I’ll damn sure feel a lot better, you betcha….

Bah, humbug! Writing about this has gotten me as worked up as reading the article did originally; I’m sitting here vibrating with anger at the corporate assholes who are constantly degrading life for the rest of us, and wishing there were some way to speed up the time until I can afford to buy a decent weapon (by “decent” I mean, of course, that it will do all I want it to do….)…. I have a feeling it won’t be terribly long now until that day actually arrives…. and I can’t wait, to tell the truth….

I’m too worked up to rant further about this, though I can feel a lot more inside me that needs to be released…. So, I’ll finish off with a little five-star pearl, using as a parameter the same subject upon which we’ve been gnawing…. Hey, it’s a quick, legitimate way to bring this to a dignified, if choppy, ending….. Enjoy….

— How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb? Four, one to change it and the other three to deny it. — Smart Bee

“Dealing with the government is like kicking a 300-pound sponge.” — Finagle’s Law of Government Contracting

“We are hypnotized into believing that two TV sets will make us twice as happy as one TV set.” — Laura Huxley (wife of Aldous)

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.” — John E.E. Dalberg, Lord Acton (1834-1902), — “The History of Freedom in Antiquity”

“I don’t want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.” — Spanish Proverb
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Yesterday’s poem reminded me why I love Emily Dickinson’s work….. and….. since I’m already in a mood from writing the above, I’m going back to the same well for more sustenance….

It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,–
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And ‘t was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

But most like chaos,–stopless, cool,–
Without a chance or spar,–
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

Well, I feel better….. and that’s enough. I hope you enjoyed it as well (except for Shawna…. she doesn’t have to, if she doesn’t want to….That is, if she’s still out there, reading this….) (If she is, it would be nice to know…. hint, hint…)
_____________________________

You know as well as I do what is coming now, so don’t tell me you weren’t expecting it….. Since we’re assuming prior knowledge here, I’m going to also assume y’all know how this works, so I’ll merely say this…. When picking these pearls, I had only one thought in mind, to use as a guide about what should, or shouldn’t, be included…. It’s really too bad the thought I had was so strange, so very odd, almost to the point of perversion, I had to throw it out, and find another one…. Unfortunately, on such short notice, I have no frigging clue as to what that one might be, so we’ll just have to deal with whatever shows itself, ‘kay?….. ‘Kay!….

BRAHMA, n. He who created the Hindoos, who are preserved by Vishnu and destroyed by Siva — a rather neater division of labor than is found among the deities of some other nations. The Abracadabranese, for example, are created by Sin, maintained by Theft and destroyed by Folly. The priests of Brahma, like those of Abracadabranese, are holy and learned men who are never naughty.

O Brahma, thou rare old Divinity,
First Person of the Hindoo Trinity,
You sit there so calm and securely,
With feet folded up so demurely —
You’re the First Person Singular, surely.
Polydore Smith

— Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“I’m not sure I want popular opinion on my side — I’ve noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts.” — Bethania McKenstry

“Forget about World Peace…Visualize using your turn signal.” — Bumper Sticker

(Irresistible side comment: I’d like to see this tattooed on the forehead of every police officer in America…. gigoid….)

But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) — A Good Time going

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

“Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“YOW!! I’m in a very clever and adorable INSANE ASYLUM!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Okay, so it’s a strange one, even for around here…. deal, ffolkes, deal…. anything that starts with Ambrose Bierce, and ends with Zippy, is guaranteed to make some kind of logical, and/or illogical, sense…. It’s mathematically impossible for it to NOT make sense, so, believe me, it’s in there…. It may take a broken pencil or two, and possibly a month’s supply of erasers, but, it’s there…. Trust me…. It’s okay, I’m not a politician, so it’s really alright to do that….
_____________________________

Whatever I had in mind when I sat down today to begin, this isn’t it. What it is, is, though, and, as we all know, Popeye is never wrong about stuff like this…. So, this means we’ll all just have to deal with that…. To reinforce that concept, and, I suppose, to enforce it as well, I’ll now go post this, entrusting the gods of email with the task of delivering these random musings to the Pearl Drops group, and, having faith the gods of html:protocol will enable their presence on the World Wide Web, even if hidden in my domain…. See you 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

Dreaming in Calliope’s house….

Posted on March 14, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

In the near distance, sharp echoes of gunfire erupted, shattering the peaceful quiet covering the wide, debris-littered street, reluctantly revealed in the dim light of the struggling morning sun. In the bitter cold, icy clouds of vapor bled slowly from the mouth of the man standing in a doorway, as he gazed with intense concentration to his left, down the street toward the sound of guns in the distance. Nothing else moved, nothing made a sound….

