Stealing a reflective moment….

Posted on August 11, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

“For my part, I had rather be the first man among these fellows than the second man in Rome.”

~~ Plutarch ~~

Life of Caesar

Given the degree of dignity so obvious in the above photo, I think a group of fellows such as he would be a fine bunch with whom to consort, as stated in the quote…. with which I have to agree completely….. In fact, I would choose almost any animal at all, other than Man, to be my constant companion and friend, and feel the same way as Plutarch…. To me, the face in the picture (found in another Daily Telegraph photo feature on animals; attribution is in the corner) is one of great spirit, showing in the eyes the depth of intelligence, humor, compassion, and dignity….

Some might say that is anthropomorphizing, and to that I would say, so what? It doesn’t make it any less true… Besides, if a gorilla doesn’t have those characteristics, and we are evolved from them, how can we expect to have them, eh?…. As Mama Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”, and, as far as I can see by the visual evidence, mankind shows a lot more stupidity than any of the gorillas I’ve observed…. by a LOT…..

At this moment in time, even though in the midst of what could be an excellent discussion, I have to interrupt to issue some necessary information about today’s effort…. Yesterday, as Murphy’s gift, he gave me an episode of arthritic hip and back pain that pretty much curtailed the major portion of my semi-annual visit with my grandson; I had to give up walking around with my son and his four-year old, as I just couldn’t keep up, and the pain became debilitating…. I ended up sitting and watching for a bit, but, only managed a couple of pix, and a few seconds of video, then Murphy handed me the second part of the gift, a dead camera battery….

So, this morning, though I have pix, I also have more pain, plus, the bonus round, a toothache, as one of my teeth scheduled for extraction next week decided it didn’t wish to wait, and is demanding to come out very soon, or it will, no doubt, make my life a living hell for a while…. I do wish I knew why this part of my life is turning into a pitched battle with my own body….

Perhaps it’s all payback for how hard I pushed it for so many years…. I have to admit, I did work it hard there, from the time I was 12, until my early forties, what with baseball, football, basketball, volleyball, Judo, Karate, Kung Fu, golf, biking, hiking, and all the other physical stuff I used to do…. and, I still miss being able to do all of it (except maybe the golf…. fun, but it will drive you absolutely nuts, trying to get it right….)

Ah well, I’m getting into TMI, so, let is suffice to say that, I hurt again today, and will be shortcutting here in the Pearl wherever I can, to save time…. I’m also up late, almost an hour later than usual, so, there is that, as well…. So, be prepared for some cheating, ffolkes, which will begin right here, with an abrupt exit from this intro….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” — Albert Einstein

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

So, for section one, I am putting below three headlines from yesterday’s news…. All four speak about separate incidents of police misbehavior, which, unfortunately, though it sounds innocuous (‘misbehavior’, indeed….), when police act out, people tend to die…. Yet, for some reason, no court ever seems to find them guilty of any crime, and, in fact, many never even get charged, as they are usually cleared of any wrongdoing by internal investigations, or one by the local “lawyers” who work hand in hand with them…. a fact of corruption, almost incestuous in its nature, as the cops, and the investigating offices of district attorneys, are almost siblings, in the relationship they share in ‘fighting crime’….

But, even the media ignores that little oddity…. I’m putting these here because, since I won’t have time to rant about it, at least I can have you read the articles, and get angry right along with me, thus providing your own private little rant, in the privacy of your own head…. Here, read these, weep a little, then enjoy the pearls which I’ll throw together to drive the points home…. See y’all in section two….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/NAACP-Feds-should-investigate-black-teen-s-death-5679684.php#photo-6707581

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Jury-to-decide-if-Huntington-Beach-police-wrongly-5675811.php

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Group-protests-at-Wal-Mart-where-man-fatally-shot-5679694.php

“The first rule of gun fighting is — bring a gun.” — Smart Bee

(But, the law says the police are the only ones who are supposed to use guns…. or, it will, as soon as they finish their war on the Second Amendment…. Think about that one, ffolkes…. Are the people you read about above the ones you want to have as the ONLY armed people around? I certainly don’t think I want to be in a place where I am not allowed to have my own defense against THEM, as I don’t see many of them who are worthy of that kind of trust….)

(Okay, I’ll just let the pearls talk now… If I keep commenting, it will turn into a real rant, and take too much time…so, I’ll quit now…. It just irks me SO MUCH…..)

“The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.” — Eugene V. Debs, US labor leader.

(Note: Debs received one million votes in 1920 as candidate for US President, while serving a 10-year jail sentence for having said in June 1918: “Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder…the master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.”)

“The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead.” — Chinese Proverb

“The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.” — Smart Bee

Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children’s circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What’s never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone’s unhurt, so the blind man sees best.

~~ Dylan Thomas ~~

“Was There A Time”

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As noted, I don’t have time to search out a poem, so, one of mine will have to do…. I’ll try to make it one we haven’t seen in a while…. Okay, so, here we have one I haven’t used since I wrote it, in December of 2012…. which speaks to what I spoke about in the intro, to wit: my old friends, Jim, and Jack…. or, as they are known to those closest to them, James and John…. I’m reproducing it in the original format used to post it….

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” — Robert Frost

Placidly falling in amber waves: old friends

Whiskey, oh, whiskey, I’d forgotten thy balm,
thy loving spread of lassitude, and nature’s own calm.
Misery and pain flee in squalid disorganization,
leaving mirth, happily embraced, in just consolation.

James, old friend, thou has not abandoned me at all,
steadfast and loyal, ever ready to answer my softest call.
Ephemeral illusions of normality come at your instigation
blessed moments of peaceful joy, sans vilification.

Gasps of coherence pound at the door to conscious thought,
muffled explosive memories of battles already fought.
Malleable as the changeable airs of time and circumstance
plaintive calls to reason stand not a single, honest chance.

Sober again, reality’s cold reign brings a new day
ringing in old changes in a new-fashioned way.
To know true freedom’s release from our everyday pain
Is worth a bit of headache, even in the cold, pouring rain.

~~ gigoid, two sheets to the wind, and back ~~

“You will find poetry nowhere, unless you bring some with you.” — Joseph Joubert

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

I promised you I wouldn’t rant today, but, I didn’t promise not to include any rants…. Here is a religirant from a couple of years back, that still hits the nail on the head…..

From 5/18/2012:

“God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.” — Billy Graham

First, let me apologize…. I hadn’t meant to go into a rant this morning, especially about religion; sitting down is as difficult as standing up or walking, so the time it takes to express the outrage necessary to produce a rant is more than I wanted to take. But then this popped up in front of me….

After I had picked myself up from the floor and recovered my breath, I still could barely stop chuckling and giggling long enough to use the mouse to cut and paste it to this page. Now I find myself almost speechless at the sheer arrogance, the complete lack of respect shown for humanity at large by this astounding statement.

In one short phrase, this deeply disturbed man has attempted to manipulate his listeners into a complete subjugation of their will, and in doing so, implies that they are not only unworthy in a moral sense, but are not smart enough to be allowed to think for themselves. I’m surprised he didn’t ask for money in the same sentence…. You can bet he did so before he got to the end of the speech….

I remember seeing Billy Graham when I was quite young, speaking on TV to a football stadium full of enthusiastically cheering, excited, identical clones in white cotton dresses, with skirts below the knees, and blue suits, with white shirts, no vests, and thin ties. Even at the tender age of 11 or so when I saw it, my first impression of him was of a used-car salesman, with a smarmy-looking smile at inappropriate moments, and a smooth, fawning manner of speaking that ranged from sly confidences to outraged proclamations of evil and sin, in very obviously scripted stages.

The words and phrases he used, straight out of the King James Bible, mostly, seemed to promote love and tolerance, but the underlying message was one of elitism and divisiveness, as indicated by the insistence that only those who accepted JC according to their rules would be allowed into heaven…. The rest of us would be doomed, consigned to everlasting hell for having the audacity to think differently…. It was pretty over-the-top, as far as I was concerned, though entertaining in a circus sort of way….

It is now 50 years since I saw that particular revival meeting, and Mr. Graham has continued to spew his particular brand of ignorance for that entire time. He is indeed one of the men of whom St. Francis of Assisi warned us to beware, a man of one book. And the above statement, to me, is proof of just how little he thinks of the general run of human beings. His basic message is, “You are a miserable sinner, and have no right to exist, other than at the mercy of God. You are not smart enough to keep from sinning on your own, so just shut up and listen, and do what you are told….”

It is certainly proof, I guess, that the world takes all kinds, for there are millions of folks out there who regard what Billy Graham says as just as much gospel as what is in the Bible…. but then in for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose…. Me, I’d rather listen to a ball game…..

Note from 2014:

“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” — H.L. Mencken

Aha! Well…. that explains that….

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Well, I did it…. I’ve put together a Pearl, under trying circumstances, in jig time (whatever THAT means….)…. Rather than push my luck, I’m going to go post this now, and be done with it for the day…. Hell, since I’m going to be taking a LOT of extra drugs, maybe later I’ll go surfing for a little while, when I get to a point where I can think past the haze of pain…. I hope so… it would be nice to be able to see another web site than just my own, and the news…. Any who, I’ll see y’all tomorrow, ffolkes; this pain has to ease off a bit some time…..

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

No glue, Ignatius, but, lots of duct tape…

Posted on August 10, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal

with the intent of throwing it at someone else;

you are the one who gets burned.”

~~ Buddha ~~

“All anger arises from obstructed desire.” — Bhagavad Gita

If, in the interests of full and complete examination, these two ideas may be considered to both be true, we find ourselves, in at least one very real sense, in possession of a key ingredient of real happiness, and true inner peace, or peace of mind, however one wishes to describe it. I find it interesting to note that, even though both of these ideas come from different religious doctrines, at different times in history, while from basically the same relative part of the world…. Yet, history itself, given the violent nature of most of it, seems to indicate that practically no one pays any attention to either of them, at least, not on the world stage….

Oh, I know what you’re thinking, that there are millions of good people out there in the world, smart, compassionate people, who try to live good lives, to be productive, and happy…. But, there is another part of humanity, who pays no attention at all to any sort of compassion, acting at all times in such a way as to manipulate & control others, to achieve their own agendas for happiness, which do not take anyone else into consideration at all. These people have no compunction about lying, or cheating, or resorting to violence to achieve those ends, especially when they can do so with societal sanction, such as in a police force, or in the army, where the science of killing is refined, ever to be at the command of those in positions of power….

I’m not sure exactly why the beautiful flower I found on my walk the other day should stimulate such a depressing philosophical discussion first thing, even though it IS the day before today, meaning I started this yesterday afternoon, when the ideas occurred to me…. I intended at first to approach the two quotes, which speak of anger from two directions, according to how they applied to myself, and how I deal with anger….

I’ve known the quote from the Bhagavad Gita, spoken by Krishna to Arjuna, since I was quite young; it played a significant part in molding my personality, as I took it to heart, as a way to control my own temper, which has always been, and remains, in a word, fierce…. Until I learned to handle it, there were a lot of occasions when it got away from me… Learning this concept, and the implication (to wit: anger can be controlled by simply changing what you want, without keeping any emotional attachment to the discarded desire….), helped me to become a better person, in my own mind; the other quote, from the Buddha, describes what anger that is NOT controlled can do….

That is another point the Buddha’s quote acknowledges, which is that anger will always be with us, part of us as humans; I can attest, there are times when knowing how to control the anger doesn’t get rid of it, entirely. It’s simply too powerful an emotion sometimes to dismiss out of hand, and must be consciously addressed to keep from bursting out on the rest of reality, an effect which, as we all know, can have disastrous effects…. I know this…. in my youth, there were times I failed to fully keep my anger inside, which caused a distinct and sudden spike in the number of casualties flooding emergency rooms all over town…

Not really…. I’m not really an ogre, but, I can be a nasty boy when aroused, and don’t like myself much whenever it happens…. So, I’ve always tried to avoid getting close to the edge when it comes to anger…. It just hurts others, and then I feel bad… and why? Because I was afraid I wouldn’t have a desire met? Not good, karma-wise, I should think…. Better, and easier, as I discovered when I first heard the idea, to just CHANGE WHAT YOU WANT…. If we don’t get overly attached to those wants, it doesn’t bother us as much when they’re not met, and life becomes much more pleasant, all the way around…

Pretty simple, eh? Simple enough, one might think even the slowest among us could learn to use the technique, to be able to change what they want, to something they are able, or at least, more likely to be able to achieve at some time…. And, if not, well, we aren’t so attached to having our own way we need to get upset about it…. Easy peasy, but, will anyone do it? Nope, not that I’ve seen….

