That ghost just flattered Nadine!….

Posted on December 29, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

As the end of another year passes in this weird society of ours, we are all encouraged to become nostalgic, looking back over the past year, assessing, weighing, seeking meaning in what has transpired in our lives. All sorts of year-end retrospectives begin to appear, and the lists come out to play…. Yes, the year end-lists….

The Year’s Best Photos, The Year’s Best Music, The Year’s Best Movies, The Damn Year’s Bloody Best This, That, and/or the Frigging Other, all begin to shout from the covers of magazines, grab us from the internet pages we visit, blare out over the radio, or inundate us with visuals in the latest videos, all for the BEST of whatever is currently in vogue on the editor’s tiny mind….

I’m not sure how this little tradition became so ubiquitous; we used to see it just a bit, in the newspapers, when I was a kid, and maybe a little bit on the radio…. When TV started to become the media of choice for most households, in the late 50’s & early 60’s, the news departments of the TV stations were tasked with coming up with new lists every year, and the race to find the most egregiously stupid list possible was on!….. Ever since then, we are bombarded each December with whatever ideas for new lists that the idiots in those departments can come up with, trying to get the lion’s share of the viewers to tune in to them, rather than to the competitors….

Actually, what I mentioned above, that I don’t know how this started, is an inadvertent falsehood; I DO know why we get deluged with all of these asinine judgments of EVERYTHING they can think of to list….. It occurs to me that I’ve really ALWAYS known what’s behind the whole scenario…. In fact, it’s really quite obvious why we are subjected to all of this hoopla during this last week of the year…..

Christmas, the biggest shopping spree of the year, is officially over, and the shadowy corporate masters of society, fresh from their latest gorging on the public’s outpouring of cash, but, still greedy, want the REST of the money y’all have squirreled away, so they can squeeze out every little iota of profit from 2013, in preparation for the new assaults on your pocketbook in 2014…. They like to make sure they get it all, and balance their books before starting on the new set….

Yep, ffolkes, it’s all just another mind game, a scam, brought to you, whether you wish it or not, by those avaricious capitalists who use their shadowy influence to direct the wishes and desires of the great unwashed masses, who never even stop to think about whether or not any of what they are seeing or doing has any real benefits for them….

These well-trained consumers are blind to how they are manipulated into spending money they don’t really have, to keep up with the competition with their neighbors and peers, to acquire useless, expensive toys that have no real purpose in their lives….. Magic shoes, electronic wonders, terminally cute icons, sexy cars, all are presented in such ways as to make their acquisition seem to be a necessity, removing it from the realm of luxury into need….

I mean, really, ffolkes, do we NEED to have the year’s hottest selling doll for our own child, just because they are manipulated into wanting it? Is that the correct way to teach our children about giving? About love, or about life? I don’t think so, myself, but, then, I’m strange, as we know…. I never felt the crushing need to have a new car every year that seems to be the ultimate desire of a great many Americans….

Nor do I feel the pressing need to buy gifts for people once a year, when I should be interacting with them, showing them love and compassion, throughout the year…. Being compassionate toward my fellow man isn’t something that should be confined to one season, yet that is how we are taught to view the world by those assholes who have their attention focused on our money, and their own rapacious desires for power and control…..

Well, when I began this little bit of discussion, I hadn’t intended to rant; this is, after all, the introduction section…. But, it just sort of grew into what it is according to what it said, and how that made me feel as I wrote…. I got madder and madder as I progressed, until I had to take a short break, to find the center again….

Unfortunately for us all, that center slipped quite a bit off course, by a matter of over 120 degrees, at least, and it has taken me an inordinate amount of time to find my balance again…. Bloody damn assholes…. Every time I start to think about all the SHIT they hand out to the unwitting masses of people out there, I get incensed, and want to go buy a gun….

Ah well, at least this came at an opportune time today…. I can now use this as my rant, as well as a much more than adequate introduction, and go on about the rest of my business as if none of it happened…. Of course, that doesn’t get the BRC & PTB off the hook, necessarily…. I’m sure I can still find a verbal bullet or two in my vest, to reload and take a couple more shots before I’m done today…. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even rant again…. Since I have no written agenda, merely an outline, empty of subjects, I can do what comes naturally…. And, most of the time, I do…. Like now, for instance….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.” — Henry Miller
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One of my blogging friends, Professor Chuq, over on his site, In Saner Thought, informs me he is working on a piece on “The Second American Revolution”, and will inform me when it is done…. I’m looking forward to it, as that concept has been in my own mind frequently of late, a concept that I believe warrants more attention than it is currently receiving from the public.

It is patently true that if we wish for things to change, we must go about creating those changes ourselves. The Powers That Be, the beloved ruling class and their shadowy corporate masters, are not going to allow any changes that don’t include their supremacy, not without a struggle, but, if we wish to survive, as a species, there is no other choice but to make changes in the way things are being done…..

In my opinion, any Second American Revolution will need to be more of a spiritual revolution than a physical one, and, in the case of our species, an evolutionary change as well, for it is human nature which MUST change…. It is clear to almost anyone who has a functioning brain cell, one that isn’t focused on remaining ignorant, that we cannot wait any longer to make the changes that will keep our planet from bursting at the seams with the garbage we have dumped EVERYWHERE, sickening us, and all the other creatures with whom we live, killing many of them, and making irrevocable changes to the delicate planetary balance, a biochemical balance that keeps the whole shebang working as it does….

In short, and as clearly as I can put this, if we don’t get smart, NOW, we are all going to die…. it is that simple. The IMMINENCE of these events is very much more than it can possibly appear to be… If that isn’t clear, let’s just say that we should have made the first steps 40 years ago… and we only have about 10 left until the game gets much more serious, much more quickly….

Damn my pomposity! Ffolkes, if we don’t make these changes, and do it in the next few years, we are all going to die, horribly, painfully, and with no dignity whatsoever….. That famous line about the world ending not with a bang, but with a whimper, will become yet another example of Art imitating Life, or, in this case, Death….

Here I am ranting again, and it’s only six AM in the morning, during the slowest news week of the year….. what a life, eh? Ah well, it could be worse…. I’m not clear as to just HOW it could be worse right now, what with global warming, overpopulation, and imminent extinction for all life as our current set of issues to deal with, but, I’m sure I could think of something that could send some chills down your spine. But, I’m tired of being gloomy and upset, even if my targets deserve all I can throw at them….

Since I’m crapping out on another extended rant, I’ll go old-school, to finish out the thoughts we’re discussing…. I’m looking forward to the Professor’s take on the necessity for changes in this country, and to the dialogue I’m sure it will create…. In the meantime, let’s see what Smart Bee can find for our amusement and/or edification….

“It seems a little silly now, but this country was founded as a protest against taxation.” — Smart Bee

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, –that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

— John Keats (1795-1821) — Ode on a Grecian Urn

“Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.” — Nikita S. Khrushchev (1894-1971)

“All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“Society can only pursue its normal course by means of a certain progression of changes.” — John, Viscount Morley

“Never do a thing concerning the rectitude of which you are in doubt.” — Pliny the Younger (61-105 AD) — Letters, Book i, Letter xviii, 5

Ah…. a good one, as it turns out. Eclectic, obscure, subtly ironic, viciously mendacious, yet never mundane, or despairing… just the way I like them….
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I’m not sure how it worked, but I actually picked this out yesterday to run today, not knowing, at that time, that it would fit in this well…. which, IMLTCHO*, it does…. Enjoy!…..

Seeing is Conducive to Belief

Folly sits so comfortably upon my fevered brow
one would easily believe that I would know how
to look at Life with a jaded, weary eye
seeing enough, and more, to know Why.

Such seems the case, as I will it to be,
an open book of a face, it looks so like me;
what’s known to be so, needs no close attention
familiar sights require no minding, nor mention.

The eye is drawn at once to the stark and new,
and sent back to sleep by successful review.
Once we find evidence we feel we understand,
curiosity languishes, dismissed at command.

Ancient sages knew the insidious value of illusion,
preachers and pundits know the power of confusion.
Each pair of eyes contains its own point of reference,
each mind sets its own standards of preference.

Seeing is believing, for those who live in thrall,
accepting what is perceived is all they ever recall.
Unknown to them, reality follows another set of rules,
Deeper, more dangerous, and no place for fools.

~~ gigoid ~~

*IMLTCHO = In My Less Than Completely Humble Opinion
_____________________________

Okay, that didn’t work…. The first three lines I wrote here were incredibly dumb, and were deleted soon after hitting the screen…. Seriously, I don’t think I could have written anything more mundane or, hell, just say it, plain old bad…. Let’s try this, instead….

I’ve ranted, sort of, and made a pearl of the older variety. I’ve poemed. (That’s a word I just made up, meaning I included a poem, either mine, fresh or old, or someone else’s, ditto…..) I’ve cogitated, I’ve composed, and I’ve drunk some coffee. My feet stink, my back hurts, and I don’t even love Jesus…. No, wait, that’s a Jimmy Buffet song…. I think…. No, that was, “my breath stinks, my feet hurt, and I don’t even love Jesus”…. Maybe…. I forget… Oh well… you get the picture….

Never mind. Any who, to get on with it…. It’s still early, and I’m about done, but, I don’t feel up to anything complicated…. so, I’ll foist off another piece from the archives on y’all, my compassionate, understanding, indulgent, unsuspecting audience, no matter how tiny, or huge…. (In numbers, not size…. I have no idea how big or small any of y’all are, do I? No, of course not….)

What I found for y’all today is a simple piece, and much shorter than usual for me, so there’s a small bonus, eh? You can’t say I don’t consider my readers, can you?…. Well, maybe it’s best if we don’t even THINK about that concept right now, okay?…. Here, this is better, for all of us….

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

From April 2012:

During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai E. Stevenson “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson called back “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”

Obviously, this implies he was part of the minority, along with not enough voters…. Mr. Stevenson was perhaps the last truly rational man to run for the highest office our country offers, hindered only by his commitment to honesty. I’ve seen a number of articles about that campaign, and it’s clear in my mind that his very rationality is what gave the election to the other candidate.