Then that damn cat jumped on the back of the chair, again, breaking my concentration into tiny little pieces, and I gave up…. Sorry, ffolkes…. I HAD wanted to write a brilliant fictional opening this morning, but, my “muse” (as my blogger-friend Lou suggests) doesn’t particularly care for what I came up with, apparently, because she keeps doing stuff to distract me from trying to write it. Who knew that a 5 lb. black cat could be a literary critic? Actually, it’s a bit lowering, thinking about how I COULD have been a rock star….

Not really, it just sounded good, and gave a good finish to a weak paragraph…. SIGH…. How frightfully depressing! I’m reduced to critiquing my work paragraph by paragraph, just so I can monitor the quality of what I’m creating….. How sad can one get? I suppose I could ring up one of those support groups for struggling authors, but, that would mean I’d have to actually SPEAK to another person…. Today, that’s probably not a good idea….

Last time I felt like this, I experienced a deep fugue state, which apparently lasted three days, or so, by all evidence…. When I woke up, seven local politicians had gone missing, and were never seen again…. That’s not to imply that I had anything to do with it, but, such events have happened before, in other towns, at other times, and, well….. Hell, I don’t actually KNOW for sure that I did it…. I DID send some nice flowers to the families…. But, I think I’ll just stay in today, and not go looking for trouble…. it always manages to find me anyway….

I wonder, do other bloggers have this sort of difficulty? Or is it just me? Homicidal urges notwithstanding, I don’t believe I’ve been overly troublesome for society to have to deal with; I’ve managed to stay out of jail thus far in my life (I’m not counting that one time in Guatemala…. we broke out the same day they put us in there, and we didn’t actually KILL anyone, so, I don’t think it counts….) I suppose I should just use all my experiences as material, and write the story I’ve lived…. and then I realize, A) nobody would believe it, and B) not even I could be so egotistical as to think my own life would be of interest to enough ffolkes to warrant such indulgence….

Oh well, at least I have this time each day to pull this crap out of my head, where it (obviously) would fester, and put it onto the screen, where the only possible trouble comes only if others take it seriously…. which I know MY Gentle Readers would NEVER do…. They’d know better….. On that note….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.” — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
_____________________________

“Rdio drops Echo Nest after Spotify move” — SFGATE news headline, financial section

What does that MEAN? Unless one knows it comes to us from a financial page, this sentence would be nearly impossible to decipher…. unless, of course, it were a coded message…. In that case, I’m sure the NSA, (or any other of our fine public institutions that deals in encryption-breaking, such as the FBI, CIA, and, no doubt, a number of others), wouldn’t have any difficulty at all in drawing every last iota of meaning out it….

As it is, one need only speak the technical language of business-speak, whereupon it becomes clear we’re talking about some companies going through merger & acquisition contortions, jockeying for a bigger piece of whatever pie they’re consuming…. But, hey! It COULD have been a terrorist plot… sure it could…..

I took today’s inspiration for this short period of ranting from Reality…. I ripped it out of the headlines. just like Reality rips poems out of my soul, with no mercy, and a lot of bloodshed, metaphorically speaking…. In this particular case, the metaphorical blood will show up as I rend the flesh and limbs of whatever poor member of our Beloved Ruling Class who draws my ire, and my attention today….. Oh god… I just realized, this means I’m going to have to actually READ that article, so I’m not talking through my ass…. Hmm… or maybe…. yeah, that’s better….

Rather than take the chance of becoming incapacitated by the sheer tedium of that business report, I’ll find an appropriate pearl on the same concept, and use THAT as my springboard, saving Rdio and Spotify for my coups de gras, nearer the end, where the blood loss won’t have such a deleterious effect on anyone’s sensibilities…. Yeah, that’s the ticket…. be right back with that…. Okay, so it took a little longer than I’d surmised it might…. you never noticed, anyway, did you?…. Nope… so, to try to keep the BS at a minimum, (oops, too late…. ), here ’tis…..

“I know everything, I just can’t remember it all at the same time.” — Sara Kate Robinson

Oops…. sorry, wrong one…. Ah, here we go…. check this out….

“Since it is Reason which shapes and regulates all other things, it ought not itself to be left in disorder.” — Epictetus (c. 60 AD) — Discourses, Chap. xvii

Damn, that’s good, but it’s not the one I wanted, either…. Where’d I put that damn thing?….

“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” — Oscar Wilde

Ah, the hell with it…. I can’t find it, so, I’ll just finish off what is now an old-school pearl, with a more general theme than the intended rant…. I’ll see what I can do about the rant later…. for now, I’d best let Smart Bee get this out of its system, by letting it give me four more pearls, to make this one of the seven-star variety….

“The earth hath skin, and the skin hath diseases. One of these…is called man.” — Nietzsche

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” — James Joyce, “Ulysses”

“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” — Albert Einstein

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don’t try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

— Tao Te Ching

So be it….. gigoid has spoken…. he didn’t say much, but, he spoke, so there….