This simple idea, of how to avoid anger, must be too complicated for anyone whose mind is capable of studying law, or needs to get elected, or becomes a ~~grifter~~, er, preacher, in order to foist upon society a set of persistent delusions about supernatural forces controlling our lives, thus dividing humans from each other with dogma…. because none of them seem to get it. None of these people seem to get the simple fact of reality, that keeps hitting us in the face, whenever we try to ignore it…

We are responsible for what we do… all of it. The good, the bad, the ugly, all of it is on us, but, most people not only don’t believe that, they actively work to pretend it isn’t so, refusing to listen to any arguments against what they believe, or look at any evidence that disputes their contentions…. In short, most people are…. well, I’m not sure just WHAT they are…. There are elements in our species of ignorance, of stupidity, of cowardice, of actual evil, in a great many people…. But, it is also true that right alongside all of these qualities, there exists so much beauty, created by the hand and mind of Man, it can make our hearts ache just to see it….

Unless ALL of us take responsibility for our actions, Reality is going to exact a price, for allowing the darker sides of our nature gain precedence over that which connects us to the whole of the universe. There is a lot to be said for the Star Wars vision of a universal Force, that connects all living, and non-living parts of Reality, which is there to be utilized, if only we can perceive it…. I suppose the trick is to figure out whether or not the vision can be made real enough to save our asses before it is too late…. No way to tell at this point, but, it doesn’t look good, ffolkes, not at the moment…..

Well, hell…. This turned out to be enough for three entire Pearls, and we haven’t even worked our way out of the intro section…. Huh…. Imagine that…. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to take things as they come, and deal…. Let’s go see what other damage I can do today, right?….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.” — Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844-1900)

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

I believe the rant in the intro might give people the wrong impression, so, here is a piece from the archives which might make things a bit clearer….. Don’t fret, it’s not too long…. I know I got carried away above, but, I’ll try to keep it efficiently sized from this point onward…. Enjoy!….

From 5/18/2012:

“It may be irrational of me, but human beings are quite my favorite species.” — Doctor Who, Ark in Space

It probably seems to most folks reading this blog that I don’t like people very much. I tend to spend a lot of time finding and pointing out the things I see in them that I don’t like, and discussing them at nearly interminable length, which would seem to indicate a lack of affection for the species as a whole. In reality, the opposite is true…. I love people… I love watching them, listening to them, thinking about them, writing about them…. they afford me no end of intellectual stimulation, entertaining comedic genius, and fertile fields of thought and endeavor to explore, virtually and actually.

Human society and culture is an incredibly beautiful, complex tapestry of emotion and creativity; nobility, cruelty, heroes, villains, puppies, cats, love, hate, and all the rest of the things that make people what they are unfolds before us every day, growing and adding length and breadth to that tapestry of existence. I can’t think of anything more interesting than the drama/comedy that is human history in the making….

I might wish it to be a more compassionate world, with less tyranny and oppression, without slavery and starvation. I might wish that my life would not be so complicated by ignorance and intolerance, and I might wish that the small percentage of humanity that holds the remainder in the grip of their own avarice would die horrible deaths worthy of their own evil natures.

But, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Nor would I say that any of these changes are particularly apt to happen without many more people in the world taking an interest in them; most folks just go through life trying to get by, and not be bothered with anything more complicated, and one can’t really blame them, bless their cowardly little hearts…. My own method of dealing with how much I’d like to see reality change is to write about what I see, and what I think can be different, with the right set of attitudes.

This desire to see the changes arises out of my love for my fellow man, not from indignation or outrage, though they are present. But what I write, and what I’m trying to accomplish, is to help folks deal with life in a way that allows them more freedom, of whatever kind they wish to have, whether monetary, intellectual, religious, or physical; my motivation is to share the strength and freedom of thought that I have sought so hard to achieve… Mankind has much more potential than we are exhibiting, and I would love to see more of it fulfilled, rather than stifled, as in current society…. we can be so much more…..

“Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.” — Albert Einstein

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

It could be said that Emily Dickinson’s entire life was spent exploring the power and nuance of metaphor, without sounding too idiotic…. I think her work, all those little pieces of truth in different words, are a constant attempt by her mind to impose some kind of an order upon the universe, according to her own artistic perception of it…. However one chooses to describe what she wrote, it remains exactly what it is, and what it has always been…. bloody brilliant….

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,–did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,–
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature’s people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

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“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.” — Mark Twain

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2014/08/05/dianne-feinstein-says-cia-trying-to-hide-facts-in-torture-report/

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/GOP-millionaire-Munger-behind-Dem-vs-Dem-smear-5669862.php#photo-3650012

http://blog.sfgate.com/fiore/2014/08/06/camp-do-nuttin-recess-for-congress/

Originally, I had collected these articles in order to rant on them…. but, I fell into the introductory rant…. Now, I don’t need these to provide me with any outrage, though each of them, in their own way, is infuriating, as one more example of how egregiously asinine are those who are now infesting our government…. I like that word, infesting…. it seems perfectly appropriate for describing how the pundits and talking heads all run around D.C. flapping their mouths and pointing their fingers, making enough noise to scare the dead, all while never getting any closer to the truth, or reality, than they feel they must…. about as useful as a handful of fleas….

It may seem as if I am ranting, but, this is merely the explanation of how it is going to go…. I’m leaving the links, as I think you should go ahead and read the articles…. Doing so may start your own rant, or, perhaps just the urge to do so…. Together, these articles, which are, sadly, representations of what is real in this world, make a statement that clearly gives a picture of today’s society, and how UGLY it has become…. I need to go find me some beauty, just to counteract the effect of all this on me this morning…. Before I do that, here is a group of fresh pearls, taking some shots at my favorite targets…. politicians, preachers, and the Asininnies at large…..

“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.”~~ G. K. Chesterton,The Speaker, 12/15/00

“Sensors show a moron in this sector, Captain.” — Spock, after running sensors on the White House….

“When one rows, it is not the rowing which moves the ship. Rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which, one compels a demon to move the ship.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

(Gee…. this sounds just like that press conference when Obama told us how the NSA was NOT spying on US citizens….)

“Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.” — Jacob Bronowski “The Sense of Human Dignity,”

“Paranoia is only the leading edge of the discovery that everything in the world is connected.” — Smart Bee

“To tell a falsehood is like the cut of a saber; for though the wound may heal, the scar of it will remain.” — Saadi (1184-1291)

(I can see your scars, and I can show you mine….)

“Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.” — Mark Twain

I love ending a pearl with one such as that one from Sam, which might just be the most perfect of all American political pokes…. Twain was, indeed, a master of the subtle jab to the ribs, especially when the target was an elected official…. Not bad for such a crowded morning….

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Well…. In the last few weeks, I’ve written a lot; some of these Pearls are breaking over 3500 words. Some of it has been some pretty good work, too, from what I can tell…. SIGH…. Now, if I could get, oh, say, a couple hundred THOUSAND more ffolkes to drop in to read it, we might just get this message out to some of the people who need to see and/or hear it…. That, unfortunately, isn’t going to happen, not right away, so, I may as well just get on with my day…. Today has some potential, so, I’m going to go meet it, head on….. 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

All the king’s horses…. are fat….

Posted on August 6, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Virtuous and vicious every man must be,–
Few in the extreme, but all in the degree.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Essay on Man, Epistle ii, Line 231 —

—————————————————————

I live in my own place
have never copied nobody even half,
and at any master who lacks the grace
to laugh at himself — I laugh.

— inscribed over the door to Friedrich Nietzsche’s house —

Ah, the poor wee beastie! She’s gone and made the poor lad into a foolish spectacle, and his dignity is in tatters. It’s funny how in pictures such as this one, the dog’s expression is just way too human for comfort, and may explain why we tend to anthropomorphize…. It takes almost no imagination at all to see the embarrassment the dog feels at being dressed up so ridiculously, or to know that he isn’t at all comfortable playing the fool. Mastiffs, even puppies, have an innate dignity that such nonsense tends to ignore….

I like the quotes that open us up today; they sort of picked themselves, as did the two which end this intro, below…. In fact, those four pearls make a pretty good pearl of their own, with some insightful observations of how mankind deals with reality….. Kind of too bad, because they would have done well in one of the sections that follow, as well as in this one…. Some quotes are just more flexible that way…. in fact, quotes, in many ways, seem to parallel those who write them, in terms of well, everything…. I guess that makes some sort of reasonable sense, as we humans tend to put a lot of ourselves into whatever we touch, or create….

That being said, I’m not sure if what I’m putting into this today is going to make the grade…. It’s certainly well punctuated, and I can find no obvious typographical errors (which doesn’t mean there aren’t any, believe me….), but, doesn’t quite FEEL right…. and, as Apple Corp. has proven, the way something looks, and feels, is important…. and, legally defensible…. Who would have thought, eh? I almost peed my pants from laughing so hard when I heard that Apple had won that lawsuit years ago, where they were able to copyright the “look and feel” of their computers, and defend that copyright in court….

Well, I did laugh, and very hard, but no harder than I was weeping, at the thought of how stupid that was, and how it is obviously an indicator of how strange the world has become…. The fact that they COULD win a lawsuit defending the “look and feel” of a product, of any kind, just tells me how corrupt are the legislators, who make such laws, and the courts, who make the decisions that favor the corporate interests who are paying them….

Oops, did I just accuse the Federal Court System, and the Supreme Court, of corruption at the hands of corporate interests? Why yes, yes I did, and I am not going to back down from that, either, as they have recently given more incontrovertible evidence of that, as the Hobby Lobby decision shows how misogyny and corporate influence are still rampant, even at the top levels…. or, more accurately, I’d say, especially at the top levels….

Justice Sotomayer, perhaps the only judge on that august bench that has a clear view of reality, has already made it clear that she disagrees with most of her peers on the SC bench, and accuses them of having “blind spots”. She stops short of accusing them of actual taking of bribes, but makes it clear she is not happy with them…. In my own less than humble opinion, the Supreme Court is no longer capable of true dispassionate judgment of the law, as they are, most of them, completely under the influence of their corporate and/or political sponsors, and no longer determine their own course of belief…. So, sue me…

I suppose I should stop now, before this introductory rant gets any longer…. I’ve already gone beyond the bounds of tact, or, for that matter, good taste, but, that’s nothing unusual for me. I only hope I didn’t drive anyone off yet…. There is a lot yet to come…. Plus, I am guessing I am going to have to be a bit abrupt now, in order to get us out of here, before it becomes impossible to do so…. In fact, let’s jump right here, okay?….

Shall we Pearl?…. Since we started today with a two-fer, we may as well go with the flow….

“Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.” — Albert Camus

“Things don’t change. You change your way of looking, that’s all.” — Carlos Castaneda

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While searching through my archived material, looking for something else, I found the following politireligirant… It is a very long rant, but, I think it keeps within the boundaries of interest well enough to be a worthwhile read, and/or discussion… It’s also still a valid rant, almost a year later, so, the root material that stimulated the rant is, you may be certain, still eating away at the foundations of reality as we know it….

From 11/19/2013:

WARNING! FRESH RANT BELOW: Read it, or not, as you wish…. but, don’t tell me I didn’t warn you…. 😆 (Note from 2014: this is no longer exactly fresh, but, the disclaimer still applies, as well….)

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” — The Constitution of the United States of America Amendment 1, 1791

I had thought, when I found this restatement of the First Amendment, to use it as the opening for a politirant. It IS the perfect lead-in to such discussions, as each and every one of the issues addressed in this codicil to the Constitution is under attack, and, in essence, is no longer one of our guaranteed rights…. I’m not crying “foul!” without evidence; the sky actually IS falling, to use an obvious literary reference. So, I suppose I will…. use it to lead in to a politirant, that is…. Let’s take this piece by piece….

Religion in this country IS free to carry on with, as long as the religion is a Christian sect…. Any other group is likely to suffer a lot of obstruction in the pursuit of their religion, both by law, and more significantly, by custom, and the power of peer pressure…. On the State level, as well as locally, laws have been, and are being passed that prevent Muslim women, and men, from wearing certain articles of clothing their faith demands they wear; other religious icons and dogmatic representations have been subjected to legal restriction as well, for many religions…. except Christian…. But, such laws are only the surface of the problem….

There are even Christian churches, or, well, allegedly, or peripherally Christian churches, that are discriminated against by their larger co-conspirators, just because they don’t have the same ideas about what their particular focus of worship is all about…. Just ask anyone from the Mormons… or ask anyone in The Tribe about antisemitism in the twenty-first century, and listen to them list all the various examples one can find, and not just in the news…. Ask just about any Southern Baptist what they think about Catholics, or Jews…. but, be prepared to get spewed upon with some nasty vulgarities…. Then, ask anyone from Texas what they call a Muslim when they aren’t calling them ragheads….