He made every attempt he could to try to engage the minds of Americans, naively, as it turns out. His opponent, Eisenhower, just mostly kept his mouth shut and let his slogans speak for him, such as “I like Ike!”, and other such intellectual standards, that appealed directly to the American public’s misplaced sense of national pride.

After four years of post WWII and the Korean war economic boom(s), it wasn’t hard for the Republicans to rest on their laurels, firmly attached to the coattails of a war hero…. There was, and still is, no place on the political scene in this country for rationality, obviously, as Ike and his ilk won in a landslide…. So much for the opportunity to see what a “thinking man’s president” might be able to accomplish….

The chances of such a man being elected today are even slimmer, considering that, in today’s media-frenzied world, those candidates who can be the most sly, underhanded, and completely dishonest, are those who catch the eye, and the votes, of the great unwashed, uneducated masses who now comprise the voting public….

“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” — Bertrand Russell
_____________________________

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below.

— John Dryden (1631-1700) — All for Love, Prologue

It is apparent to me, and most likely, to the most casual observer, that today, I’ve covered the complete gamut of surface errors to lustrous pearls from far below…. Far be it from me to stand in the way of progress, so, with no further fuss or muss, I’m outta here…. Well, until tomorrow…. 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

A delicate motif, in gold filigree….

Posted on December 28, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit. : “There is no great genius without a tincture of madness.” — Seneca (8 BC) — De Tranquillitate Animi, 17

This is a truism, in my world, which extends itself to include “all the nicest folks I know”; in this way, it lives up to the same piece of wisdom, first told to me by my own father, who told me while I was still quite young, “Son, all the nicest folks I know are just a little bit tetched….” Though he was from Illinois by birth, he said it in a very Georgian, or Texan, accent, with a big smile, and a twinkle in his eyes….. These, of course, were the non-verbal signals to let me know that, though said in the spirit of fun(ny), he was quite serious, and believed it to be an absolute truth…..

I’ve found this to be true in my own life, for certain; just about all of the nicest, most intelligent, most compassionate people I’ve known were all just a little strange…. or, as in my own particular case, pretty damn strange altogether, by intent….. Meeting, and knowing, these people is different than other folks one meets; it reminds me of the difference between some tap waters in various cities…. Some have more flavor than others, such as the water from my old home town, Templeton, which, because of its situation on the Salinas River, had water with a much higher content of minerals and other substances, not to be duplicated in other areas…. It actually tasted great, compared to most of the other towns and cities we traveled to….

People, like water, it seems, need the same addition of various things to make their personalities more flavorful, and a little bit of strange goes a long way, like a good, strong herb does to the right food dish….. Like basil in tomato soup, it can make a big difference in how that person tastes, personality-wise….. We all know a lot of people who tend to try to avoid most of Life, by hiding, or shyness, or fear of interactions, or whatever other reasons they have…. These folks go through life trying to protect themselves from getting too wet, from getting too hot in the sun, and generally missing out on most of what Life has to offer in the way of joy, because they are trying to avoid the pain that comes with it….

As is patently obvious to most observant of ffolkes, avoiding the pain in Life isn’t possible, and trying to do so often will block us from receiving, or perceiving, any of the very real joy that is very often in the same vicinity. In trying to miss the hard parts, these people seem to shut themselves off from finding any of the easy parts…. It often causes them to be bitter, and, in the typical way of the fearful, gun-shy, afraid to come out of their shell of ignorance….. They never seem able to see that by getting past the fear, there is joy to be found….

Ah well, Life is not fair, I suppose, and even as we try to do what we can to make it a more level field of play for all, the universe is going to crap on us whenever it wishes…. It is our place to deal with that, without get all worked up at how discriminatory it seems…. Life craps on us all; only our personal reaction to that FACT is what makes us different….

Having exposed themselves more often to this process, the people I’ve known in Life who handle this the best are those who embrace the hard parts, who make strangeness their friend; moreover, they use it as a tool, to perceive it all without taking it personally, as the universe is completely indifferent to how we feel about whatever happens…..

Now that I’ve expounded mercilessly upon a very odd point, for the entire purpose of justifying my own oddity, we’ll somewhat hastily, if long-windedly acknowledge the point in question, and get on with other business…..

Today’s introduction has been brought to you by the “Animal” (from Sesame Street) Fan Club, by the letter S, and by the number 13….. Portions of this morning’s outburst were created in a studio, and have no connection with reality; the rest of it is fairly normal in intent if not origin…. We hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip into nonsense and back, and urge you to buckle up, and try enjoy the rest of the ride…. One never knows where we’ll end up around here, or what kind of strange turbulence we’ll encounter along the way….. Good thing, too…. I wouldn’t deal with normal very well…..

Shall we Pearl?…..

“If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.” — Mark Twain
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I’m not sure just now whether to spend some energy on a rant, or just go old-school…. I know, I’ll look at the headlines, then make a decision, when I see if there is something in this morning’s news at which to get some outrage going….. Be right back…..

http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Federal-judge-rules-NSA-phone-surveillance-legal-5096126.php

“How come you never see a politician laugh? Because they know what they’re getting away with, and if they started laughing, they’d never stop.” — Smart Bee

Naturally, since this is a left-leaning area of the country, this was buried near the bottom, but, it was there…. I’m a bit disappointed in the reported decision, for the simple reason that it was made, as explained by the judge, according to the idea that expediency is an acceptable reason to abrogate personal liberties, and that his own interpretation of the program and its capabilities, including its intent, is superior to the public’s knowledge, making him entitled to decide for them which of their rights are acceptably abrogated when expediency demands it…. I can only hope the next court to look at the issue finds a bit more intelligence within themselves to avoid basing their rulings on personal beliefs that are based on demonstrably false assumptions….

But, that’s just me…. This one, though egregiously down-played by the media source where I found it, is bound to cause a lot of noise over the next few days, as the country begins to wake up from the holiday brain freeze that seems to invade and disable the minds of the nation this time of year….

Don’t forget, this is the same time of year when our beloved leader, the POTUS, signed the NDAA in 2010, or whenever it was, handily utilizing the absence of Congress to make it an Executive Order, thus bypassing that silly public and congressional approval requirement in the Constitution…. That year, the New Year’s holiday session was over a weekend, so even the TV and news outlets were less active than usual, as they were involved in holiday reporting, while the public could be counted on to remain inebriated and ignorant.for the four day period…. Slick timing, don’t you think?

I’ve noted it in the headlines, and, in the little bit of TV I’ve watched, and on the internet chatter….. The world, at this time of the year, seems to want to NOT think very much…. about anything more important than how much egg nog they have on hand in case the neighbors should drop by, or whether to walk the dog, or take a bath. Which is fine…. I have no objections to anyone taking a day or two off from stuff…. but, weeks? Oh well, I suppose it’s just practicing their skills at turning off their perceptions, to be able to adequately ignore whatever they may need to in the coming year…..

Snideness aside, this doesn’t exactly fill me with sufficient angst or outrage to rant today…. at least, not more than I just did….The mood of the world is contagious, I guess… In fact, I’m feeling so lazy, I’m not even going to give Smart Bee any parameters to follow in the search for this first pearl…. Nope, not me, and don’t you say anything, either…. THAT would really make a mess!….. Oh, don’t fret, I’ve done this before, lots of times; plus, I’m an uncertified professional, so, no worries….

“Indifference is isolation. In difference is texture and wonder.” — Edwin Schlossberg

“There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.’ — Russian proverb

“Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.” — Epicurus

“Where does weight go when you lose it?” — Smart Bee

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” — Baruch’s Observation

“Because you’re not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.” — Madeleine L’Engle

“I’m just here for moral support. Ignore the gun.” — Smart Bee

See? What did I tell you? Not only did no one get hurt, or even splashed, it turned out to be quite an excellent pearl…. go figure…..
_____________________________

As with any of this woman’s poems, no adornment is required…. only your willingness to open yourself to her vision…..

Thereon Rose a Serpent

I dreamt the mists of morning masked the mall
Where silent sentinels stand stolidly.
I wandered lonely in a listless lea,
Where spirits moaned a mantic madrigal.
This scene was like to art by some Chagall
When thereon rose a serpent from the sea,
Who lolled upon that shore complacently,
As there spread ebon darkness over all.

I sought my Sarah in the standing stones
Once raised by people of the Pleistocene.
It’s here a ghostly shaman still intones
Odd chants and runes beyond Death’s thinnest screen.
I know for certain that she is most near,
I wait and hope that she will soon appear.

~~ Sylvia Plath ~~

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As iterated above, I’m not outraged enough at any of the usual subjects, OR suspects, in my pantheon of villains to produce a fresh rant, beyond the mere hints of such furnished in the same ‘above’ as is/was noted at the beginning of this sentence, which, please note, is a veritable gem of punctuational and lexicographical brilliance….

I’m also not going to subject y’all to another random pearl, which not all may appreciate so early in the day…. For some, two can cause over-active imagination to chip in with distracting irony the rest of the day; this has been reported to cause some embarrassing moments in check-out lines full of people with no sense of humor…. Any who, what I’ve dredged up is a fairly small, though patently longer than necessary, discussion of, well, stuff…. I hope you enjoy it, but, if not, remember what it cost in a real sense, not counting your time….

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From December 1, 2012:

“The sage wears clothes of coarse cloth but carries jewels in his bosom; He knows himself but does not display himself; He loves himself but does not hold himself in high esteem. Thus he rejects the latter and takes the former.” — Lao-Tzu

In spite of how it must appear, there is a small degree of organization to this blog’s contents. Most days I try to make sure that the first and third sections, while possibly related, are essentially about different concepts. The second section is, of course, reserved for whatever poetry strikes my fancy that day, whether classic, humorous, or original (Though it does seem that my recent outpouring of original poems has run dry, I don’t think I’m done with that, yet….). It seems to work for me…. well enough, at least, to keep my internal critics quiet most of the time.