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/10695841/In-pictures-Artist-Saint-Hoax-transforms-world-leaders-into-drag-queens.html

After I finished the above section, and had uttered the final “so there”…. I went for a cruise on the internet, to the UK Telegraph news site, where I came across this WONDERFUL set of pictures, all of which you can see by following the link…. One of them is below this, to give you a taste of them…. they’re all brilliant, and hilarious…. Enjoy!

(I couldn’t figure out anywhere else to put this, so you get it here, in this weirdest of pearls, which resembles nothing I’ve ever produced before…. and don’t ask me to tell you what THAT means!…. Or, for that matter, what any of this means…. I’m done worryin’ ’bout tryin’ to figure it out…..)

_____________________________

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” — Emily Dickinson

A Man’s a Man for A’ That

Is there for honesty poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave – we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a’ that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that,
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that,
The man o’ independent mind
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.

A price can mak a belted knight,
A marquise, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that,
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
That man to man, the world o’er,
Shall brithers be for a’ that.

~~Robert Burns ~~

_____________________________

Apparently, Smart Bee has rebelled, as it did in the first section, on previous occasions…. I found this old-school pearl seemingly comprised of the same sort of unintended collection that occurred above…. It’s pretty good, all things considered, so, I’m being lazy again, and putting it in here, even though I haven’t ranted today…. I know, breaks your heart, don’t it?…. (I may be an egotist, but, I’m NOT stupid, you know…) Any who, enjoy this blast from the past, ffolkes…. it’s your last chance today to do so….

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

From 12/4/2012:

So, I’m diving around, looking for oysters, and these random quotes on various aspects of religion kept popping up. Since I’m not particularly bursting with material, or angst, sufficient to either rant, or write much of interest, I thought I’d string them together for an old school pearl…. my default position in these instances. There is no real point to be made here, though it is entirely possible that there is one…. I just like these because they made me think…. Hopefully, they’ll do the same for you…. enjoy!….

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” — C. S. Lewis

“A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.” — James Feibleman, “Understanding Philosophy”, 1973

“While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession, conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge, we must ask how one differentiates “real transcendence” from neuropathies that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense of cosmic unity. When accounts of sudden religious conversions in TLEs [temporal-lobe epileptics] are laid alongside the epiphanous revelations of the religious tradition, the parallels are striking. The same is true of the recent spate of alleged UFO abductees. Parsimony alone argues against invoking spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice.” — Barry L. Beyerstein, “Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual Possession”, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255

We are arguing like a man who should say “If there were an invisible cat in that chair, the chair would look empty; but the chair does look empty; therefore there is an invisible cat in it.” — C.S. Lewis

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.” — Michael de Montaigne (1533-1592) — Essays, Book ii, Chap. xii, Apology for Raimond Sebond

“…there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth.” — George Jacob Holyoake

No, it isn’t a trick…. The last one was, indeed, added on purpose, and actually brings all the rest into focus, making what I said above about this pearl having no point a lie…. or perhaps, premature ejaculation would be more appropriate….. Whatever it is, or might have been, or isn’t, it is what it is, so there…. And, believe it or not, it actually makes some sense, on a very basic level…. Any who, it was a few moments of exercising a muscle we all need to keep strong, so, all is well that ends well, yes?….. And, at the very least, you may comfort yourself with knowing it is ended….

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

Or is it?….. cue Twilight Zone theme music…. dedo dedo dedo dedo…. dedo dode dahhhhhh! Ha ha ha ha ha….. It will NEVER be over…… except in your dreams, all of which have turned to nightmares….. You may go now, if you dare….
_____________________________

I’m fairly certain the events that have transpired here this morning would fall under the heading of Results of Unintended Consequence. The only fresh portions today are at the beginning, and at the very end…. Everything in between those two points was created yesterday, or much further in the past….

Looking back over it all not only convinces me of the truth of my categorization, but also establishes a new, if all-too-achingly-familiar, pattern of insanity and self-indulgent egoism. As such, it may not be exactly the most enlightening thing you’ll read today, but, it will most certainly be the most challenging, in re: it can alter, or at least affect, your own level of insanity…. That being said, I think it’s probably best if we go now, before the authorities arrive…. See ya tomorrow, if I’m not in jail, or on the run….

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

Cops & donuts– Match made in heaven, or evil twins? Film at 11…

Softer explosions seem to be our only option….

Sifting through arbitrarily discarded feathers……

1000? 1000? You let him get to 1000? Oh, DAMN!….

They want that oil FULLY hydrogenated….

Would chartreuse fill the bill?…

May I see your license to glean, sir?….

Balderdash! A jury won’t convict without that mango….

Look, Amelia, it’s a flock of abusive platitudes….

Dreaming in Calliope’s house….

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