Okay, that’s the first section of the Amendment, on religion…. That’s gone, kaput, no longer in force; from a cultural point of view, it really never was in place, not very strongly…. The Christian sects have always been good at paying lip service to the principles of their dogma and creed, (the ones about tolerance, and compassion for others….). but, they’ve never been terribly good about actually living up to those principles, have they?…. That little episode during the Middle Ages, the one they called The Inquisition, now THAT was a pretty thing, wasn’t it?…. Now, of course, we have the plague of pedophilia, and/or outright bigotry that permeates so many church hierarchies, and not just the Catholics…. Even a simple, even Christ-like soul, such as the current Pope seems to be, won’t have a big effect on that degree of corruption of spirit….

Next is free speech…. Need I even say anything at all about this? How free is our speech, when telling the truth about the illegal activities being perpetrated by the government is looked on as treason? How free is our media, when they won’t print anything that exposes the lies told every day by the government, much less publish the stuff that Eric Snowden had to show? Oh, they enumerate the prevarications in spots; there are fact checking sites, and a lot of folks who claim to call BS on them everywhere…. The lies they tell are so obvious, that much exposure is unavoidable, given the internet, and the scope of modern technology….

But, those sites, articles, and shows that expose the lies don’t get anywhere near the publicity or exposure that the lies get, or the spin on the lies, or anything at all that the pundits and talking heads have to say in defense of their lies…. Hell, much of the time, the response by the government, regarding a particular instance of being caught lying, is handled most effectively by just ignoring it, making no statement at all…. and the media lets them do it! Every time!…. No follow-up outrage, no further mention of the lies told, just silence…. When was the last time we saw a public official actually tried in court for lying to the public?….. Nixon, maybe? Maybe so….

I can think of, at minimum, three instances in the past six years of this administration when huge lies were told, or exposed, and not a single politician or government official has been prosecuted for those lies, up to, and including the President…. This doesn’t even address the lies told by the Republican Party (the “loyal” opposition?….) on a daily basis by that entities representatives…. I’m not going to bother naming them, as all of them were covered extensively in the news, for all the good it did….

Okay, free speech, and freedom of the press, those are pretty much gone, too…. Let’s see, now, what’s next?…. The freedom to peacefully assemble, and petition for redress of grievances…. Have you tried to get a permit to have a protest lately? I understand there are now a bunch of requirements that are necessary to be allowed to assemble anywhere in a public venue, all laws passed on a local level, as a rule, and enforced by police departments with a huge sense of entitlement, legal backing, and guns they aren’t afraid to use on the public….

Those requirements that must now be met before assembling any group for protest in public, requirements which are, if one actually reads this Amendment, completely illegal according to the Constitution, have to do with protecting property, mostly, from the vagaries of mob actions….. The laws were put in place through the efforts (i.e. they spent a lot of money to make sure their politicians voted the “correct” way….) of corporate entities…. The landed gentry, or more accurately, private interests, to protect THEIR profit margins, and THEIR rights, as opposed to the rights of the people… Can’t have those ignorant voters taking money out of their pockets in their dissatisfaction, now, can we?….

Oh, and by the way…. When was the last time we heard about a policeman getting arrested , ( Or women, though police women don’t seem to ever go as completely overboard in their zealousness as their male counterparts, at least not without first becoming more male than female in their attitudes about violence, and the use of it to control the public….), for being violent during a protest? Or actually being prosecuted, and convicted for those kinds of acts? Very, very seldom, as you are well aware, I’m sure…. That particular issue is generally taken in hand by many governments by passing laws making the police immune to prosecution for ANYTHING they do while on duty…. pretty slick, eh? Become a policeman, get a get-out-of-jail-free card to stick in your wallet….

Not bad work, if you’ve got the stomach for it, along with a very, very skewed and distorted sense of honor, and justice…. To my mind, in the current state of our society, it takes a pretty sick mind to want to take on the duties of a police officer…. Sadly, there just aren’t enough honest, honorable men to fill the empty spaces, and the need for them….

As a result, I’d estimate that at least half of the men, and, almost as many of the women, who try to become police officers are clinically insane, and should never be allowed to have that sort of power over others, for they WILL eventually, even consistently, use that power for their own ends, or use it in ways that are destructive to the public good…. It’s their nature to do so, and they WILL do so, if given the chance… As evidence, I will once more point to the news, and the many instances reported of dishonorable, destructive behavior by police officers….

It must be remembered, THOSE reports only tell of the ones who are caught, or prosecuted, or screw up so badly even their own mates turn on them…. How many instances of police bullying, or intimidation of citizens in the pursuit of their ends, actually show up in those reports?…. More significantly, how often do you see a news report, many months after an incident, that was investigated for wrong-doing, or illegalities on the part of the officers, that exonerates the officers of all wrong? Of course, the fact that these investigations are carried out by OTHER POLICE OFFICERS seems to forever lose its place among the reactions from the press….

SIGH, now, I’m a little bummed out…. Here it is, not quite 7 AM, I’ve got a dental appointment to live through at 10, and I’ve already put the hammer to the First Amendment…. Say BYE BYE, ffolkes, to that hallowed document, the Bill of Rights, otherwise known as the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, because the efforts of the past 235 years by the corporate masters to do away with that hallowed document, as predicted by Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, George Mason, and a number of other of our Founding Fathers, have almost reached their desired results….

Most, if not all, of the rights we were guaranteed in the Bill of Rights have now been abridged, in one way or another, and we can not depend on ANYONE in our government to give them back…. Not when we’ve already given them the keys to the treasury, by allowing them the right to vote their own salaries, their own health care system, their own retirement, all without ever realizing we were doing so….. The American people have cooperated fully in their own enslavement, ffolkes, and though the collars we wear are not yet such as to kill us outright with their fit, nonetheless have taught us to do without a lot of the freedoms our forefathers gave us, with our full, if sadly ignorant, consent….

Sorry to be the one to bring this out, but, hey, somebody has to, right? Right….. I may not be a small child, but, as far as I can see, the Emperor is NOT wearing any clothes, ffolkes….. Now, let’s see how many ffolkes, and/or folks, out there will either admit to it, or reject my assertions…. nicely, of course…. I suppose this is a good place to bring this rant to a dignified close, though, given my history, that’s pretty much out of the question… the dignity, I mean… I think I’m going to have to resort to a pearl to make my escape…. so, let’s see if Smart Bee can come up with just the right one…..

“What now if the sky were to fall?” — Terence (185-159 BC) — Heautontimoroumenos, Act iv, Sc. 3, 41, (719.)

“If you don’t make the rules, you don’t have to keep them. If you do make the rules, you won’t anyway.” — Smart Bee

How admirable, he who thinks not,
Life is fleeting,
When he sees the lightning!

— Basho

Well, it took three, and that’s okay, too…. because they’re perfect….

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Here is one of my older poems, that fits in well with today’s apparent theme…. I hope you enjoy it….

Rejection

“Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so…”
I’d be crying a river, I thought
if ever such crap I bought.

Sorry if it hurts your sense of style,
but, hypocrisy always gives me bile.
Being lied to accidentally is okay,
but, deliberate lies make me angry, and fey.

Oh, God, hear what I pray!
Keep me from your followers today.
Having to listen to so much that is wrong
makes me puke, before it makes me strong.

I don’t know why it isn’t clear to other folks,
which is alright, you know, different strokes.
But, why should that mean that they must
force me to believe, or fail in trust?

Spare me the lies, and the make-believe,
fairy tales are easier to hear, and to weave.
They give us a lesson which we can feel
but don’t pretend at all to be real.

Reality can scare us, that’s a given fact,
still, met with care it will leave us mostly intact.
Met without fear, standing tall and alone
Life will allow us to make it our own.

Folly beckons, and so many follow
mass delusions seem to me most hollow.
I’ll have to stick to my own chosen way
while so many go so sadly astray.

It’s lonely at times, it may seem sad,
but really isn’t, and I’m quite glad,
that knowledge is always stronger than fear,
year after year, tear after tear…..

~~ gigoid ~~

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The following is what might be considered a partial pearl…. Just one entry, with a number of good zingers, all of which hit me where I’ve lived, an environment where I spent many an interesting day, and night, trying to maintain my own sanity in the face of what isn’t supposed to be, but, actually, is rather infectious, if exposed to it for long periods of time… to wit: Insanity, insanity, as far as the eye can see, and not a drop to…. oops, sorry, wrong cliche…. Any who, working with people who live at the extreme edges of human thought and existence is always interesting, and often, if one can keep intact one’s sense of the ludicrous, more than just a little entertaining….

** Hello and Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline **

If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6.
If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want – just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press next.
If you are manic-depressive, it doesn’t matter which number you press – no one will answer.
If you suffer from panic attacks, push every button you can find.
If you are sane, please hold on – we have the rest of humanity on the other line and they desperately want to ask you a few questions.

— true phone script for operators at the Berzerkeley Crisis Hot Line

— okay, so that’s a lie. It could be, though….

— Shoot…. I must have used this before, because the Spell Checker didn’t react at all to the word ‘Berzerkeley’….

— Alright, so, it’s not mine; I don’t know who did it, but, it’s funny as shit, especially to a former psychiatric technician…. You’ve got to admit, the one about the co-dependent is pretty sardonic, not to mention sly…. Okay, so I’m odd…. I knew that, and, you should have, as soon as you saw the dog in the bumble bee outfit…. Deal with it….

I actually wrote this pearl yesterday…. In the interim, it occurred to me that there might be some people who would consider this to be offensive, in that it makes (mild) fun of people with problems…. To those people I would say this: one of the primary characteristics of all the conditions of mental illness listed above is the loss of any sense of humor, about much of anything, and certainly not about their condition….

This lack is a large part of why they are having the problems to begin with, and I would point out that the urge to be politically correct about such matters indicates a certain lack of humor, as applied to one’s self…. and I can can tell you, without a single doubt, that being able to laugh at yourself is probably the primary characteristic of those who are sane, and can deal with reality on its terms….

TO MANKIND And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after all. — Dedicatory note of The Gods Themselves

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For a Pearl that grew so much, this went smoothly; mise en place is a good thing…. and, no, I’m not going to explain that now. This is already too long. In fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if it became the longest Pearl ever, but, that remains to be seen…. Regardless, it’s done, and I’m outta here. 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

Fear is both tool, and weapon; use them, or be used by them….

Posted on July 31, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

“He had that rare weird electricity about him — that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving “normally.””

— Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939), journalist — Fear and Loathing ’72

Look! It’s a plane! No! It’s a turd! Hooray! It’s Toilet Man!….. Enough! I can’t do it…. I am, as the theme above suggests, NOT normal. It’s okay, I never wanted to be, anyway, so, it’s not going to hurt my feelings to be accused of missing out on that particularly noisome state of mundanity. Me, I could never figure out why it was so attractive, or so important for people to feel they were either on their way to becoming normal, or were already considered to be one of the conformist crowd…. Sure, I like people, occasionally, but, I sure wouldn’t want to BE like any of them…. But, no matter how I feel about normal, I can’t take advantage of it that way….

That, of course, is just the curmudgeon in me talking, which I can’t seem to stop from happening, all too often. According to the training rules for us curmudgeons-to-be, we are supposed to USE our skills, but, we aren’t supposed to make other people feel bad thereby, necessarily, although it is acceptable under certain conditions, such as being accosted by one of the stupids, and needing to put them out of their misery. That’s okay, but, generally, we aren’t supposed to load our foul moods onto other ffolkes; only if they deserve it, for which there are strict requirements to fulfill, to ensure they are a deserving recipient of our ire….

At this point, I’d probably do well to mention that we are still quite a far piece from reality, so, you shouldn’t be taking any of this too seriously, or trying to figure out whether or not my tongue is in cheek, or somewhere less appropriate than that. This is also a good point to tell you, the picture is from SFGATE, from a photo feature a few days ago, highlighting signs around the world with funny or odd statements, such as the above, and the name of the photographer is on the picture (in VERY small letters…) …. I have actually seen a sign very similar to this, in Beijing, during a visit there in 2004. Such signs were a constant source of amusement, as many of the English translations in the advertisements on billboards were simply hilariously mashed up….

Of course, it’s important for me to remember…. this kind of opening, as fun as it may be, does have its own potential risks…. For example, here we are, a good three to four paragraphs down the pike, and we have yet to whine about being late, or how lazy I’m feeling (somewhat….), or any of my usual techniques to draw your attention away from the lack of any sort of elegance, not to mention the lack of any sort of visible evidence of intelligent life as we know it. The risk in this should be obvious, even to…. no, I won’t go there. I’m not going to be one of those bloggers who insults my readers, just to show I can, or some other misguided reason….