Today, it seems that most of what I’m seeing for pearls are related somehow to what I spoke of peripherally in today’s first section, to wit: the importance of integrity in human life. Integrity…. hmm…. not the precise word, or the characteristic I am thinking of, actually; it’s more than merely integrity. I suppose one could say the concept to which I’m referring is too mystical an idea to be presented clearly, and not be too far off the mark….

However, not being one to ignore a challenge to my vocabulary, I’ll take a few unseen moments here and find the correct word to facilitate further discussion, because, hey, if I can’t, no discussion, right? Right…. Be right back…. instantly, by all you will know and see…. Well, the challenge is a strong one, and I think best answered with more than one word to describe what I’m trying to say. Those words are all contained in Axiom #7 of Peruaosophy, to wit: Do your Duty. Honor the Truth. Respect Life. Share your Love.

I know that it is my own philosophy, and some may think that is cheating, but, not so. All that I hold to be true is in that axiom, and it represents the four cornerstones of my personal foundation. I find that when I am able to live up to all of these concepts, when I am able to use their direction in guiding my actions, my life is much smoother, and my moments of joy are plentiful, to balance the pain that life brings all of us in turn. This, to me, is the best way to advance the human condition, little by little, with the efforts of each man and woman adding its weight to the forward momentum.

Yes, the actions and discoveries that the best of history’s minds bring to us are wonderful, and work to make the lives of every human better…. It is the everyday efforts of each man, though, that takes that wisdom and turns it into reality, by using ideas, and integrity, to add their experience to that of the rest of society. Since there is a large number of folks who do NOT subscribe to this kind of ethical behavior, choosing to make their own self-interest their primary concern, it is the duty of those who do believe in these ideas to carry them out as best they may, so that the world can retain some semblance of harmony. It doesn’t always work, and, in fact, is in constant jeopardy of not working at all, but, it is the only way that will make the changes our society needs to survive…. which is another discussion for another time….

“And now there is merely silence, silence, silence, saying all we did not know.” — William Rose Benet
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It’s been an interesting morning, to say the least…. Without going into details at this late stage, let me just say the last two and a half hours are some I wouldn’t trade for anything at all…. It’s been a peaceful, productive period of time, and those are precious moments indeed, in a reality that often takes us in directions not of our choosing, without notice or concern…. As such, they should be cherished…. From what I can see, this is done; I don’t think I can do any further damage, nor would I wish to, given my already heavy karmic burden….. 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

Don’t pry, MacDuff, it’s clan business….

Posted on December 27, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

“If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us.” — Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.” — Albert Einstein (1879-1955), when asked what his Theory of Relativity was– by William Randolph Hearst’s mistress — during a visit to Xanadu, the Hearst mansion

When my mind is this achingly empty, it hurts….. a lot. On such mornings, it becomes imperative to supply it with something that will ease the pain, while simultaneously filling some of the sheer emptiness that echoes for what seems to be forever….. Fortunately, one of my first steps in the morning routine is to turn on the computer, which is trained to open up the database of quotes I use frequently, Smart Bee….. It can then randomly supply me with such gems as the two above, which have served me well this morning, easing my mental hunger…. for it was shockingly empty, and the pain was fierce….

I like the above pearls, and not just because they saved the morning for me…. I’ve been looking back at the history of the US in the last century for some time now, trying to figure out just when it started to go bad for us…. Mostly, I’ve found that the roots of the problems we are facing go back quite a bit further than the twentieth century, although much of the worst that has come to light seems to have taken place since the beginning of that last hundred years; this, though, is merely a matter of observing the effects, over time, of the policies that are causing the issues to manifest….

In short, the bad habits we have displayed as a species, which have been running without much interference for a couple of thousand years, thus shaping the mental attitudes of almost all those living in our culture, (some of us seem to be more resistant than others….), are now coming to fruition, in terms of the long-term effects of our behaviors, effects we had not the wit to see, or understand….

Our continuous, constant rape and pillaging of the planet’s dwindling, and certainly finite, resources has reached a point where our filthy habit of pouring smoke into the air, as if it would have NO effect at all, is going to kill us all, in a surprisingly short amount of time. In spite of all my research into the matter, I’m still not sure exactly WHY we have ignored this for so long, other than to say that we all must have been blinded by what is wishful thinking; regardless of whether or not that is true, we HAVE ignored it, and the effects of that neglect are now catching up to our continued display of ignorance….

I’ve been ranting about this for a week or so, since I saw the report in the Nation that summarized some of the latest reports from climate scientists…. reports that show exactly how late it is, and how little time we have to make the needed changes in how we make use of the planet’s resources….. I have, unfortunately, been made aware, by the lack of reaction to what I’ve written by almost ANYONE else, that the season has played a part in how few have seen or reacted to my sense of urgency about all of this. In short, my angst has been usurped by the seasonal atmosphere of “Oh, it’ll wait ’til after the holidays! Have another egg nog!”….

So, I can see that whatever campaign I might wish to begin, to try to alter the course of history in today’s world, isn’t going to make very much headway until the New Year….. Thus, I may as well relax, and try to have a bit of fun until then…. I am not looking forward to the next fifty years, should I survive that long, as they promise to be more than just a bit “interesting”….Even if mankind DOES wake up, and start to make some kind of effort to halt the environmental damage, and alter the course on which we are now locked, it isn’t going to be simple, or easy, and there will be a great many people who complain vociferously about the changes, which they don’t want, and can barely understand….

The world that is coming, ffolkes, won’t be very much like the one we have now, not once the atmosphere becomes a danger to us…. There will be SUCH a scramble, to see who will be saved, and who will be condemned to die, that all the revolutions and wars we have seen throughout history will pale in comparison…. Governments will try to blame each other, and lie to protect themselves (just as they do now….), but, it won’t matter who is to blame, because Mother Nature really doesn’t give a shit WHO did it…. her reaction will be the same…. Clear the decks, kill them all, and start over…. from Her viewpoint, it’s much easier than trying to get us to change our nature…..

Changing human nature has been our species’ most important goal for most of our history, as well as the one that is resisted most strongly by any to whom it is applied….. Those who have power and resources do not want to give them up easily, and see very little in it for them….. and that has been the problem right from the start….. These people (and I use the term loosely, as they do not accept many of the rules and customs that actual ‘people’ live by, which, in my opinion, removes their right to be included as part of the species at large….), who have set themselves up as the ‘leaders’ of humanity, are in truth merely thugs and thieves, willing to lie, cheat, and steal to make sure that they are in control, of other people, and of the wealth of the community….

We have yet to figure out how to keep them from doing that, and, unless we, as a larger group set against them, are willing to use the same degree of force that they are capable of using, we won’t do so…. until it’s too late, and the ignorance and idiocy of the lifestyle they’ve chosen so blindly will end up killing them…. and, sadly, us along with them…. I guess, if there were a way to figure out how to make the universe JUST, things might work out better…. But, until there is some way for the behavior shown by the BRC to be rewarded by killing ONLY those who show it, well, then, the rest of us are going to end up paying for their foolishness…..

There, now that I’ve completely depressed myself, and anyone else who stumbled in this morning, I guess I can go on to more lucrative pursuits…. Or, at least, more lucrative in the sense of being more enjoyable, and less depressing…. It isn’t every day I start off the day with a nine or ten paragraph rant on the End of Days Scenario, so we should, if for no other reasons than sheer exuberance and silliness, celebrate such flippancy and sang-froid, with some funny, heartwarming pearls, all of a lighter nature than this discussion…. In short….

Shall we Pearl?….

And the angels, all pallid and wan
Uplifting, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy ‘MAN’
And its hero Conqueror Worm

— Edgar Allan Poe “The Conqueror Worm”
_____________________________

Having ranted above, sufficient unto the day, the following shall have no excuse, nor any pity…. This pearl, ffolkes, is about politicians, and the way they look at life…. Some may just show how they speak, or show of what they think about in crisis, but all demonstrate, somehow, just what assholes they are, providing ample justification for how little we like them…..

“The higher you climb, the more you show your ass.” — Alexander Pope, “The Dunciad

“You can fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of the time; and that should be sufficient for most purposes.” — Smart Bee — Found on a plaque, set in the wall beside the doorway into the Congressional offices…..

Chang: “‘Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!'” — “STVI:TUC”, Stardate 9523.8

“The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong. If the Government or magistrates think an individual is right, no one will interfere with him; but when agitators talk against the things considered holy, or when radicals criticize, or satirize political gods, or question the justice of our laws and institutions, or pacifists talk against war, how the old inquisition awakens, and ostracism, the excommunication of the church, the prison, the wheel, the torture-chamber, the mob, are called upon to suppress the free expression of thought.” — Harry Weinberger, letter to the editor, — New York Evening Post, April 10, 1917

One, two, three, four
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn.
Next stop is Vietnam.
Five, six, seven, eight
Open up the pearly gates.
Ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopie! We’re all going to die.

— Country Joe and the Fish

“When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.” — Harry S. Truman, 1959

I might have guessed, had I thought of it, but, I didn’t…. so, it doesn’t matter. Nonetheless, I’ll say it anyway…. this final pearl took quite a while,and quite a complicated search, to find just the right candidate to finish this off correctly…. The effort was worth it, for it’s absolutely perfect…. Here, look….

“There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed.” — Edward Abbey

See? I can’t think of ANY statement that matches the concept of politics as we know them better than this, a pearl that helps to form a, (yes, I’ll say it again…), perfect ending to a fine indictment…..
_____________________________

Today’s post is freshly made, so, this means the poem will also be mine, though not fresh….. Nobody else will get any blame for any of this, I promise….

Penance, Made Simple

After all the dross is sent away
a celebration can begin,
time will face up to space, to stay
willing, to shine from within.

Anger and confusion come in to share
brushing reason aside,
eager to welcome all that is fair,
alert to danger, eyes wide.

Re-gift the wicked with their own pain
stand with the just;
fail to partake of the ill-gotten gain,
living in honor, the only must.

Standing fast in the face of wrong
is its own prize and reward.
Holding on to truth makes us strong,
well worth working toward.