I am, however, going to have to call a halt to this, even though we’re just beginning to have some fun with it, and it’s starting to flow nicely…. Too bad I’m completely out of any more ideas as to what to put here…. In fact, my brain is emptying out so fast, I’m getting dizzy, and had best take a break…. You know what this means, so hang on….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“It’s snowing still. And freezing. However, we haven’t had an earthquake lately.” — A.A. Milne’s Eyore

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In keeping with the theme which has thus far characterized today’s effort, let’s see what the headlines around the web have for us….

http://www.theonion.com/articles/exxonmobil-chevron-locked-in-bidding-war-to-acquir,36561/

Oh. My. Gosh….. Okay, well, so it doesn’t quite have the same impact, or cathartic release factor, as the usual blasphemy I could be expected to come out with in such cases, but, I think employing the use of such a mild epithet will, no doubt, save me some hate mail…. Of course. that would help, if I actually got any…. Nonetheless, expletive expressions notwithstanding, I was a bit surprised to see the above headline, which, since you can’t see it all, says, to wit:

“ExxonMobil, Chevron Locked In Bidding War To Acquire Lucrative Pennsylvania Senator”

Flabbergasted, flummoxed, flustered, and, just a little bit surprised, I was, when I first saw this…. Then, of course, I noticed where it was published, on The Onion, and, so realized it was only humor…. pointed, sharp humor that accurately skewers Reality in America, but, humor…. In this case, what needs to be noted is the source of the humorous nature of the piece, which is rooted in the fact that it is probably true, though not necessarily for the exact companies named here….. You may be certain, however, that the concept itself is NOT completely out of the realm of possibility in the US Senate…. not in THIS Reality…..

I’m almost certain my creative juices aren’t quite up to turning this into a rant; it’s just too ironic…. which, coming from me, is pretty ironic, as well…. True, though, so, I’m going to go with my instincts, and go with an old-school pearl, a collection of pointed sticks to jab in the eyes of all those in our Beloved Ruling Class who are so diligent in their efforts to screw the rest of us….. Enjoy!….

“Anyone who has had a bull by the tail knows five or six more things than someone who hasn’t.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.” — H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

“I’m not against the police; I’m just afraid of them.” — Alfred Hitchcock

“A little truth helps the lie go down.” — A direct quote from the US Senate publication, “Communication Tips for New Senators”

“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.” — Tom Robbins

“Not all the conservative are stupid, but all the stupid are conservative.” — Benjamin Disraeli

(The oddest part of this quote? Disraeli, by modern standards, would call himself a conservative…. To me, it just goes to show, ALL of them need help…. and, by that, I mean professional help….)

“This sickness doth infect
The very life-blood of our enterprise.”

— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), King Henry IV — Act iv, Sc. 1

Well, there you have it, ffolkes…. I’m thinking I may have been a bit too eclectic; most of these wouldn’t be understood at all by any of the people it targets…. which rather eliminates part of the point, doesn’t it? Oh well, there’s always tomorrow; I don’t think they’re going to add on any IQ points overnight, so we’ll have another chance to make a dent in their intransigent stupidity….

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I repost this poem at least once a year, just because it is one of my favorites, it goes so well with much of the material I end up producing…. and usually ends up saying what I was trying to say, better than I said it…. Enjoy, please…..

À Bas Ben Adhem

My fellow man I do not care for.
I often ask me, What’s he there for?
The only answer I can find
Is, Reproduction of his kind.
If I’m supposed to swallow that,
Winnetka is my habitat.
Isn’t it time to carve Hic Jacet
Above that Reproduction racket?

To make the matter more succinct:
Suppose my fellow man extinct.
Why, who would not approve the plan
Save possibly my fellow man?
Yet with a politician’s voice
He names himself as Nature’s choice.

The finest of the human race
Are bad in figure, worse in face.
Yet just because they have two legs
And come from storks instead of eggs
They count the spacious firmament
As something to be charged and sent.

Though man created cross-town traffic,
The Daily Mirror, News and Graphic,
The pastoral fight and fighting pastor,
And Queen Marie and Lady Astor,
He hails himself with drum and fife
And bullies lower forms of life.

Not that I think much depends
On how we treat our feathered friends,
Or hold the wrinkled elephant
A nobler creature than my aunt.
It’s simply that I’m sure I can
Get on without my fellow man.

~~ Ogden Nash ~~

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Y’all are getting the benefit of my laziness again today; a rant just doesn’t seem attractive right now…. I guess there’s only one thing to do, as I don’t have any goo Art to go with…. another old-school pearl, which will serve several purposes, at least three of which cannot be discussed in this venue without notifying certain officials, which we don’t wish to do…. so, those purposes shall remain secret, as long as y’all can keep quiet…. In fact, I insist…. Why don’t y’all have a seat right there, and listen up….

“Could you tell night from day?” “No, I regard all such distinctions as logically impossible.” — Heraclitus

“Be ruled by time, the wisest counselor of all.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Life of Pericles (B.C. 495-429)

“He who receives a good turn should never forget it; he who does one should never remember it.” — Charon

“The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it – once you can honestly say, “I don’t know,” then it becomes possible to get at the truth.” — Robert A. Heinlein

“A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs…” — Epicurus (341-270 B.C.)

“Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.” — Albert Einstein

Well…. This turned out quite well, thank you; balanced, sharp, and deep. Plus, a new quote from Albert that I’d never seen…. I’m happy there are still a few left in Smart Bee for me to find…. especially when they’re like this, and help to create a fine pearl…

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Wow… I got so jazzed about the potential to be finished, I forgot to close it out…. Now I haven’t a clue as to what to say here; two minutes ago I had it all planned out, but, after going back to edit, it went away, to whatever place in my mind where such ideas go to cry themselves to sleep…. Not a particularly rational image, but, poignant…. Any who, it’s done, such as it is, so, I’m outta here….. 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

It’s just like a dead parrot….

Posted on July 24, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”
~~ Buddha ~~

Or, if we are lucky, we can be what we imagine in our thoughts, no matter how fantastic they are….. Just sayin’…. Ultimately, though, it’s both egotistical and impertinent to believe that I could add anything particularly useful to something the Buddha said as part of sharing his wisdom…. Oh well, it’s true, so, it can’t hurt, and I’m sure the Buddha wouldn’t mind, as long as I am not being untruthful, or mean-spirited…. Mostly, I’m just being fanciful, to get the old grey cells moving along in a reasonably straight line, even if the line doesn’t get us much of anywhere important…

‘Important’ is just another personal judgment anyway, right? Right…. the universe treats us all alike, with complete, massive indifference to our wishes or our sensibilities…. It’s just the way it is, so, what becomes important is how we react to whatever we are presented with in our lives…. much of which is not under our direct control…. As always, the only thing we can really count on being able to control is ourselves; beyond that, all is up for dispute…. Nobody likes that part of karma, or existence, or whatever we choose to call life when we are speaking metaphorically; we don’t have to like it. All we have to do is deal with it, for there is no other choice…

That being said, we do have SOME choices; in fact, that is our saving grace, to my way of thinking. We have the choice to act, or not, always…. That is a powerful tool, though sadly misunderstood to be so critical…. But, then, it takes more than just two neurons bumping up against each other to have a chance of cluing into that fact, so, a lot of folks out there just don’t have the wherewithal…. This is what creates so much tension and difficulty in the world, because of their thrashing around, trying to control everything they don’t understand, using the only tool they know, which is aggression and violence….

There, how’s that for a three paragraph summary of world history, with a valid, pertinent appraisal of human nature, and a solid, short, rational description of the root causes of the mess we call current events in world-wide society, or, as we usually think of the issue, Life As We Know It? Not too shabby, I’d say, even if it is a little bit heavy on the assumption of guilt part…. Hey, stupid is as stupid does, as Mama Gump says, so, I’m not apologizing for any of it, not even to the Buddha…. I was only trying to help!….

Never mind, we’ll just go on…. Today’s picture is one of several I took yesterday on my walk, taken when I discovered the local colony of pine cones, in their original habitat…. Apparently there was some kind of formal gathering going on, so several of them agreed to pose in the formal attire, right there in the pine tree where they live…. It was interesting, and gave me a little better insight in the Wise Old Pine Cone, and the environment from which he was, shall we say, sent forth unto the world, to carry out the dictates of his Arts….

Now, now, calm down, no need for drama…. Remember, this is all fantasy, so, I can say all this, and it doesn’t mean a damn thing, unless….. wait for it…. hold on…. unless….. YOU MAKE UP THE MEANING!….. See how that works? I rest my case, and my arguments, and my tired grey cells…. Well, not tired, just confused, their normal, default state after such a bout of philosophy, combined with fantasy, and a dollop or two of humor, all in one sitting…. All prepared prior to even awakening, too; I’ll bet you didn’t even notice that part, did you? Nope, but, don’t feel bad….. There was no way you could know I was writing ahead, or, in my sleep….

Since I’ve discovered I have the powers of a Time Lord while writing here, it’s getting a little hard for even ME to keep track of when stuff gets done…. but, as long as I don’t cross the streams, we’ll be fine…. Well, that’s what Ray said…. and Luigi backed him up on it, so, I’m letting it fly….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.” — Edward Abbey

And, in the same vein….

“I drank WHAT???????” — Socrates (470?-399 B.C.)

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On most occasions, the first section is comprised of either a rant, or an old-school pearl, or some combination thereof…. Or, it may start with links, to articles that stimulate my discussion/ranting, which often turns out to resemble my nose, i.e., large, round, & red, with a tendency to HONK when squeezed….. or, on rare but entertaining occasions, when looked at with the plain intent to squeeze…. Today, we, or, dropping the royal personage, I, am going a completely different direction…. sort of…..

The link you’ll see below is to an article from the sports page of SFGATE, the SF Bay Area news website run by the SF Chronicle, about the home team’s latest exploits, in this case, a Giants’ win, night-before-last in Philadelphia, a tough win in 14 innings on the road…. It’s an upbeat story, with a lot of good signs for Giants fans regarding the second half of the season…. Read it, even if you don’t know baseball, for the change of pace from the usual fare around here, which, I am aware, is generally rather intense in nature….

http://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/Posey-extends-game-in-9th-Crawford-lifts-Giants-5640059.php?cmpid=hp-hc-sports

The last line in the above article kept me smiling for a long time…. Don’t skip down to it, or it won’t make any sense…. You must read the entire article, or at least skim it down to the last couple of paragraphs, to get the sense of the game, and the fantastically humorous, ironic ending lines…. Brilliant!…..

Now what?….. Hmm, I guess we’ll wait until something occurs to me…. I know, let’s see if Smart Bee can come up with a five-star pearl that is “happy-making”, in a manner of speaking…. I’d try to explain, but, English is the wrong language for that…. Oh, hell, let’s just see what happens…

“Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment… They do everything but watch television.” — Lewis Thomas

“I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.” — Josh Billings

“By definition, when you are investigating the unknown, you do not know what you will find.” — The Ultimate Principle

” The difference between a politician and a snail is that a snail leaves its slime behind.” — Gerrold’s Pronouncement

“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.” — Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence … — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“The forces of evil can marshal even more support than the forces of good, especially when pizza is served.” — unknown

Okay, so, I can’t count…. I’m happy, so it all balances out, right? Right…. Onward, before they have a chance to catch up….

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

This poet needs no introduction in my world; he is indeed a master of the metaphor, and silly to boot. What’s not to like?…. Enjoy this one, ffolkes, it’s a dandy….

Children’s Party

May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party’s over.
Since three o’clock I’ve done my best
To entertain each tiny guest. My conscience now I’ve left behind me,
And if they want me, let them find me.
I blew their bubbles, I sailed their boats,
I kept them from each other’s throats. I told them tales of magic lands,
I took them out to wash their hands.
I sorted their rubbers and tied their laces,
I wiped their noses and dried their faces. Of similarities there’s lots
Twixt tiny tots and Hottentots.
I’ve earned repose to heal the ravages
Of these angelic-looking savages. Oh, progeny playing by itself
Is a lonely little elf,
But progeny in roistering batches
Would drive St. Francis from here to Natchez. Shunned are the games a parent proposes,
They prefer to squirt each other with hoses,
Their playmates are their natural foemen
And they like to poke each other’s abdomen. Their joy needs another woe’s to cushion it,
Say a puddle, and someone littler to push in it.
They observe with glee the ballistic results
Of ice cream with spoons for catapults, And inform the assembly with tears and glares
That everyone’s presents are better than theirs.
Oh, little women and little men,
Someday I hope to love you again, But not till after the party’s over,
So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover

~~ Ogden Nash ~~

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What we have below is a typical old-school, random pearl, picked out by myself and Smart Bee, acting in mind-meld-mode, where SB brings up quotes as suggested by whatever the meld is telling him I am looking for…. Well, it works something like that, anyway; maybe one of these days we’ll let the folks at Princeton test us for their ongoing studies into telepathy…. Or, maybe not…. I think this came out rather well, all things considered; in all honesty, I’m not entirely sure my mind has been in attendance, at all, while creating this Pearl today…. Hmph…. No matter, just enjoy….

“It behooves a prudent person to make trial of everything before arms.” — Terence (185-159 BC) — Act iv, Sc. 7, 19, (789.)

“What is done with joy is always better done.” — H. L. Mencken

“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” — Aldous Huxley

“I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.” — G. K. Chesterton, ILN, 10/7/16

“Nobody does good to man with impunity.” — Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)

“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.” — Nietzsche, “Thus Spake Zarathustra”

“And furthermore, my bowling average is unimpeachable!!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Also, ffolkes, you need to consider this….. If it wasn’t, would I tell y’all? Probably not….. and, what that has to do with any of the above remains as much a mystery to me, as it does to you….. I also suppose, if you stop to think about it, isn’t particularly unusual for this process….

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Well, that was interesting…. It isn’t every day my brain takes a working vacation, while still putting a Pearl together; I can’t say what kind of effect it had, but, I suppose I’ll see when I go proof it….. SIGH, I guess I’ll do that now, while I’m still in my coveralls….. I’ll be back…..

Well…. Contrary to all the available evidence, I’m speechless. But, that is, by definition, and by its nature, a good place to bring this to a close. It’s logical, if only to a fault, never approaches any sort of politically correct terminology, and, bonus, it’s on sale….. How can you lose? Hell, I’m pretty sure we now take Bitcoins, so, it’s even more convenient….. If you act now, we’ll even throw in the chocolate sprinkles….. Or, not, your choice….. My choice, should I choose to accept it, is to make my way outta here, which, I will proceed to embrace, here, and now….. I must, for I’m out of both pomposity, and, more critically, chutzpah….. 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

A plethora of positive paradigms….

Posted on July 22, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

How does it feel?
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown?

~~ Bob Dylan ~~

The first time I heard Bob Dylan’s song, Like A Rolling Stone, I was half-asleep, riding in a car to go to work, very early on a summer morning in, I believe, 1963, or 1964….. Though not overly impressed by the voice that sang it, I was struck at once by the power of metaphor he employed so liberally throughout the piece…. It was the first time any of us had heard him; that was his first hit song, the one that catapulted him into fame, and the public eye…. Somehow, the plaintive tone of his voice, almost a whine, but, not quite, fit the words he spoke very well, and those words were, themselves, a new experience, as the poetry dug down into the subconscious to deliver subliminal messages, underneath the more obvious lyrical verses….

Ah well, those were the days…. Wait. Stop there….. Step back a few feet, ffolkes, let me get a better look at this….. Yep. I thought I heard some overt nostalgia in there….. Sorry, ffolkes…. We don’t often get attacks of mundane sobriety, with a strong overtone of nostalgia like that, but, we try to head them off quickly when we do come across one of them…. They can cause quite a bit of mental damage, if not caught early on; that sticky sweet reminiscence can be, not just fattening, but dangerously filling…. One small dose of it can layer a whole new coat of fat over the heart, increasing the risk of stroke by a factor of 3 or more…. not good….

So, we’ve developed a pretty efficient way of dealing with them when they come after us; we burn them, and get on with our business…. So, since this one has already been hauled off by our friendly stevedores, off to the incinerator, which will make short work of it, we can put it out of our minds, and move on to the next international incident, er, section of the post…. You’ll have to excuse me this morning, ffolkes, I’m still a bit groggy from sleep…. The picture above is what woke me…. Well, that’s not quite accurate…. hold on…. short break….

It would be more accurate to say the sight of the picture shocked me closer to the state of awareness needed to begin this missive; I’m now three or four paragraphs down the line, and still feel like my brain resembles a bowl of oatmeal more than anything fully alive…. And, see, I can’t even come up with anything remotely humorous to describe what is taking place! In a minute, I’m going to start whining again, so, it might be best to employ one of my emergency exit strategies, to take us out of here, on to where we need to go, wherever that might be…. Given this introduction, it could be just about anywhere at all….

Shall we Pearl?…..

And I’ll do you one better if you’ve got the nerve,
I’ll race you all the way to deadman’s curve.

~~ Jan & Dean ~~

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“Cato instigated the magistrates to punish all offenders, saying that they that did not prevent crimes when they might, encouraged them.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Roman Apophthegms, Cato the Elder

Below you will find an epic pearl, a rant of magnificent proportions, complete with at least two rants, both aimed in the same general direction, but coming at it from different starting points…. I spent a good portion of yesterday at the computer, having been given that boon by my massage the day before, putting my whole body in a better space…. This led me to catch up on some news sites I hadn’t been to in a while, particularly the Guardian, the UK news site that broke the Snowden Papers story to the world….

(Of course, when I say a long time at the comp, it means an hour or three, not six or eight, so, I could only read the news, not visit all the blogs I want to catch up on… If I start that, I never can get caught up, or get away before I start to regret it physically…. SIGH…. Hard decisions… Any who….)

I still find many of the more egregious activities that the US government is up to on the Guardian, rather than any US sites…. The US media seems to censor much of what the Guardian is writing about, sometimes not covering stories at all that the Guardian has unearthed. Whether this tendency is from jealousy, or fear of reprisal from the government, I can’t say, but, the stories just aren’t there as often, or, if covered, don’t get as deep into the issue as the European site does…. It isn’t just the US who gets their custom, either…. They focus their attention on their own government just as tightly, nor are the rest of the world’s leaders spared their often intensive questions about conditions in other countries….

Nonetheless, the US media has its own axes to grind, and they LOVE any story that puts the police in the spotlight, so, the first part of today’s epic rant concerns that issue, to wit: police brutality and the military bent that the police have been assuming for some time now…. Let’s see what got me going, because, otherwise, it won’t ever get done…. Enjoy, and for goodness sake, pay attention, and pass the information on to those who need it, i.e. every citizen of this country, and of the world, who are being affected by what those assholes at the top of the heap are up to these days…..

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly-involved-us-terror-plots-report

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/nsa-surveillance-world-leaders-calls

The latter article is from October of 2013, but, may not be known to some Gentle Readers…. When considered in conjunction with the other article’s information, the earlier report serves as prior proof of what I’ve been saying for quite a long time now, regarding how the government looks at the public as their tool, not as their boss…. If anyone at all has any evidence to the contrary, please, come forward, and we can discuss the matter…. I don’t think there are many who will come forward, because it’s all truth; they ARE spying on YOU, ME, and EACH OTHER…. The tail has begun to wag the dog, and the leaders of the world are completely insane, taking the old saw about “knowledge is power” to new extremes of meaning….

We saw above how the FBI particularly has been abusing their newly-acquired powers to create terrorist plots, involving people in them, then using the completely unconstitutional terrorist court system created after 9/11/01 to convict otherwise innocent people, to justify their own existence and continued clandestine operations…. The FBI is the top level of the police forces of society, forces that are supposed to provide protection and support for the citizens of this country; they help set the tone for the other forces, on the state and local levels, who also are supposed to, as they are fond of saying, “protect and serve”….

Instead we have, on a daily basis, though not all of them receive this much coverage, incidents such as the following, which provide examples of how, in today’s society, the police view the public as enemies, to be unworthy of possessing even the most basic rights, such as free speech, or privacy, an enemy requiring intimidation to assert authority, and threats of violence to maintain control, while the public views the police as violent, aggressive, filled with entitlement, unethical, unfair, not to be trusted, and, worst of all, continuously demonstrating their belief they are not subject to the laws they enforce….

(Note: it took SFGATE three articles to give the same information three times, without ever getting very deep into the issue… they had lots of nice photos, though, of Rev. Al and his religious cronies, taking advantage of the publicity to get photographed with the victim’s widow…..)

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Rallies-planned-after-in-custody-death-of-NYC-man-5632335.php?cmpid=hp-hc-nationworld

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/More-studies-needed-in-apparent-chokehold-death-5635142.php?cmpid=hp-hc-nationworld

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/NY-preacher-appeals-for-justice-in-chokehold-death-5634035.php?cmpid=hp-hc-nationworld

“…..as four officers bring him down to the sidewalk, Garner, who was asthmatic, gasps, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” The video shows one officer using his hands to push Garner’s face into the sidewalk……” “The second video, which appears to have been shot shortly after Garner was handcuffed, shows him lying on the sidewalk, apparently unresponsive. More than three minutes in, medics arrive and one checks his pulse. Garner is lifted onto a gurney and transported to a waiting ambulance about two minutes later.”…. “A bystander asks why no one is performing CPR and one officer responds, “because he’s breathing.”” — excerpted from the last article listed, describing the events as seen in the videos shot at the scene by bystanders….

In addition to the other issues presented by the incident, I find it a telling point that no mention of any police videos of the incident have been noted by the media, nor by the police…. I don’t know if the NYPD is in step with most of the other police forces in this country, but, I’m pretty sure, by now, the majority of officers and police cars on the streets of New York have video recorders somewhere about their person or vehicle, fully capable of recording all they do, and all they encounter in “pursuing their duties”…..

If not, well, I’m thinking they wish they did have them in place; if they do, why haven’t they been used to either corroborate, or deny, the accusations of wrongdoing? Any speculative reasons as to why such evidence is not available are, naturally, going to be negatively perceived, and will not help their already tarnished image….

The NYPD, along with just about every police force in the entire world, has become what many of our forefathers warned us against, i.e., professional soldiers and/or para-military wannabe soldiers, with a sense of entitlement, and a barely restrained tendency to use violence as their measure of authority…. which, being the neurotic personalities that all-too-many of them are, they must seek out to feel any self-worth…. Only by asserting that authority can these sick, violent bigots feel in control, thus proving their “manhood”.

I’m not being hyperbolic, either…. I’m going by my own observations, and my own experiences in observing the interactions between the police, in this town, and everywhere I’ve ever lived, as well as in my more than simply copious reading of the local, national, and international news, to the tune of two news site a day, minimum…. That’s now; it used to be two news papers….

All of which is in addition to the book a day I have read since I was 10 years old, in addition to all I read in the news…. That reading, and my perceptions of this issue, have enabled me to see the police go from being one of the most admired and respected professions in the world, when I was young, to one of the most feared and mistrusted segments of government, and society….. all in the course of my 55 years or so of perception and reasoning about the world at large….

When I was a lad, in the 50’s, my own parents always made sure we kids knew that, if lost or in trouble, an MP (military policeman) would always help (we were Army brats….)….and that included civilian policemen…. However, by the time I was in college, in 1968, police ranks had swelled to unprecedented numbers, while the hiring standards remained set on old, outdated concepts of societal needs.

The societal disharmony that had been building up, along with the widening of the income gap, for many years, since the Depression, and before, all came to a head, erupting in the early 60’s, when society exploded against the restraints on their freedoms….The Free Speech movement, Civil Rights, Vietnam, the invasion of Cambodia, as well the beginning of the women’s rights, and LGBT rights movements, society-wide struggles that continue today, as society moves forward into a new millennium. These new, (for the time) large demonstrations by students and citizens with issues were a new phenomenon to the police forces that existed, and the conflict started to demonstrate how out of touch they were becoming with the rest of society…..

That same separation of perception has continued to widen ever since, until now, police everywhere, no matter how good or bad they are, will be painted with the brush of corruption, psychopathy, bigotry, and para-military rigidity of thinking…. and for good reason, as there are EASILY as many, or more, bad cops these days, as there are good cops….

Actually, though, it occurs to me, the whole issue is merely one facet of the overriding problem facing society at large, which is the ever-widening gap between the super-rich and the rest of humanity….

And don’t fool yourselves, ffolkes…. it’s way smaller a number than 1% that is behind the entire set of problems that face mankind, as a result of their selfishness and lack of humanity…. My guess, without actually researching, but, going by the “sincerely best-guess” methodology, is that the number of people in the world, who actually have the control over 99% of the money and resources, either directly, or by proxy, is about 5000 people, or fewer…. This small number of super-wealthy, inhumane assholes, believe they have the right to decide for all of us exactly how reality should be run, which just so happens to coincide with their vision of absolute power….

The sad part is, they have been able to do exactly that for many centuries now, ever since the major proportion of the world became dependent on the whole concept of money, compounded by the gullibility that allows them to be fooled so easily by those without any morals or ethics to restrain them…. They buy governments, without anyone ever knowing their names…. They buy churches, who spread the delusional belief in a supernatural afterlife where all life’s pain will be taken away, and they will be rewarded for being sheep all their lives, allowing those in power to tell them how to think, and how to live…. And, in the process, they are killing themselves, and us right along with them…..

Isn’t that sweet?