Little is left to chance by fate
our lessons are never free of cost.
Seldom does reality make us wait
only when alone, are we lost.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

So that no one can ever say I’m not equal opportunity in my criticism, here are some pearls that have a bit to say about the preachers/priests…. You know,those delusional busybodies who insist on having everyone share in their delusions, which mostly involve a prophet commonly found in the desert, fasting and hallucinating, a supernatural love triangle involving rape and incest, and soliciting the promise to give them 10% of all you earn…. You know, those guys…. Any who, these are some pearls that have something to say about those who would not be king, but, rather, would rather serve that king to help keep you in thrall… for free housing, guaranteed income, and a good tax shelter, of course….

“No man with any sense of humor, ever founded a religion.” — Robert G. Ingersoll

Proof that Bill Gates is the devil ; The real name of the Bill Gates is William Henry Gates III. Nowadays he is known as Bill Gates (III), where III means the order of third (3rd.) By converting the letters of his current name to the ASCII-values and adding his (III), you get the following:

B       66
I       73
L       76
L       76
G       71
A       65
T       84
E       69
S       83
I        1
I        1
I        1
————–
666 !!!

Some might ask, How did Bill Gates get so powerful? Coincidence? Or just the beginning of mankind’s ultimate and total enslavement???

— Smart Bee

“A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.” — H. L. Mencken

“Since everything in life is but an experience perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.” — Long Chen Pa

“You do nothing but steal men’s souls and make them your slaves. Your words are are nothing but empty lies.” “The same could be said for any religion…” — Simon Belmont being utterly destroyed by Count Dracula

“God isn’t dead, She was never born.” — Smart Bee
_____________________________

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man except one thing: the last of the human freedoms— to choose one`s own attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” — Victor Frankl

I think, in coming years, this will be an important attitude to cultivate, and, a mental direction that will provide the one who follows it to live in the most comfort possible…. in their own mind, anyway…. If what I see in the evidence comes true, as I sincerely hope it does NOT, we all will need the ability to retreat into our minds for comfort, because there won’t be any to be found, not out in the real world…. But, time will tell, and who knows? Maybe the One who has the genius to figure out the answers is being born as I speak, and in twenty years or so, will condescend to figure out how to save the world…. Ah well, we’re all looking for a magic bullet, aren’t we?….. 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 magical life of Welsh budgies….

Posted on December 25, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

“Any mental functions attempted in this area must be re-evaluated during a subsequent period. It has been discovered that standard logic works sideways in this area due to the influence of the occupant.” — Smart Bee, describing a sign reportedly seen on the White House lawn in 1983…. (Fairly early in the Reagan Years, for those with sympathetic memory loss issues….)

For some reason, SB left this sitting here on the screen for me to find…. go figure….

Most mornings here at ECR find me staring with trepidation at a blank screen, worried that inspiration will fail me at last, and no Pearl will be forthcoming. So far, I’ve managed to avoid that, most days, missing only about a dozen or so over the last two and a bit more of years; many of those were due to technical glitches, with about a half-dozen due to illness…. such as the first four days of this month, when I came down with bronchitis while on a cruise….. Such fun that was! One of my most compelling memories will always center around being trundled through the hallways of the ship, in a wheelchair, miserable, (a euphemism for tossing my cookies….), and wondering how many thousands of dollars it was going to run me for this….

I lived through that, so I guess it taught me a lesson….The problem is, I can’t figure out what the lesson is, that it is trying to teach me…. Don’t get sick? Don’t go on cruises? It’s a bit of a facer when I can’t even decipher my own subconscious’ little tricks designed to get me to live more…. what? Safely? Healthy? What? I don’t get what it’s trying to tell me with this…. It’s not as if I spend all my time pursuing unhealthy behaviors…. Hell, the way I move these days, there’s no danger of any speed-related illness or injury, that’s for certain…. I feel like a snail much of the time, and walking over two blocks is getting to be a real challenge…. I stay warm, I don’t hang out in crowds, and I eat a well balanced diet, mostly….

So, what’s the deal here? Did I lose all my marbles last night? Have I forgotten what I was going to write about today? What’s with all these questions, anyway? Have I lost it completely? Maybe I should wait for one of these to be answered before starting to write the next….. But, if I started answering any of these, how will I get to where I want to go? And just where is it I want to go, anyway?….. Maybe I should just start to think about that one…. But, since I haven’t known the answer to that question for many, many years, other than where it might be in relation to a cruise itinerary, it would arguably be a waste of time…..

Of course, we’ve already done that for, oh, twenty minutes or so already, so that isn’t going to fly as motivation, or as defense, at least, not a viable one….. I suppose I’ll have to just pull out method #9 for ending intro sections, which involves a lot of noise and party favors, while the noises from outside the house continue to sound as if the Twilight Zone has settled into the neighborhood for good…. No wind, but nice wind-chimes happening, and the lights keep flickering at odd moments out on the street….. I think I’ll just leave the doors and windows locked up for the moment…. Oh, wait, look at that!

It’s a nocturnally oriented, black faced, cattus domesticus, sleepily winding across the floor to demand morning libations…. Loudly demanding her morning food and water attention, she graciously accepts the morning attentions of one of her personal slaves…. There, one high-maintenance cat taken care of…. Since I’ve managed to meander far enough to satisfy even the most stringent of bureaucrats, even the one with the dual pocket protectors, method #9 isn’t going to be needed today…. That’s always good news, as it is one of the more expensive to use in terms of physical resources that need to be replaced each time…. That damn caviar is getting expensive!…. I suppose I could use non-Beluga, but, what would the point of that be?….

Okay, so, not bad…. Five full paragraphs of completely useless bullshit, none of which had A) any real meaning beyond its existence as fodder, or piffle, B) any connection to Reality at large, either Consensual, or Privately Held Beliefs, and, most importantly, C) more dignity than necessary to keep from breaking formation….. For less than a full cup of coffee, that’s not bad at all…. Hell, it might just be a record, but, we’re not going to measure today…. The necessary tools are all put away in their winter stations, and I’m not up for it…. Besides, I just realized, it’s a holiday, isn’t it? So, legally, I can take the day off from tasks like that….. I have reached my limit of nonsense, and shall now go find another way to annoy myself…..

Shall we Pearl?…. In fact, for openers, let’s do it twice, because that’s twice as nice…..

“I don’t understand why everybody’s in disguise.” — Lemmy Kilmister

“Integrity has no need for rules.” — Albert Camus
_____________________________

So, it’s Christmas…. This is a tough holiday for me, since I don’t believe in the Christian hierarchies of thought, or buy into its particular set of delusional material…. In fact, I’m pretty pissed off right now at the Christians, as I hold their attitudes to be a significant factor in the events that have led to the current world environmental crisis; you know, the End-of-Days scenario, that is forming as we speak, or, more accurately, as I regale y’all with my outrage…. The Christian attitude, of “we’re special, because we are the ONLY religion that is right….” has caused more damage over time than any other single idea, especially since it is so egregiously FALSE….. but, I digress….

Any who, since I don’t believe in the BS, it’s hard for me to engage in the more likable parts of the season, like the gift giving, because I find it so hard to justify the rampant consumerism that goes along with that…. The ads, commercials, the billboards, the deals being screamed at us from every venue, get so annoying, it makes me want to go out, buy a gun, and start carrying it around, not necessarily to USE it on the idiots, but to show it now and again, to at least get them to SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR FIVE DAMN MINUTES….. How many times does it take before “Silent Night” becomes a legitimate call to take up arms?….

So, for this first section, we’ll go with an old-school variety of pearl, and hope we can find some way to poke some fun at the culture we all inhabit…. Hey, it’s a tough job, but, somebody’s got to do it, right?…..

“We have nothing to fear but the atmosphere itself.” — Smart Bee

(Okay, so it’s not funny…. it’s TRUE though, and that should count for something…..) (Okay, I’ll stop with the comments now, and let the rest of this pearl proceed apace….)

“Space is not the final frontier. The final frontier is the human soul. Space is merely the place where we are most likely to meet the challenge. The victory will occur in the continual process of challenging and testing our limits — both as individuals and as a species — and not in the amount of territory conquered.” — Solomon Short

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

Conservative: The mix of megalomania and stupidity. — Smart Bee, in a VERY insightful moment

“There are many things worth living for, few things worth dying for, nothing worth killing for.” — from Tom Robbins’ “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues”

Memorial Day In The United States; “A day when almost every community holds memorial parades. The man who enjoys marching in line and file to the strains of music falls below my contempt; he received his great brain by mistake.” — Albert Einstein

“To be wise, the only thing you really need to know is when to say “I don’t know.” — Smart Bee

As I’ve said before, I know it will be okay when Smart Bee has the brackets covered….. Perfect, if a bit eclectic in nature…. good embedded cynicism, I think, if a bit light on incipient sardonicism…
_____________________________

Hmm…. let’s see now…. for whom am I in the mood today? Ah, I know…. This will do nicely….

Old Men

People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when…
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies.

~~ Ogden Nash ~~

_____________________________

I had some trouble figuring out what to put in here, but managed to find an archived rant, one that should fit in quite well…. It’s fairly long, but quite cogent, so, we’ll just get to it…. This is from June 22, 2013….. not so long ago, was it?…. A mere six months…. which, as the rant indicates, another six months when NOTHING changed in the world at large….

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

“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.”) — Smart Bee

This has been sitting around for a couple of days, since I found it in SB. It’s the perfect beginning for a politirant, and the news of late has provided a number of interesting side notes to this idea, so I find myself in the position of being compelled to rant, which is the best attitude to start with….

The recent news has shown a number of items concerned with the revelations just released a few weeks ago, when a former NSA contractor spilled the beans about how the US government has been spying on its own people, collecting personal data from phone records, mercantile records, and from review of emails and other data mined from the internet…. The revelations, of course, are in the process of being denied and/or devalued by that government, who are trying to convince the public that the spying is “transparent”, and that the information is NOT being collected to investigate American citizens…. This, of course, is a bald faced lie, and anyone who believes it deserves anything that happens to them….