“Do I look like someone who cares about what God thinks?” — Zippy the Pinhead

Don’t worry, ffolkes…. I’m not done ranting about these people…. This one, however, has gone on long enough, and is starting to get a bit nebulous…. I prefer a more substantial target for my barbs, so, we’ll come back to this another time, when I’ve put together a bit more ammunition to use on them, and, perhaps, even identifying one or two of them for y’all ….. For now, I’ll leave you with this: Keep your head in the game, and always be ready to doubt what you hear from anyone who thinks they are in charge….. because, whether they are or not, they believe that shit, which makes them annoying, and potentially dangerous to your well-being….

Stay on your toes, ffolkes, (metaphorically speaking, of course), & don’t believe any of their lies…. How do you know when they’re lying? Their mouth is open, and words are coming out; if that’s so, it’s a damn good bet…. The tricky part is knowing exactly who they are…. they don’t come out into the light much….. You know how those evil demons of the dark are…. Besides, they have their talking heads, the pundits & politicians, to stay in the public eye, where they want to be, and are most easily manipulated…. The bottom line for those in power is to prevent, at any cost, any change in the status quo, thus ensuring their continued existence at the controls of society..

“The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.” — Edward Abbey

SIGH…. It’s a pretty ugly picture, and it isn’t getting any prettier…. More later, ffolkes….

“It’s getting harder and harder to act weird.” — Zippy the Pinhead

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I’m not such an egotist that I think I’m a great poet; I’ve written some good ones, but, nothing to compare with someone such as Sylvia Plath, or Poe, or Whitman, or any of a hundred others from the past who have written many works far better than mine…. But, by using my own, nobody else has to take the blame for all the stuff surrounding it, which may or may not be of note to the Gentle Reader…. I AM enough of an egotist to keep writing it, though, and putting it here for y’all to either laugh, cry, or otherwise react in some way to let me know I’m a writer of bozoid degree…. I hope you enjoy whichever one I choose for your perusal….

Stray Cats

The veils that billow and fold
between dreams and reality
may sometimes part,
showing the visions of one to the other,
blending, bleeding as one,
only to bring us up short,
closely jammed against immovable fate.

Still, we keep our watch,
seeking to find the vision
that brings with it the mark of reality’s regard,
a humble mind, and a compassionate heart.

Events of broad impact draw us away again,
distracting with shiny glitter and tinny music,
leaving our feelings raw and bruised,
the victim of universal disregard.

Now, in the twilight of years, the music is fading,
and the glitter has all gone….
yet the memory of visions remains sharp and clear,
melancholy reminders of reality’s promises,
unkept…..

~~gigoid~~

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

I see from the above, I got a little carried away…. To save myself from any further potential claims of abuse by overuse, I’ll throw together an old-school pearl, with simple parameters to find good advice…. Enjoy, ffolkes, it’ll be quick and easy…. Well, compared to the rest, anyway….

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” — Aristotle

“To tell a falsehood is like the cut of a saber; for though the wound may heal, the scar of it will remain.” — Saadi (1184-1291)

“To know much is often the cause of doubting more.” — Michael de Montaigne

“How did the great rivers and seas gain dominion over the hundred lesser streams? By being lower than they.” — Lao Tzu

“Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.” — Seneca, 65 AD

“In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“How pleasant then to be insane.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I should know better than to say anything would be quick and easy….. Not that you care, but, finding that last pearl was an incredible ordeal, as Smart Bee went into “let’s fuck with gigoid” mode, and started throwing up all sorts of really stupid, asinine quotes for me to wade through…. I finally found that last one by F. Scott, and said, “YES!”…. I cut, copied, pasted, and am outta here, having done all the damage possible for one morning….. See y’all tomorrow, if I recover in time…..

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

Revolutionary changes are imperative, it seems….

Posted on May 29, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

I don’t know about y’all, but, I’m starting to bore myself, a bit…. It’s hard to do, as we all tend to NOT get bored according to our own choices, but, I’ve gone beyond the normal, past the strange, into the overbearing…. and, apparently, my readership has noticed, as well. Site traffic at ECR has fallen off again, and this time, I think I know why…. I’m probably making myself crazy even paying attention to the site stats, but, in all honesty, my ranting has gotten old, to me, and, no doubt, to those familiar with my writing….

I write a lot, I know, so I always take that into account; a lot of people don’t read fast, and can be intimidated, I’m sure, by the sheer amount of what I’ve created each day…. I average about 2200-2500 words a day, and I know it can be a lot to take in, since not all of it is what can be called easily digested (I hope…). I had hoped that the content, and the relative importance of that content to each and every person alive, would draw folks, and ffolkes, in to read, but, I suppose, after a while, even the most compelling stuff gets old….

That, I think, is where I’m at…. at least, to some degree, enough so to affect my readership, and enough so I am no longer sure it’s what I should be doing here…. Of course, since this is a relatively new idea around here, I also have nothing in the way of replacement material, should I decide to forgo all ranting, or at minimum, avoid such depressing subject matter for a time, to give it a rest, so to speak….

It’s hard to decide, when it’s all so new to me…. Like many ffolkes my age, I am not dealing as well with CHANGE as I formerly did; it tends to make me grumpy….. Or, maybe it’s that I no longer want to put up with changes that I didn’t personally authorize or initiate…. It plays into it, I’m sure… I AM human, after all, so my own likes, dislikes, and preferences are going to play into whatever I decide to do…. Hell, being human, those are the PRIMARY reasons for almost ALL that I do…. as it is for all of us bald monkeys….

I know what I WANT to do…. which is probably a good thing. What I’d like to do is to alter the format some, to include images, and possibly videos; either one of those would enhance the experience here at ECR quite a bit, as well as make it more palatable for those readers who don’t read as fast, depending (as most modern folks do….) on shorter, more intense bursts of less information, more colorfully arranged….

In essence, what I’m saying here is this: I think I need to put my message into a format that is more acceptable for consumption by today’s readers…. The old fashioned, reasoned, logical, even philosophical approach to passing information is just that…. old fashioned…. Modern readers like their information in smaller bytes, so to speak, with more pictures and less text to read….

I suppose what I need to acknowledge is that the modern politicians, with their Twitter feeds, and Facebook presence, are getting the message out better than I can do with my ranting, because they are framing their words in pictures, (InstaGram, or Pinterest work for them….), or creating modern memes that draw attention for a short time, but manage to pass on the necessary information…..

Information is becoming three dimensional; soon our phone calls will include holographic images of the person to whom you are talking, just as if you were in the same room. Anyone who wishes to pass information to the public is going to need to learn how to frame their message in ways that will draw attention, and hold it long enough to inject the information into the person being addressed…. My method of ranting will have audiences limited to those who prefer the old fashioned ways, or who like their information in bigger bytes…. er, bites….

Any who, I will be thinking about this…. I will also be going out into the world, with my camera, to start recording pieces of Consensual Reality to use here, to frame the message I need to put out to people, using fewer words, and more pictures…. I want to use my own pix, for two reasons…

One, I LIKE to take pictures… and two, if I use my own pix, I don’t need to worry about attribution, which will make it much easier…. It can sometimes be hard to remember who is responsible for a picture I’ve found, and saved, as the attribution isn’t always present; I’ll stick to my own, mostly, and avoid the worst of that issue….

For today, let’s see what kind of trouble I can create, by keeping in mind the need for more art, and fewer words…. though, if this intro is any indication, it’s going to be tough as hell to stop writing so much…. I just got good at this rambling, blathering style, and can go on like this almost forever… which, as I say, wouldn’t be good for the blog…. So, instead, we’ll employ emergency method #4 again…. Hang on tight for a moment….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.” — Epictetus (c. 60 AD) — Discourses, Book i, Chap. xii

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

“The Constitution of the United States guarantees every individual the right to make a damn fool of himself — in public or private, however he chooses.” — Solomon Short

This pearl will be the first of its kind…. Below you will see pictures ( provided I have done this correctly….), all taken with my own camera, during various trips to here and there…. After each there will be a (hopefully) short comment on some facet of life suggested by the photo…. That will, in turn, be followed by a pearl, that will hopefully speak to the picture and comment…. In short, these will be Visual Pearls of Virtual Wisdom, designed to expand, and augment the process of Pearling to a point where it’s more fun than the previous versions….

That’s the plan, anyway…. Let’s see how it comes out, shall we?….
First, imagine yourself standing on one of the ice floes you see in the foreground…., or, better yet, you’re swimming in that frigid water…. Feel the cold that surrounds you, making your breath almost freeze as it leaves your body, forming a thick cloud of icy vapor in front of you with each tortured breath….. Now, imagine standing on the glacier you see further down the stream, literally freezing your butt off….. Now, once you’ve come to understand the true nature of cold, you will realize why I call this picture, “The Corporate Heart”…..

“He knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.” — Old Testament — Proverbs ix, 18
This one needs no introduction; it’s self-explanatory…. Suffice it to say, my father taught me ALL of these, and I still try to live my life by these rules…. If the rest of the men in the world would use only HALF of these, that world would be an entirely different kind of place, one with some degree of rationality, and consequently, some degree of peace…. If you don’t think so, just try using these rules as a standard by which to judge those you see in a political office, and see how many of them they break, on a regular, daily basis…. it will shock many people….

“I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.” — G.K. Chesterton
Irish morning? Or, Scottish evening? It could be either one, and is a good illustration of how perception can be uncertain, if one doesn’t know all the pertinent information regarding those perceptions…. But, we get a new one, every day, to keep on trying to get it right…..

“If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.” — Horace
Time passes, and none may stop its progress…. and, Life treats us all the same…. badly. It is how we react to that abuse that determines the course of our lives, so, learn to enjoy what you see, and be honest and true in what you do…. I guarantee, it makes it all better than if you don’t do either of those simple tasks….

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.” — the 14th Dalai Lama, interview in “TIME”, 11 April 1988
I’ve spoken previously of my feelings about Duty…. This picture, to me, defines that concept…. and I’m not really sure why…. I guess it’s because he is out there, all alone, dressed up in a silly costume, playing the pipes, which will only increase his solitude…. yet, he plays on, to complete the duty he has chosen to assume…. That’s the way it works, ffolkes, and any other way of looking at it is incorrect….. Dig it….

“Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.” — Lazarus Long

Well, there you have it, ffolkes, the first of its kind….. I hope you enjoyed it…. I certainly enjoyed putting it together, and I don’t feel all ragged out from ranting, so, that’s good, too…. See you down the page….

“We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.” — Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592)

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

I need some Emily….

I had no time to hate, because

I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

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

Since I created a new-style pearl above, and to avoid a rant here, I’ll go with the archived pearl I had already picked out for this morning’s effort…. Enjoy….

From 1/14/2014:

The following old-school variety will be a unique pearl, put together using a method of timing and selection heretofore untried…. I’m not even sure of my ability to describe exactly what parameters I’ll be setting, as the search for these connected aphorisms has taken place on three separate occasions, none of which were related in any elemental way…. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I have no idea how this will turn out, but, usually, when we try new techniques like this, it seems to work out pretty well, so, I’m confident this will do the same…. Enjoy!..

“The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.” — Roman Congregation decision against Galileo

“To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover.”– Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

“Kids, the seven basic food groups are GUM, PUFF PASTRY, PIZZA, PESTICIDES, ANTIBIOTICS, NUTRA-SWEET and MILK DUDS!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Okay! That, I think, will give you a clearer idea of where we are headed with this, so, make sure you’re safety harnesses are fully fastened, and you are hanging on for dear life to the soft, fluffy stuffed animals provided by your friendly flight attendants…. Hang on, ffolkes, these last four could get rambunctious….

“All riches come from iniquity, and unless one has lost, another cannot gain. Hence that common opinion seems to be very true, “the rich man is unjust, or the heir to an unjust one.” Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, than by his predecessor.” — St. Jerome (340?-420)

“Heroes as great have died, and yet shall fall.” — Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — The Iliad of Homer, Book xv, Line 157

“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games which it is most attached is called, “Keep tomorrow dark,” and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) “Cheat the Prophet.” The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.” — Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

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

I rest my case…..

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

Considering the relative newness of today’s process, it didn’t go too badly…. Now I get to see how it posts…. and, I’d best get to it…. See you, tomorrow, ffolkes, if I last that long…..

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

No, no! File the DRY ones first!….

Posted on February 4, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

My brain informs me that today we will be taking the day off, at least from any sort of the customarily productive, intellectually stimulating activity that generally occurs here…. This isn’t to say that our usual acts of random idiocy are anything that should, or, for that matter, shouldn’t, be encouraged, or that I believe any of the claptrap that ends up on the screen…. Oh no, far from it…. It merely means that I’m lazy again, and trying desperately to figure out a way to get this done without actually doing any real thinking, an endeavor which, at the moment, hurts considerably….