The government of this country is in the hands of people who are controlled by the corporate masters of society, sometimes willfully, most times without their complete knowledge. They (the corporate masters…) don’t give a SHIT about the rights of anyone else, so the above statement that got Mr. Debs in trouble is shown to be perfectly true. The people who control society don’t believe in the sacred nature of rights, for anyone who isn’t them, so it can be said that the rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million, because to the 1% (a number that is actually far larger than the number of real masters of society…. that’s probably closer to .001%…..), neither one is sacred at all….

What disturbs me a lot of the time is that there are still a lot of people who believe that, of the choices available in the political spectrum, one side or another is better, and showing support for one of them will direct matters to a more favorable (for the people) resolution…. The fact is, neither the Republicans, nor the Democrats, nor any of the Independents who are in office, or trying to get into office, have any interest at all in doing anything other than establishing their own agenda as the one used by society. Those agendas have nothing to do with helping the general public; they are designed to benefit only those who ascribe to the correct philosophy. No matter which political party or entity you choose, you’re going to get screwed, in the final analysis.

“The art of government is the organization of idolatry.” — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

If you still think that Barack Obama is going to help the common man, well, I suggest you listen to the crap he is putting out right now about this surveillance. Remember, too, that he signed the law that killed the Bill of Rights, on New Year’s Eve of 2012, the infamous National Defense Authorization Act, which makes it legal for the government to arrest citizens without a warrant, to hold them in an unknown place, without any oversight or review of rights, and try them in a secret court, without legal representation. It authorized the use of drones in a domestic fashion (which they continue to lie about, and say they aren’t using them…. when reports from all over the country provide relatively incontrovertible PROOF that they ARE using them….), and, most assuredly, authorized the illegal wiretapping and internet data mining that is currently going on, even though it has been exposed.

We may as well begin referring to the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution as the Bill of Former Rights, because, face it, ffolkes, you don’t have them anymore. I’ve heard it said that they are not rights, anyway, as a right is something nobody can take away from you…. More accurately, you have no rights that you are unable to defend…. and the government has slyly convinced most people that they don’t want those rights anyway….

Look how many formerly intelligent people are jumping on the bandwagon about gun control, forgetting all that our forefathers cautioned us about, when they warned about the possible encroachment of big business and the churches into the workings of government…. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Mason, Franklin, all of them mistrusted the corporate interests and the preachers, having suffered much at their hands, and they tried to warn us against listening to them….

But, what happened to Eugene Debs back in 1919, when he was sent to prison (in direct violation of the right to free speech….) was not the first indicator that things had regressed, and the trend toward government takeover of the rights of US citizenry has continued right up to today. The recent revelations about spying, you will see, will be quashed, and ignored by those in power, as there is now nothing we can do to stop them from doing whatever they want…. According to the laws we let them slip by us, it’s all legal ffolkes…. We are screwed, and the only good thing I can see about it, is that, due to global warming, climate change, and the imminent destruction of the human species by our own pollution, we won’t have long to put up with it….

Books are burning
In the main square, and I saw there
The fire eating the text.
Books are burning
In the still air
And you know where they burn books
People are next.

– “Books Are Burning”, XTC
_____________________________

To some degree, I am procrastinating the finish of this Pearl…. It is now but 0635 in the AM of Christmas Day, and I can foresee a long, boring day ahead, filled with many hours for which some sort of entertainment must be found that won’t stultify my brain completely…. The current choices offered by the mainstream media just aren’t going to provide me with anything remotely amusing, and the library is closed today…. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to go back to bed, and sleep until tomorrow….

First, though, let’s see how this came out….. Hmm… not too shabby for a non-government contractor working for free…. It will pass muster for a holiday, at least…. Gosh, I suppose this means I can delay no longer, but, must find a way to end this, hopefully with some grace and dignity…. Ah, the hell with that….. I’m outta here, ffolkes…. 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

In the domain of the demons of democracy…..

Posted on December 24, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Timing…. is everything….. and mine has been way off lately…. Here ’tis, Xmas Eve, and I’ve been so busy ranting about the upcoming climatological emergency, (an event COMING SOON, TO A PLANETARY UNIT YOU INHABIT), I completely skipped over talking about any of the rampant consumerism that is so “in your face” this time of year, all of which, in my opinion, is based on a delusional system that over a third of this planet has bought into, and fully believes…. I guess that’s what comes from not watching very much TV; the worst of it is on there, what with the massive amounts of money put into directing consumer’s habits and tastes every holiday, particularly Christmas….. Gasp! Epiphany!

Wow! I just realized why Christianity, all throughout history, has been so closely allied with the forces of corporate manipulation of society, i.e. the bankers, and/or whomever are in positions of authority…. And it isn’t because Christians are so “special”…. No, they are merely encouraged to think they are, because when they do, they are the most easily manipulated idiots on the face of the Earth, save perhaps cows, or, maybe, starfish….. and, hey, who’s worried they’ll take over, eh?….

Any who, at this time of year, the mask comes off, to a degree, and the rampant greed and sheer avarice of the very rich is fulfilled by the appetites created for them by the churches, the radios and TVs, and the newspapers, all of whom repeat and trumpet the latest deals into the public consciousness…. I actually saw a car commercial of some sort, in a rare moment when the TV was on, that said something to the effect of “Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy buy… buy” to the tune of some carol or another, complete with subtitles…. I kid you not!…. I had to laugh, to keep from weeping….

There is something good to be said for the spirit of compassion that is so much more common now than at other times of the year (Yet another sign of the morally and ethically juvenile make-up of society at large…..), but, on the whole, other than exchanging gifts with my kids, and a couple friends, I ignore most of what other folks are all excited about…. and that’s okay by me, a hard thing for some to understand, without getting an impression that isn’t wholly accurate….. C’est la vie, friends…. I can’t change the world…. at BEST, I can successfully ignore what it does to, or on, me (Think about it….), and learn to be content with whatever that may be…. or, if not content, resigned….

Aside from that aforementioned higher degree of human compassion that marks many interactions at this time of year, there is little to recommend it to me, as the commercials, the decorations (another area where greed and competitive spirit cause so many to go completely overboard….), the false bonhomie, the distressed parents and over-amped kids, and all of the other “holiday” treats the world has for us…. Well, all of that holiday spirit just tends to piss me off more than anything else….. This is because I realize it is ALL in place solely for the benefit of those who want power and money, and none of the given reasons for the season have any more influence on people than does the weather…. and nobody seems to care!….

Ah well, I’m tired of ranting to no purpose…. since I have a ways to go today to get this done, I’ll end this mini-intro-section-rant here, and get on with today’s dive…. It will serve more purpose than has been garnered by this section, that’s for sure and for certain….

Shall we Pearl?….

“No matter where you go, there you are.” — Buckaroo Banzai, from “Buckaroo Banzai – Across the 8th Dimension”
_____________________________

Of course, since I ranted, to some degree, in the introduction, y’all get the benefit of that, in the shape of an old-school pearl here in section one….. Yesterday, Smart Bee was being rather showy, providing all sorts of great quotes even when not asked for them…. It was a very lucrative day, aphorism-wise, and I’m hoping that attitude will extend into today’s search…. Murphy, bless his tiny little head, has been busy elsewhere during this holiday season, due mostly, I think, to my own lack of Christmas spirit, which doesn’t leave him a lot of leeway to pick at me…. I’m already in curmudgeon mode, so I’m less vulnerable at this time of year…. Yay!….. Any who, here you go….

Not bad for a first find…..

“And now, let the fun begin.” — Smart Bee

“I may RISE today, but I refuse to SHINE !!!” — gigoid, channeling Zippy

“A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul.” — Hawthorne

“Delay is preferable to error.” — Thomas Jefferson

“There is only one commandment: Thou Shalt Not Waste. All the others are superfluous.” — Solomon Short

“Mastering others is strength. Mastering one’s self is true power.” — Lao Tzu

“Ask me about my lobotomy.” — Smart Bee

We always know a pearl will work when Smart Bee provides the bracket quotes…. This one is a good one, all in all, and well balanced, for all its sparsity…. How well balanced? Allow me to demonstrate….

Not bad for a first find…..

“And now, let the fun begin.” — Smart Bee

“I may RISE today, but I refuse to SHINE !!!” — gigoid

“A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul.” — Hawthorne

“Delay is preferable to error.” — Thomas Jefferson

“There is only one commandment: Thou Shalt Not Waste. All the others are superfluous. — Solomon Short

“Mastering others is strength. Mastering one’s self is true power.” — Lao Tzu

“Ask me about my lobotomy.” — Smart Bee

See? Just TRY to knock THAT over!….. Not happening, ffolkes…. You will please note that the outline shape of the text is an exact replica of an Imperial Starship… which, as we all know, were pretty tough to bring down…. and even tougher to de-legitimize….. What? What does that MEAN? Why? Who needs to know? I mean, in the final analysis, it’s all dross and drivel, so, who the hell cares, eh?….

No, really, sorry ’bout that…. a bit of insanity and temper, just ignore me…. It’s kind of like Tourette’s Syndrome…. I need fluids, my electrolytes are imbalanced, or something…. I know, let’s try getting on with this…. maybe it will get back on to some sort of logical track on its own….. Hope springs eternal, you know…..
_____________________________

While cruising some old pearls in the archives, I came across this poem, which I wrote…. some time …. and not in the future, so we know it was in the past. Sorry, I forget when it was, and it’s a long, laborious process to find it again, as my Pearls are not organized, by subject, content, category, or title…. Hence, I can’t find ANYTHING in there, unless I stumble across it while surfing…. Any who, this is one of my favorites of my own, if not exactly my best…. and mine is the only opinion that really bears any meaning for me, because, with me, it’s all about “better out than in”….. Being human yourselves, you will understand my obsessive need to make it all about ME!….. Oh well, try to enjoy it anyway….

Joe Friday’s lament

Life is short, and though I’m odd, they say
it really doesn’t bother me
to realize there is no God, per se.

Though other folks will disagree
and tell me I’m wrong
I won’t believe it, not with naught to see.

Liars, called padre, tell me, ‘have humility,
and do as the authorities say’,
then fondle little boys with facility.

They also tell me to share the wealth
and give them a 10% tithe
so they don’t have get it by stealth.

So spare me the delusions, please
don’t bother with such a tale;
I’m nobody that needs such a tease.

Keep your fantasies under your hat
and out of my face;
I don’t need them, they’ll make me fat….. headed.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

Shoot! I lost some pearls…. I had several collected for this space, and inadvertently copied something over the top of them…. Now I must go back and find them again…. thank goodness for control-Z, or in SB’s case, just Z….. I’ll be back, to copy in what I’ve found…..

Okay, well, not bad, found a couple of them…. it will do…. Now I can get on with this, and finish off today’s effort, if I can only stay focused, and pain free for another twenty minutes or so…. Wish me luck, friends….. Oh, bonus prize today….. If you can articulate, exactly, what concept to which this pearl points, you will be absolved of any and all responsibility for what happens in the future….. S’truth! I’ve got an “in” with the gods of justice….

“Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” — American Proverb

“Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.” — P. J. O’Rourke

“Beer commercials are so patriotic: “Made the American Way.” What does that have to do with America? Is that what America stands for? Feeling sluggish and urinating frequently?” — Scott Blakeman

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.” — Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936), “What’s Wrong with the World”

“They gave me a book of checks. They didn’t ask for any deposits.” — Congressman Joe Early (D-Mass) at a press conference — to answer questions about the House Bank Scandal

“When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not guilty.'” — Theodore Roosevelt

“Government of the people, by the lawyers, for the conservatives.” — Smart Bee

Bonus prize hint: The answer is included in the above text, about half-way through this group of pearls…..
_____________________________

Yesterday, the day before, and today, I spent a lot of words, and time, speaking of the End Of The World As We Know It, and As We Don’t (which is obviously what we do more of…..) In the ensuing period of time since beginning those posts and pieces, I haven’t seen anything that tells me that the world has taken notice of the urgency that is present in the given statistical analysis, nor any indication that degree of ignorance, deliberate or not, will change…. Realistically, I couldn’t expect that to happen….. However, I’ve always been like Churchill, in this way at least….

“I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.” — Winston Churchill

Then, I find a little piece of wisdom like this one, from a poet extraordinaire….

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

— Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning” — delivered at the inauguration of Bill Clinton, Jan 21, 1993

At such moments, it’s hard to hang on to the depression that naturally ensues from the consideration of our species’ extinction at its own hands…. but, that issue isn’t going away, and there will be time to lament, and to rant, and to panic, and to watch, as the world goes stark, raving mad in the face of its own demise…. Such a pity, but, what are ya gonna do with them, eh? They just won’t listen….. Ah well, I’ll try again tomorrow….. 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

I hear the death bell tolling…. it tolls not just for thee….

Posted on December 23, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Yesterday I wrote the most important of all the rants I’ve written here on ECR, and, true to form, very few people came by to read it; only the ffolkes who make it by very regularly show up on Sundays…. Normally, I wouldn’t much care, but the message I was delivering with that post is one of a critical nature to the whole species…..

In my mind, and in my opinion, this is not hyperbole, or a dramatization, or an attempt to catch your attention, or any other plot or literary device. It’s a fact. A fact. Not a factoid, not a speculation, no longer even a matter of having special knowledge…. The evidence is right out there now, for anyone to see, and it doesn’t take a degree in climatology or climate sciences to predict the future any longer…..

Naturally, it isn’t widely known, or accepted, at this moment, which is why nobody is panicking yet, though we all SHOULD be about ready to do so by now…. It is, perhaps, true, that my ability to foresee future events is somewhat advanced over that of others, due to my scientific background, and my skill at assimilating large amounts of data and coming to the correct conclusions from that information. But, the evidence is pretty plain now, and doesn’t require much background training to interpret…..

They (the scientists who study the changes in the environment due to global warming) (which your beloved rulers would have us believe isn’t yet a problem….) have discovered that the permafrost in the environment is melting, releasing massive quantities of methane gas into the atmosphere….

Simple, undeniable, this is a fact, not speculation…. the stuff is melting all over the Arctic, the Antarctic, and on the seabeds all over the world near the poles, where a LOT of it exists, and the methane gas trapped in that permafrost is now being added to the carbon particulates that we humans are pumping into the air, at a rate of hundreds of millions of pounds per HOUR…. ( See the World Clock, at Poodwaddle.com http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/worldclock/ )

What needs to be understood is that methane is a much more potent polluting material than carbon…. It is known as an “environmental catalyst”, because even small portions of the substance, added to the mix we have, can, and will cause changes to occur in the climate, changes that will rapidly escalate as more of it is absorbed into the air….. AND…. as it melts, it will go faster, until it is a growing at a parabolic rate, meaning faster every moment, increasing without limit, until there is enough methane, plus carbon monoxide, plus carbon dioxide, plus the other particulate matter that clings to them all, now in the air to affect the balance of chemicals, whereupon the (unwelcome) changes begin….

At a certain point, the changes will become two things important to us…. First, they will become IRREVERSIBLE changes…. we won’t be able to go back to the way it was, at least, not by any process we have knowledge of….. Second, at about the same point in time, or possibly sooner, the atmosphere will become too poisonous for us to breathe, causing widespread panic and death worldwide, until, eventually, we are all just a memory to the planet…..

The MOST conservative estimate as to how much time we have until those points are reached is less than one hundred years…. the game has changed, ffolkes, and not in our favor….. The less conservative estimates give us far less time, some as little as THIRTY YEARS, or less, and, sadly, THEY are more likely right than the others….

When the permafrost began to melt, it became a whole new ballgame, ffolkes, and this game is one NOBODY is going to want to play…. Unfortunately, thanks to the assholes who run the planet, none of us have any choice in the matter….. We are going to have to deal with the consequences of our actions…. or, on the part of the public, our lack of action, for not having removed the assholes who are killing us a long time ago…. Regardless of whether or not we like it, we are going to have to deal with this, and it won’t wait for us to make up our minds whether or not it is real….. It is real, and it isn’t waiting for us to accept that….

Oh, gosh, look what I’ve done…. the entire intro got turned into a rant, the same rant as yesterday…. Given, however, the present situation in the world, it is a rant you are likely to see EVERY DAY on this blog, from now on, until the public gets off its collective ass and starts to actually DO something about all of this….

That’s the thing I do know about all of this…. Once it becomes too obvious to ignore any longer, there is going to be SUCH AN UPHEAVAL in society, all past wars and revolutions will pale in comparison… The war that is coming, ffolkes, will be, literally, a war for survival as a species, and if we lose, we ALL lose, even the powerful elite….. for even THEY cannot make the air breathable, once it is not….. As for us…..

Shall we Pearl?…..

“I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.” — John Muir, American Naturalist (1838-1914)
_____________________________

We’ll be going old-school here in the first section today, simply because I am now far too emotional to rant…. I tend to get too many salty tears dripping onto the keyboard, and, worse, into my coffee…. Hopefully, the process itself will provide some serenity, as it is, when pursued in a properly mindful/mindless manner, quite a soothing task…. Who knows? Serendipity could strike while I’m searching the dB, and I’ll come up with a brilliant solution to the methane issue…. If not, well, we’ll have a couple chuckles to look back on….

“Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.” — Smart Bee

“Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.” — Horace (65-8 B.C.)

“To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil by evil is evil.” — Mohammed

“All the secrets we may be able to keep from any and every god and human being do not in the least absolve us from the obligation to refrain from whatever actions are greedy, unjust, sensual, or otherwise immoderate.” — Cicero, On Duties

“The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject but man only.” — Thomas Hobbes

“Wisdom, understood as a new kind of strength, is a paramount necessity for Man. Now, even more than before, it is required as a basis for fitness to maintain life itself on the face of this planet and as an alternative to paths toward alienation or despair.” — Jonas Salk, The Survival Of The Wisest

“I don’t CARE if you’re on fire! Stop SCREAMING like that!” — gigoid, on waking from a dream…..

Okay, so most of it turned away from funny, toward entries for Aunt Millie’s Life Advice column, but, they’re all true as they stand, so, just deal with them with a bit of salt, or soy sauce….. Please note also, it did go wonky there at the end, and, by golly, ended up where it needed to be…. As for me, well…. all I can say is….

“Ah, the vastness of space and time… and I end up here..” — Smart Bee
_____________________________

I’m feeling a bit of angst, from whence I’ve not a clue…. it could be left over from the rant, or it could just be the background anxiety that seems to have parked itself in the far corner of the parking lot of my mind, sitting there in a dimly lit, lonely space, just hanging about in case its needed, ever since I read the article on climate change in The Nation….

It could also be my over-active imagination, but, that’s moot, as such manifestations are as real as reality…… whatever THAT may be today…. Any who, on occasions such as these, I like to use my own poetry, just so no body else can be blamed for whatever takes place today….. In that spirit, here is one from, well, I don’t know, but, it was a while ago….

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’m deliberately retreating somewhat today…. I have to admit, I haven’t EVER been this terrified of the future, nor so saddened by its prognosis. The sadness, of course, comes from knowing my children, and my grandson, may never have any chance at all to achieve any of their own life goals…. and there won’t be any more to come after that….

I think, if it is true, this is NOT an inappropriate reason for sadness…. even if only a possibility, it is worth a bit of depressive emotion, at the minimum, and sadness is better, at any point, than despair…. which would be the next logical choice, if one were to give in, to the seduction of that path….

Instead, I’m going to do another search through my database, for something that can LIFT spirits, or UPLIFT them, as it were, rather than give in to the darkness that threatens…. I guess it’s just not in me to give up completely, no matter what the apparent odds… Let’s see if a random, harlequin approach to Smart Bee will garner the results I’m looking for….. I NEED a good pearl….