Hopefully, in my casting about for a suitable opening, I haven’t sprayed any of the dross on your clothing, or offended you in any way; it’s way too early to deal with a lawyer, or hard feelings. Mornings such as these are a trial to me, methinks, mostly because of my sense of honor, and its true companion, integrity, instilled in me by the man who raised me, and not something that I have any choice about…. This honor of which I speak is of the ilk that has always forced me into acting in ways that puzzles many of my contemporaries, as I do things that the general run of folks don’t bother to do….

Like giving an hour’s work for an hour’s pay…. Like paying one’s bills as soon as possible. Like telling the truth, even when it hurts me, or someone else. Like opening a door, or standing when a lady enters a room. Like taking off one’s hat when going indoors. Like showing respect for those older than me. Like doing all those things that lead one to self-respect; in essence, these acts are those that make one able to look in the mirror in the morning, and meet their own eyes….

Much of our society ignores these simple rules, a truism that has, to my way of thinking, led to many of the serious, life-threatening issues we face in the world today…. To be honorable, one must act in such a way that one’s own self-interests are secondary to whatever is needed to make others comfortable, or safe. Robert Heinlein’s definition of love includes this concept, when it says, “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” When one is capable of extending that love, and/or the actions that go along with it, to the entire world, one may call themselves a gentleman….

It’s really not that hard to do, once one embraces honor and truth as their guidelines for life, making the firm determination to live as a gentleman….. a statement which inspires me, at this point, to include some Art…. I seldom do this sort of thing in the intro, but, today, it seems like the correct thing to do… So, with no further bilge from me, here are the Rules of A Gentleman…. To me, THIS is the blueprint for a life, well lived….

On that note…. Shall we Pearl?…..
_____________________________

I’ve been lazy lately, as you know, and haven’t written a fresh religirant, or politirant, in days…. I’m also not going to burden y’all today with another long, rambling diatribe against the Asininnies, of all varieties, because, quite frankly, I’m a little burned out, and need to let my brain percolate without having to produce for a time…. As that is the case, we’ll be going old school today, with a few pearls I found over the last few days, all of which take a few nice, healthy swings at the priestly hierarchies, as well as at the numb knees who buy into their delusions…. Enjoy!….

“A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.” — Matz’s Maxim

“A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain, then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?” — Robert A. Heinlein

In English, “I beseech you, my brothers, _remain faithful to the earth_ and believe not those who speak of supernatural hopes. Poisonmongers are they, whether they know it or not. — Nietzsche, “Also Sprach Zarathustra”

“Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around the sun. At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact. That all present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology. Biologists differ only with respect to theories about how the process operates.” — Martin Gardner, “Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life”, — The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131

“He who speaks the truth must have one foot in the stirrup.” — Armenian proverb

“Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth.” — Socrates (470?-399 B.C.)

“Don’t you think you’re a little over reacting?” — Adam to God
_____________________________

On March 18 of last year, I wrote a long, harsh religirant, with the main target being Mother Theresa, one of the most egregiously sanctimonious assholes of all time, in my opinion…. I’m not in a space right now to show that rant again just now, (though you could find it in the archives with that date in 2013), but, the poem I wrote after being stimulated by the rant isn’t bad at all, so here ’tis, such as it is….

Rejection

“Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so…”
I’d be crying a river, I thought
if ever such crap I bought.

Sorry if it hurts your sense of style,
but, hypocrisy always gives me bile.
Being lied to accidentally is okay,
deliberate lies make me angry, and quite fey.

Oh, God, hear what I pray!
Keep me from your followers today.
Having to listen to so much that is wrong
makes me puke, before it makes me strong.

I don’t know why it isn’t clear to other folks,
which is alright, you know, different strokes.
But, why should that mean that they must
force me to believe, or fail in trust?

Spare me the lies, and the make-believe,
fairy tales are easier to hear, and to weave.
They give us a lesson which we can feel
but don’t pretend at all to be real.

Reality can scare us, that’s a given fact,
still, met with care it will leave us mostly intact.
Met without fear, standing tall and alone
Life will allow us to make it our own.

Folly beckons, and so many follow
mass delusions seem to me most hollow.
I’ll have to stick to my own chosen way
while so many go so sadly astray.

It’s lonely at times, it may seem sad,
but really isn’t, and I’m quite glad,
that knowledge is always stronger than fear,
year after year, tear after tear…..

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

In keeping with today’s policy of anti-freshness, I offer the following link to an article in the Telegraph, a newspaper from the UK, now publishing online…. This was a photo gallery, with pictures of each of the comedians listed…. I thought it would be a nice little break in routine for around here, to send y’all off to somewhere to find a few smiles…. I’ve included some of my favorite lines below the link, to give an idea of what you’ll find there…. Enjoy, ffolkes, it doesn’t happen often around here….

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9594011/30-great-one-liners.html

Groucho Marx (1890-1977): ‘I never forget a face, but in your case I’d be glad to make an exception.’

W.C Fields (1880-1946):’Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.’

Billy Connolly (24 November 1942-): ‘My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.’

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967): ‘If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.’

Mae West (1893-1980): ‘I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.’

Jay Leno (April 28, 1950-): ‘Politics is just show business for ugly people.’

Ambrose Bierce, author of The Devil’s Dictionary (1842-1913): ‘War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.’
_____________________________

It’s actually a good thing I didn’t try to write anything original today…. The process of trying to put this whole Pearl together has proved THAT to me indisputably…. I won’t complain, though, because, hey, we’re done, right? Right… See you tomorrow, I hope…. if things improve, there’s a solid chance of it….

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

Fat chances at skinny odds….

Posted on January 2, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Since the White Rabbit’s progenitor seems to have dictated how this morning’s events should transpire, I’m going to do what I do best when a crisis hits…. take a break…. In case it isn’t clear, that’s a joke, ffolkes…. My first reaction at the initial signs of trouble is NOT to cut and run, unfortunately. My life would have been a LOT different if that were the case, and that is for sure and for certain….. The more than 750 times I got into a major altercation with some insane, violent mental patient might never have had the effect on me that it did, had I not been the kind of person who did NOT run away when confronted with danger…..

Today, however, I’m going with the flow, such as it is, and taking a break, first off…. not to relieve tension, or difficulty, but to gather resources, to find the center, if it is anywhere to be found…. I’ll be back shortly, when I’ve made an honest effort to get it together…. Maybe then, I could come up with something original, and fun to read, rather than this personal chatty shit that seems to have me under its spell of late…. Any who, I’ll be back…. and you won’t even notice I’m gone….

Whereas I, intimately connected to all I do, naturally, noticed the exact moment I returned, which is not this one, or this one…. It is, however, this one, so, let’s get back to the reality for which we so diligently yearn…. You’ll be pleased to know, I’m sure, I DID find the center, and, yea, verily, I speak to you now from the serenity of its confines…. Well, I’m near there, anyway; I can see it, and it’s beautiful, too…. But, I’m okay over here, sort of off center, but, near enough to feel the balance it provides by its mere existence…. Yah, sure, he said, remembering at last it was time to take those pesky medications they make me take to keep me quiet and happy…. Mmmm, yum!

So, I was taking a break outside, as I normally do about this time, and it was very strange…. NOTHING happened. The usual traffic, of course, and joggers with dogs, and brisk morning breezes to keep me on my toes….. Otherwise, nada, zip, zilch…. It made it quite nice, in truth, as it gave me some good cogitation time, which I spent judiciously on a number of subjects close to my heart and mind (what else would I think about?….). One of the ideas that struck me, (this one was quite bloody for a moment, opening up that vessel over the eye that bleeds like a stuck pig at the slightest blow….), in fact, should be good for a pearl or two, which means I can afford the replacement blood….

Still, I think that this morning’s attempt at introducing today’s pearls is sufficiently strange to serve the intended purpose, which, sad to say, I am not at liberty to divulge at this time. Doing so would involve too many alterations to reality as it already has been configured for the day; such alterations have a high risk of disturbing the balance of the entire space-time continuum in ways completely new and unknown… That risk is just too high to allow such knowledge, so, you’ll just have to wait until the end, when the purpose becomes not just apparent, but justifiably protected….

Hey, that argument seems to be good enough for the White House, so, as a citizen, it’s good enough for me…. Shall we Pearl?…..

“Support your local church or synagogue. Worship at Bank of America.” — Smart Bee
_____________________________

Above, in the intro section, I referred to an idea that occurred to me while I sat in the morning air, engaging in my favorite pastime, random thinking about Stuff…. This idea is a delicate one, and needs to be explored a bit more deeply on my part before I bring it out into the light of day…. I’ll just say this: it has to do with the Internet, the Asininnies, and You/Me(Us)…. and it’s a bit disturbing….. In case you don’t recall, Asininnies are those humans on planet Earth who live by the code of Me First, regardless of what other people or animals may have to say about it…

They are the Beloved Ruling Class, those professional politicians (parasites) who claim to lead, but more accurately, crave power; the Shadowy Corporate Masters, those bankers and old money warmongers who buy and sell the world at their whim, including the loyalty of the BRC, and those others who are also Asinine by nature…. There are more… The entitled Police and Military Goons, The Athlete Rock Stupid Role Models, The Media Cowards, who unconsciously help the Asininnies accomplish their manipulations by parroting their lies without complaint, or exposure….

Most heinously, which adjective I use deliberately, these Asininnies are all supported by the efforts of the last group in the category…. the Priestly Hierarchies, those deliberately delusional fanatics who live by faith rather than reason (though they would claim the opposite….) By encouraging their constituencies to follow their lead, and accept all that the worldly authorities tell them to do in their lives, they teach the people how to obey, both by example, and by designed application of guilt over original sin….

What a scam! Convince people they are bad because of what some original member of the tribe did, which may or may not have happened in truth, then, use the ensuing manufactured sense of guilt to cause behavioral changes at direction…. Willing mental slaves, all for the price of a good story line…. gotta love those early Christians and Muslims, eh? They knew human nature, with its susceptibility to the lie, and its gullibility to the apparent truth….. What ticks me off is that it continues unabated after thousands of years…. It goes a long way toward proving Robert Heinlein’s statement on the subject, by his character Lazarus Long, to wit: “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

That, then, is the current scenario we have in the world today, as I pointed out above…. Internet, Asininnies, and Us…. In the near future, I’ll expand on the idea that occurred to me, but, I’ve taken enough time and energy this morning to make sure all the players are known, and clearly…. I don’t want any confusion about any of that after I begin my rant, whenever that may be…..

For now, I’ll just put together a short five-star pearl, which, hopefully, will give y’all a preview of the rant that is to be…. Let’s see what SB can do about that…..

“I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge of the man.” — Seneca (8 BC) — On a Happy Life, 2, (L’Estrange’s Abstract, Chap, i.)

“Now that the government is going to balance the budget, it is up to the rest of us to budget the balance. Some folks think we are getting too much government these days. They should be very happy that we are not getting all of the stuff we are paying for.” — Smart Bee

“The devil knew not what he did when he made man politic.” — William Shakespeare

“We are locked into a system of “fouling our own nest,” so long as we behave as independent, rational free-enterprisers.” — Garrett Hardin

“Know yourself. Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.” — Ann Landers

Perfect…. Good enough to go on, for sure…..
_____________________________

I’ve seen this poet’s name and work all my life, but never took the time to explore it…. Now, I will….

On what is best

Some celebrate the beauty
of knights, or infantry,
or billowing flotillas
at battle on the sea.
Warfare has its glory,
but I place far above
these military splendors
the one thing that you love.

For proof of this contention
examine history:
we all remember Helen,
who left her family,
her child, and royal husband,
to take a stranger’s hand:
her beauty had no equal,
but bowed to love’s command.

As love then is the power
that none can disobey,
so too my thoughts must follow
my darling far away:
the sparkle of her laughter
would give me greater joy
than all the bronze-clad heroes

~~ Sappho ~~

_____________________________

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you just might miss it.” — Matthew Broderick — in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, screenplay by John Hughes

The movie, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, is a cult classic with good reason, & not just for this little gem…. Too much to go into now, just suffice it to say that it’s worth a look, and worth thinking about a lot of what is portrayed in there about society, and human interaction…. Any who, I’m tired, still recovering from my illness, and find myself willing and ready to cheat already this year…. But, with good reason…. While looking for material, this relatively short piece from the Pearl posted on New Year’s Day of last year jumped up, & demanded to be included in a Pearl of more recent vintage…. If not today, then soon…. I decided to just go ahead and let it have its way, as it is well worth another read…. Enjoy, if you dare….. 😉
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the Pearl posted 1/1/13:

“Life isn’t weird; it’s the people in it.” — Smart Bee

This is one of the reasons I love Smart Bee, for its cheery reminders to look at reality from different perspectives; it always helps me to gain a wider understanding. It is also fitting to begin the New Year with one of its little gems, especially when it fits into my own world view so seamlessly. Weirdness, to my mind, is what gives people their snap (or, in at least one case, their Snaap!). Those who fight against weirdness, who try to conform as much as possible to what society wants of them, are dull, listless, and have leeched all the color from their existence, choosing to live in reality’s version of limbo, a world painted all in grey, quiet, and depressing. It is those ffolkes who embrace the strangeness in life who have found the secret of filling life with color, music, and beauty….