“In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble.” — Yun-Men

From ignorance our comfort flows.
The only wretched are the wise.

— Matthew Prior (1664-1721) — To the Hon. Charles Montague

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.” — Gore Vidal

“Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.” — Buddha

“The chief aim of wisdom is to enable one to bear with the stupidity of the ignorant.” — Xystus I

“Neither will the wave which has passed be called back; nor can the hour which has gone by return.” — Ovid (B.C. 43-18 A.D.)

“The sages put great stock in saying that every ending is truly a beginning, or every beginning an ending, or insisting that there are no endings or beginnings, or remarking that there is nothing new, and we are doomed to endlessly repeat ourselves. Or have I said all this before?” — The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. LXXXVII

Hmm…. I think it’s possible I MIGHT have said all this before….
_____________________________

Before finishing today’s effort, I want to say this…. Zackary. That one word, my grandson’s name, is the reason for all the pain I’m feeling about the news I read in The Nation, regarding the climate change status this year. If the worst scenario is even nearly true, then by the time he is my own son’s age, he will have lived most of his life in a state unimaginable to me, fighting every moment to stave off extinction, while the majority of the species, (the word “race” no longer matters, as all the races of Man have lungs….), goes through the contortions involved in social upheaval of a magnitude never before experienced on this planet…. not by our species, anyway…. Bob Dylan said it well, ffolkes, when he wrote, “It’s a hard rain, a gonna fall….”

I took a short break before finishing the last section, and prior to starting this closing piece; I found myself sitting in the morning air, breathing, and crying, as each breath reminded me that it won’t be long before I, and everyone else alive, will be fighting to draw the next breath, and the next, and the next, if we wish to merely survive…. It’s a hard picture to live with, and I don’t like it…. but, there it is, and it won’t go away….. As of this moment, I don’t yet know exactly what I will DO about this pain, or about any of this issue…. so, we’ll see about all that…. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with two last pearls, both of which speak eloquently to just what I am talking about…..

“There is an immeasurable distance between late and too late.” — Anne Swetchine

“Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols — it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.” — William Hazlitt

The saddest part is that the exact opposite of Mr. Hazlitt’s description of mankind’s nature is ALSO true…. There is, in us, the greatest potential imaginable for virtue, for honor, and for compassion, in the souls of MOST people…. It is those few who have turned away from those finer qualities we all possess who, with the cruelty of their indifference to the benefit, or the pain of others, have caused all the trouble…. Ah well…. that’s a subject we talk about a lot around here…. 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

Squeeze the trigger, don’t yank on it….

Posted on December 22, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Can you feel it? Is the taste of real terror becoming familiar to your tongue? If not, you should be paying closer attention, because the signs are all in place now, and the show is about to begin…. or end, however one may choose to view the upcoming events on this planet….. None of those events are going to be much fun for any of us, but, hey, we made our choices, and now we have to pay the piper, to mix a more than just a few metaphors into a cocktail…. the literary equivalent of a Long Island Iced Tea, so to speak….

I’m giving here a bit of a preview, of the rant that will follow today…. This is a post I’ve been considering writing for some time, but, I was procrastinating, as I do with most things, because I am a firm believer in the power of anxiety to produce better work…. Well, it works for me, and always has…. I was a terrible procrastinator in school, but, by choice…. I found that the work that I put out when I was rushed and panicked always seemed to get better grades than the ones I completed in good time. So, for a long while there in high school, I never studied, until the night before a test, or the night before homework was due…

It seemed to work for me, as I got straight A’s my sophomore year, and ended up with a 3.9 grade point average over the course of the four years, good enough to be the class valedictorian, albeit in a very small class; there were only 36 students in my graduating class….. For my four years of high school, I ended up with less than an A grade in only four classes, and all of the work needed to do that was produced at the last minute, at times writing in the final answers for a math homework piece as the class bell rang….. I was shameless, too, in my using it as an excuse, and in using my number one status to aid me in manipulating the teachers, to allow me extra time for assignments, for late papers, etc…..

After completing the schooling I wanted, once I started working, I found that I could still procrastinate, but that I had to be a bit more discrete in choosing when to allow it to happen; not all bosses are as easy as my high school teachers…. But, they are still subject to the same manipulations, from those who do good work, believe me…. Being the one to whom everyone at a job goes to for information or help is a valuable position to assume, and I found it to be useful for my entire career in the workplace….

In the same way that I’ve never wanted to be rich, or famous, I never wanted to “rise to the top” at any job, because I was smart enough to be able to see how much harder those folks had to work than the rest of the myrmidons….. Our corporate masters have rigged the game for their benefit at ALL the levels in which they allow participation in the game of life, and the perks and privileges that go along with large amounts of gelt don’t begin until one reaches the very highest levels, at the point where the amount of money being made is sick and insane, much like the power that goes to the heads of those who go into politics…..

Before this becomes a rant all by itself, I’m going to cut it short…. sort of. A bit late to cut it completely off, since it’s already gotten to the point of cumbersome…. But, six paragraphs of my personal history, and my take on reality, should suffice to act as a sufficient buffer between y’all and the weight, and the moderately dangerous qualities that today’s rant will bring to you….

If not, well, y’all know where the bandages are kept, don’t you?…. I’m torn, between writing the rant, and letting it go for a day or two, but, if I do that, I may not get to it, and it all needs to be said….. We’ll see how it goes as we proceed…. I may have to make some adjustments to account for time; I DO have other things to get done today, and they are of significant import, as well…. so….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.” — Edmund Everett Hale
_____________________________

Here is yet another example of how much I procrastinate…. I KNOW I need to get the rant done, and I know it will be a hard one to write, as it is a subject close to home for all of us, and my emotions will take a beating in getting it all down…. but, first, we’ll go old-school, because I can, and because I want to…. which is the underlying reason for ALL I do, now that I think of it…. I’ll have to think about that…..

“Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.” — Calvin & Hobbes

“It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. – A.D. 65)

“Neither the water nor the moon make any effort to achieve a reflection.” — Deng Ming-Dao

Although a cloth be washed a hundred times,
How can it be rendered clean and pure
If it be washed in water which is dirty?

— Nagarjuna (c. 100-200 A.D.)

“We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.” — Aristotle

“My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.” — Peggy Noonan, speech writer for presidents Reagan and Bush, 1996

“I like life. It’s something to do.” — Ronnie Shakes

I love it when the last pearl is so perfect for the grouping…. Besides, in this case, we can only agree with the sentiment, observing that it is a far better arrangement than the alternative…. as far as we know….
_____________________________

Kitten: small “homicidal muffin on legs; affects human sensibilities to the point of endowing the most wanton and ruthless acts of destruction with near-mythical overtones of cuteness. Not recommended for beginners. Get at least two.” — strata@psyche.mit.edu

“The cat would eate fish, and would not wet her feete.” — John Heywood (c. 1565) — Proverbes, Part i, Chap. xi

Why, you may ask, are these here? Well, they just seemed appropriate, in light of today’s poem…. You may have noted that, aside from the rant, and parts of the intro, this Pearl has had a lot of humorous, lighter material, even more than is normal…. This is a deliberate attempt to lighten the mood, because the rant is a tough one… so, enjoy this while you may….

Ode to Spot

Felis Cattus, is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an endothermic quadruped carnivorous by nature?
Your visual, olfactory and auditory senses
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion,
it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.

O Spot, the complex levels of behaviour you display
connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.

~~ Lt. Commander Data ~~

from “Schisms”, STTNG

_____________________________

Over the last three years, I’ve been ranting, off and on, about three, or four, groups of people whose actions have been causing the rest of us a hard time, and continue to do so, in spite of our best efforts to get them to cease and desist….. These groups, which I’ve labeled with various derogatory names, just to keep them straight in my mind, and yours, are that part of our species that regards the rest of us as prey….

To these assholes, other people are merely on this planet to see that they are supplied with all they wish to have, no matter how those others may feel about that….. Now, I could go into a lot of psychiatric, and/or psychological reasons for all of that, but the plain and simple truth is that they are assholes…. They were born that way, and have never been anything else…. Why they are that way still is another question, though….

Normally, the universe, in the guise of parents, will supply people with good reasons NOT to be assholes, but, many people never get exposed to those reasons, because their own parents don’t believe in them, but rather have a sense of entitlement that, in their minds, gives them the right to walk all over other people to get what they want…. This entitlement arises from one or more of several ideological repositories, each of which, though based on completely delusional material, is so compelling, and so attractive to the mind that embraces cheating and immorality, that it has been solidly in control of the society in which we exist for the entire history we have endured….

The shadowy corporate masters who control society, and who have done so for millennia, are adept at concealing their presence from all but a few, of whom they have complete control, and nothing to fear…… In this way they have manipulated society for all that time, to have the majority of resources and money under their control, thus giving them very real control over the rest of us, as we all have to eat, and they control the food…. it’s that simple…. That, combined with their willingness to use violence, without any compunctions due to compassion, to achieve their ends, has provided them with the means to maintain their control, and keep the rest of mankind in ignorance….

Now, however, their own ignorance, stupidity, and lack of foresight is going to kill them, and there is NOTHING AT ALL they can do about it….. Read this, please, and take heed of what it implies; note especially what it says between the lines of the statistical facts presented…. In other words, read it critically, so you will understand that to which I’m referring…..

http://www.thenation.com/article/177614/coming-instant-planetary-emergency#

This is it, ffolkes…. I’ve been predicting this moment for a long time, though I’d hoped to be wrong for the entire time…. But, it cannot be denied any longer, not now that we have the concrete evidence of our own imminent demise…. I’ve spoken often of a date when a certain flash point will have been reached…. That point has to do with how fast the temperature of the planet is rising, and the changes this will cause to the atmosphere THAT WE ALL BREATHE…. It is my incredibly sad duty to announce, that flash point has been reached…. The new evidence quoted in this article, regarding how fast the permafrost is melting in the Arctic environments, is not merely scary, it is downright terrifying…. It is clear evidence of that flash point I was referring to, and tells us, without doubt, that our time has come….