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

SIGH…. I must be getting old…. This year, for the time being, at least, I’m counting my refusal to make any resolutions as living dangerously. Normally, (there’s that word again…. I should stop using it, since it has little relevance around here….), in my checkered past, I’d do something a bit more flamboyantly dangerous, like go out drinking on New Year’s Eve, or maybe go out drinking on New Year’s Day morning. Or, when I was a Dad with teens, I’d try to keep track of my kids on New Year’s Eve…. boy, now that’s dangerous! This year, since nothing of what I intend for my life can happen until my SS disability is awarded, I am on HOLD, unwilling to partake of anything particularly complicated because I am….. and that makes me feel OLD….

“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along and not bothering.” — Winnie the Pooh

Perhaps it is an indicator of some sort, to base much of one’s behavior, or at least intended behavior, on the philosophy of a teddy bear, but this little idea from Pooh, in his Uncarved Block mode, is probably one of the most valuable pieces of advice one can take, even if not used consistently. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t mind if people consider me weird for feeling or thinking that way; in fact, it is rather a compliment, to my way of looking at things. But, then, having been raised in a family where ‘weird’ was encouraged, I suppose that isn’t a surprise…..

“Life treats all of us like dirt; it is how we react to being dirt that determines our own worth.” — gigoid

I imagine, nay, I’m pretty certain, this thought is not original; only the words I’ve used to express it in this form are mine. It is, however, perhaps the most important lesson that I have learned in my life, and I do not say that lightly. The four pearls in this pearl (don’t fret, just flow…), if put together as an old school pearl, would say the same thing they are saying with my comments, which is to say, a very important idea for anyone who wishes to live life well, with dignity and honor.

Sure, we are all going to have moments of pain, moments of joy, and more than plenty of moments of nothing much going on….. but, how that makes us feel is completely up to us. We can, as the Navajo say, “walk in beauty”, or we can trudge through life with our heads down, plugging on toward the cemetery, oblivious to the beauty by which we are surrounded…. The choice is our own…..

“Truth does not change, although your perception of it may vary or alter drastically.” — John & Lyn St. Clair Thomas, “Eyes of the Beholder”
_____________________________

“Some people are quick to criticize cliches, but what is a cliche? It is a truth that has retained its validity through time. Mankind would lose half its hard-earned wisdom, built up patiently over the ages, if it ever lost its cliches.” — Marvin G. Gregory

Good news for gigoid! Cliches are ‘in’ again! Yay! This brings a whole new level of opportunity to this blog, doesn’t it? Yes, yes it does, he chortled with glee, as I am, if nothing else, very, very familiar with cliches…. In fact, I’ve spoken cliche since my early teens, having been raised on commercials during the 50’s and 60’s, when cliches were getting created every minute for a new products advertised on TV….. It’s all quite “old hat” for me, don’t y’know?…..

Alright, I’m done now…. Let’s look at today’s mess….. Well, considering the amount of material I’ve written, one can say with fair certainty that “I’ve done worse”…. I can also say I haven’t done a lot better, either, without feeling too bad about it, so, it’s good to go….. See you 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

Surveys are calling for juicier burgers….

Posted on September 29, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

It’s entirely possible that I’m drying up….. I’ve written so much in the last two years, it’s all starting to sound the same; if there is one thing I refuse to consider, it is repeating my self to no purpose. I’ve repeated myself here, of course, many times, as I have continued my campaign to show as many ffolkes as I can just how badly they are being disrespected by the BRC, the PH’s, their CM’s, and the blind, vicious masses of myrmidons who loyally, if immorally, support them all, hoping beyond hope enough people would hear the truths I’m shouting out, and begin to work toward stopping them from killing us all….

In that campaign, and to pursue the stated end,I HAVE repeated my assertions, any number of times, which is why I think I may not have much left. It all is beginning to seem futile, at the least, and completely pointless, at the worst; I cannot see much evidence that all I’ve been saying is getting us very far toward salvation as a society. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not a complete idiot (presumably); I don’t believe that I am the world’s savior, or that I have the only message worth hearing, and I certainly don’t claim to be the world’s most compelling writer, even if I do use a lot of big words…. 7 billion people who have NOT ever read what I write can’t be ALL wrong, can they?….

No, I can’t claim to be the most important, or the best, or even the most committed writer of what could be called “calls to action” (though, perhaps, the most prolific in word-count); a lot of people, who are (maybe) better writers, and who certainly have more readers, also write about this stuff, every day, in a lot of news outlets. There are organizations with web sites who have been formed solely for the purpose of counting all the lies that politicians tell us (fact checkers, they call themselves….), checking the claims made in their speeches against reality, to ascertain the level of truth being told….. At last check, the claims I’ve made, about ALL of them, that they are ALL lying, have been proven, beyond a doubt, to be absolutely correct…..

However, truthful as I may be, I’m getting a bit tired of continually promoting a message that, even though annoyingly and humiliatingly true, as well as bitterly ugly, does not seem to outrage others as much as it does me…. I don’t understand how the press can constantly print the crap they do, allowing the lies that are put out to be distributed beyond all hope of counteraction…. It is as if the entire society has accepted the lies as their only truth; even the media will breathlessly repeat anything said by a major politician, without ever checking the statements for truth, in full awareness that what they are repeating may not be the truth…. They know what they’re doing, but, because it makes a profit, or in some other way meets their need for expediency, they refuse to stop reporting what they KNOW, or, at least, suspect, to be false….

Actually, I don’t know if profit is the ONLY motive of those who report the news…. I do know it is the sole motive of those who own and control the media; their primary concern has always been one of control of information, not the undisciplined spread of it. But, it really doesn’t matter what their motive may be, as the end result is the same; a society controlled by shadowy masters who have no compunction about lying, cheating, or stealing their way into power, then using that power to consolidate their positions, making it damn near impossible to either remove them…. most of the time, they don’t allow the media, or anyone, to even identify them….

Those who have the real power in this world tend to stick to the shadows and back alleys, (which, oddly enough, look strangely like penthouses and country mansions….), never showing their faces to a public that would revolt and tear them limb from limb, had they any clue as to their real part in how reality is ordered….. They don’t like to be photographed, and they never walk in public venues without security at close hand, to protect them from the “mean streets”, filled with the mostly ignorant inhabitants, of the world they have created to suit themselves.

I would imagine that even the most powerful politicians in the world haven’t a clue that they are really puppets, controlled by people who will never give up their clandestine power. If the world’s political leaders were ever made aware of the degree to which they are no more than marionettes for their invisible masters, just like the unwashed masses they lord it over, it could conceivably cause problems for those who have the real power, which they aren’t going to allow…. The real rulers of this planet have had many thousands of years of practice at directing human culture into the channels they desire, wherein the great mass of humanity believes their leaders are good people, trying to make their lives better, when in reality, we are all headed straight to a Dante-esque version of Hell, of our own making….

On that positive note, I think I should go on to the rest of today’s outburst, before I rant myself into a coma…. As pleasant as that prospect may sound to some, I’ll pass, thank you….. Shall we Pearl?…..

“Sex! Lies! Drugs! Money! Power! Corruption! Man, I love Congress!” — Smart Bee
_____________________________

I’ve waited a long time, and spent a lot of time very diligently searching the Net for an article such as this one…. It is a very even-handed, and more importantly, realistic take on all the stuff that the politicians use to whip the public into a frenzy of fear, whenever there is a new mass shooting, or another terrorist attack somewhere. Such reports of terrorist activity doesn’t even have to be happening here, in this country, for some of the media pundits and politicians to use it as a method of creating panic and outrage in the public arena.

The author acknowledges a little known, and certainly under-appreciated fact, which can be stated thus: when the number of shootings are actually COUNTED, there are actually no more of them happening now than at any other time since statistics on the matter have been collected. In fact, several earlier periods of our history, especially in the last century, experienced significantly more terrorist bombings, and more mass shootings, than have occurred in the first 13 years of this century. These are numerical FACTS, ffolkes, not speculation, or guesses…. The pundits WANT the people in fear, so they promote that agenda, with no shame at all…

Because the political pundits would rather keep the public in a state of suppressed panic than tell them the truth, they flood the media with emotional diatribes against unseen, sometimes even non-existent dangers, in order to manipulate the great unwashed masses into accepting new limits on their freedom, in the form of “temporary” laws they tell us are only there to protect us, but, in reality, will be used to spy on their own people, operate clandestine prisons and courts with no oversight, and arrest even law-abiding citizens who fit their profiles of a possible terrorist….

Did you know that the right to publicly assemble to address the government with grievances has been done away with?…. Yep, look it up, ffolkes, the Patriot Act makes it a crime to gather a certain number of people without a permit…. which they are NOT giving out…. They — “They” being police authorities and/or military troops, or even agents of government bureaus, such as Homeland Security, the FBI, or the NSA, or ‘special agents’ of some other acronym we haven’t even been made aware of, acting blindly, but with full cooperation and agreement, under the orders of politicians — they no longer need to give it out, anyway, as it is now legal for them to arrest anyone at such an event, under suspicion of terrorist actions, and they don’t have to explain it to ANYONE!…. Truth, y’all…. Capisce?

Read the article ffolkes, it’s an eye-opener, and gives a good take on a subject most are afraid to even discuss….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Terror-mass-shootings-don-t-mean-more-danger-4852423.php

“Although a wise man might urge that one should suffer fools gladly, this should not be construed as license for any fool to demand that one do so.” — Frederic William Kantor
_____________________________

Today’s Pearl has, so far, come from within the confines of my own mind, such as it is, and, as far as it goes, so, for the poetry selection, we’ll go with one of mine, as well, to maintain balance, and to ensure that no one else can be blamed for any of what has transpired here today….

Unheralded Sagacity…

To many, who will not see beyond their nose
the world becomes a dangerous place,
a bullet in every gun, a thorn with every rose,
no magic comes to save us, reality leaves no trace.

Minds closed, wrapped tight in manufactured fears,
men become clay, easily molded into complacent form.
No chains needed, held in thrall for years,
lies become gospel, when dishonesty is the norm.

Shed the chains you wear in durance, in kind;
Oh, ye of little faith, and much doubt
Strength is found in an unfettered mind,
Cry “freedom” with a great shout.

No help from any gods can hinder so much
as our own lack of confidence;
finding the light within, knowing it as such
confirms us, becoming consequence.

Illumination…..

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

Thus far today, I’ve ranted, twice, if one cares to be technical, and used one of my own poems as ballast; that order of events dictates that this section will be an old-school pearl, and who am I to fuck with tradition, eh?….. I have no idea what direction it will take, but, I’m hoping for a good grouping, to finish off what feels like a good effort…. Let’s see what we can persuade Smart Bee to let loose….

— Bother! said Pooh, as the Borg assimilated him.

“There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a person’s taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse. It is easy for any one to imagine an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned. But where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal experience? In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling differently from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine-tenths of all moralists and speculative writers.” — John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_, Chapter IV

“A time to mourn, and a time to dance.” — Ecclesiastes 3:4

“Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically–for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist–but then what isn’t?” — Quentin Crisp, 1984

“I’m going to live forever, or die trying!” — Spider Robinson

“All generalizations are dangerous, perhaps even this one. There are exceptions to the rule, but this does not appear to be one of them.” — Smart Bee

— You may be redneck… If the Borg refuse to assimilate you.

Okay, well, hmm….. I am speechless…. moreover, I’m in awe, of SB’s sheer genius at what Dorothy L. Sayers called piffle, what the world-at-large calls insane nonsense, and what I call damn fine irony…. I hope you enjoy this one…. I did…..
_____________________________

“Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?” — Friedrich Nietzsche

Yes! Yes! Now, THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!!! Of course, once I read it through from start to finish, it could fall apart, but, for now, it feels like a good one…. Let’s go see….

For once, I was right, even though I’m a man, and I’m standing in a forest, by myself, talking…. I have it on good authority that in such cases, I am always wrong… Nonetheless, this is a good one, and I’m not going to listen to anything to the contrary… Well, wrong, I’ll listen, but, I won’t agree…. Not only that, but, it’s done! 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

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: Friedrich Nietzsche

Stealing a reflective moment….

No glue, Ignatius, but, lots of duct tape…

All the king’s horses…. are fat….

Fear is both tool, and weapon; use them, or be used by them….

It’s just like a dead parrot….

A plethora of positive paradigms….

Revolutionary changes are imperative, it seems….

No, no! File the DRY ones first!….

Fat chances at skinny odds….

Surveys are calling for juicier burgers….

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