Do you know what this means, ffolkes? We are talking about an atmosphere that WITHIN FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW, WILL BE DEADLY FOR US TO BREATHE….. That estimate, of MAYBE fifty years, is now ensured of becoming reality….. That’s all, fifty years….. At that point, we all die, ffolkes, and there is no respite, no relief to be found, because, Hey, IT’S TOO FUCKING LATE!…. That’s correct, ffolkes, it’s already too late….

The flash point has come, and gone, and the chemical imbalances that our species has created on this planet will now proceed to kill us all within the next 100 years… Once the process of change reaches the point of parabolic increase, it is IRREVERSIBLE; it cannot be stopped….. And, yes, that figure is right….. I said a hundred years….. That’s if we’re lucky, and scientists DO find some way to slow the process down, once enough people have panicked enough to start trying to fix what we’ve done…

It can’t be done, though….it’s too late, and there is nothing in our technological bag that will fix what we have broken…. For many years, I held out the hope that, no matter how bad it got, we would find a way, through the magic of science, to fix things…. But, sadly, that hope was never realized, things just went from bad to worse, and, now, have progressed to the worst-case scenario…. I’d hoped that this little aphorism below would be true…..

“If the Catholic church couldn’t stop Galileo, then governments won’t be able to stop things now.” — Carlo de Benedetti of Olivetti on the folly — of trying to regulate information technology

But, it wasn’t true, because, without us knowing it, it was already too late, by the time we got the computers….. It’s a sad thing, one that threatens to make me pretty angry…. So angry, in,fact, that I may even consider breaking some of my own personal commandments, and spending some of my remaining years hunting…. Since I’m sure you won’t misunderstand me about that, and, to also make sure I’m not jumping the gun, so to speak, let me say this…. I am pretty pissed off about this…. None of what is happening was NECESSARY, or even likely, not without deliberate ignorance of the assholes who put themselves in charge of everyone else, trying to grab all they could for themselves…. If those assholes had learned to share, like everyone else, we wouldn’t be having these issues at all….

But, no, because the fucking Christians feel entitled, or better than anyone else…. or because the richest assholes on the planet can’t share…. or because the whites hate the blacks and browns, who hate the yellows, all of whom are afraid of the greens, we have been doomed, sentenced to a gasping, unpleasant death at the hands of our own planet, and our own people….. It’s enough to make a strong man want to give up, and start blasting away…. an event that may very well occur before too long….

I’ll be ranting about this again, ffolkes, and may not stop until I get enough ammo to start my hunting…. Now, don’t get me wrong… I know my hunting won’t fix anything, other than soothing a few of my own feelings about all of this…. But, maybe, just maybe, the game I bring down just MIGHT slow things down, even just a little, and that won’t be a bad thing….

Of course, we’re all going to have to come to terms with the fact of our own demise, and sooner than we had thought…. THAT should be an interesting show, to be sure…… Actually, I’m kind of looking forward to the time when all those asses realize what they’ve done to themselves…. I hope I’m around long enough to see some of them get their comeuppance…..

“This ain’t no technological breakdown. This is the road to hell.” — Smart Bee
_____________________________

So, I’m a bit unhappy with the rant…. I wanted it to be even more of an indictment, of the BRC, of the Priestly Hierarchies, of the Shadowy Master Class, and all their myrmidons in the police and military forces of the world…. I wanted it to be an indictment of all the rapacious, evil assholes who have controlled our society right into the dumps, cackling over their profits and indulging in their perversions, fondling their religious icons before fondling small children…. But, I just didn’t have enough in me to do it right…. this time…. I have a feeling I’ll be writing this rant again a few times, with a different approach, but a similar message… For now, let’s see how it floats…. or flies…. either one will do….

Well, it ain’t bad, and it does say what I wanted to say…. but, my sense of displeasure at its efficacy remains, so you will no doubt be seeing more on this subject before too many days pass…. As I’ve made clear above, there isn’t a lot of time left, and if I want to achieve any of my remaining goals in life, well, I might just have to stop procrastinating….

And won’t that be a good thing?…. Well, I have the feeling there are certain members of the shadowy corporate master group who wouldn’t agree with me, but, then I wouldn’t expect them to, so that’s okay…. Their disapproval won’t take them out of the scope’s range…. See you tomorrow, friends…..

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

As the black cat watches, the ritual begins….

Posted on December 21, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Brain damage…. it’s the only reason I can come up with to explain this…. I must have banged my head on a sharp corner, or something equally inane, that caused some bleeding, that led to swelling, and now my brain is frozen in place, never again to jump or play in the vast fields of imagination…..

Okay, so maybe it’s just the usual morning fog that I’m trying to see through…. but, a little drama never hurt a blog, now, did it? I have to keep coming up with a tricky piece of writing every morning, in order to catch and hold your interest, right? That’s how it was explained to me by Mrs. Rich, and Mr. Olsen, back when they were teaching us the basics of writing, in English classes in my teen years….

Now that I’ve been actually writing every day for over two and a half years, I’ve learned a bit more about the actual workings of the written story, or article, and know that the beginning of any piece is the most important part of it…. It doesn’t matter at all if what you have to say is right, or pretty, or important… what matters is that you can catch the interest of the reader…. Once you have engaged that interest, it can be led to where you wish it to go, depending on the available skills, and the value of the story being told…. but, first, you’ve got to get them to bite..

I’m trying to avoid using the old metaphor about fishing, as I think it’s over-used, and has lost some of its appeal as a teaching tool…. but, in this regard, it remains as valid as ever…. The writer must find the tastiest looking worms, er, ideas, and put them out to attract the fish, er, readers, not always knowing what which worms will work, which will move and squirm in such a way as to say to the fish, “Come! Eat me!”, rather than, “Oh, shit, get me outta here!” which is more likely what is passing in that tiny little brain…. I know if I were there, drowning, with a hook through my thigh to hold me in place, I’d be screaming and playing hell to get gone….

Now that I’ve destroyed all hope of garnering any of the gentle reader’s attention for this morning, with that less than attractive image of my fat old man body squirming at the end of a fishing line, with a hook through my leg, screaming my head off, I think I’ll slink off into the remainder of today’s effort…. I seem to have gotten lost here in the intro today, starting one place, heading off to another, then screwing the entire morning’s work with an ill-conceived trip into descriptive imagery, and have no idea at all how to get back to anything remotely dignified, or compelling….

It’s a shame, really, as I had high hopes for today…. I found a good rant yesterday, and fitted it together with one that jumped up and bit me yesterday afternoon, so I already had part of this one done…. which left only a poem to find, or write, and an old-school to gather up…. piece o’cake. But, no, I had to try to be tricky in the intro, and get all finillibrated, (yes, I just made that word up…), and turned around, so that I end up apologizing, instead, for yet another trip through the back alleys of my brain…. SIGH…. I’ll get it right one of these days…. Until then….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“If you are out of trouble, watch for danger.” — Sophocles

All us hippies know this one, because Jerry and the Dead told us, way back in the day, in Uncle John’s Band…..

“It’s a buck dancer’s choice, my friend,
don’t you worry any more….
for when Life looks like Easy Street,
there is danger is at your door….”

— Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter

Stay alert, ffolkes, it looks like rain…. and I’m not talking about water from the sky…..
_____________________________

Okay, here is the old-school pearl I promised…. I’m putting it first, because the rant is enough to tire anyone out, and I wanted y’all to have enough at the end to be able to think about it a bit…. so, let’s see what Smart Bee has in store for us today, to put us in the correct mood for an epic rant…. Shall we dive?….. C’mon, let’s go…

“Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendor.” — Horace (B.C. 65-8)

“We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented.” — Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948

“I guess you guys got BIG MUSCLES from doing too much STUDYING!” — Zippy the Pinhead

“Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself; he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.” — Plato (428-348? B.C.)

“A man that expects to train lobsters to fly in a year is called a lunatic and is locked up. But a man that thinks people can be turned into angels by legislation is called a reformer and allowed to walk free.” — Mr. Dooly

“All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.” — G. K. Chesterton, The Thing

“Don’t take life too seriously; you won’t get out of it alive.” — Hubbard’s Law
_____________________________

Pity this busy monster, manunkind, not.
Progress is a comfortable disease.

— e.e. cummings, One Times One

It is difficult at times to find the works of Edwin Estin in their entirety, due to copyright issues…. for today, though, I’ll use this little piece of one of his best poems, as an appetizer, so to speak, with this little gem from Alfie to follow as a main course…. Enjoy!….

All Things will Die

All Things will Die

Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing

Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing

Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating

Full merrily;
Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
O, vanity!
Death waits at the door.
See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call’d–we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.
O, misery!
Hark! death is calling
While I speak to ye,
The jaw is falling,
The red cheek paling,
The strong limbs failing;
Ice with the warm blood mixing;
The eyeballs fixing.
Nine times goes the passing bell:
Ye merry souls, farewell.
The old earth
Had a birth,
As all men know,
Long ago.
And the old earth must die.
So let the warm winds range,
And the blue wave beat the shore;
For even and morn
Ye will never see
Thro’ eternity.
All things were born.
Ye will come never more,
For all things must die.

~~ Alfred Lord Tennyson ~~

_____________________________

Below, you will find the rant to which I referred above…. it’s another long one, thanks to the support I again found in the archives, but, it’s worth the read, for it will all point toward the rant I’m planning for tomorrow, one that will be a culmination, and a summarization, of all the rants I’ve done up to this point…. For today, please read, and pay attention to this, as it will end up being important for all of us…. a point which I hope to make clear tomorrow….

In order to achieve the proper understanding of this issue, and the following discussion, aka a ‘politirant’ of first magnitude, the article attached to the following link should be read first…. It contains some interesting information that is critical to the dialogue that may ensue, or, in any case, for a full data set to use for analyzing the issue at large…. Go ahead, we’ll wait here….

http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Judge-NSA-program-is-likely-unconstitutional-5068946.php

It isn’t often this happens twice in a row, but, since I’m always attuned to the possibility of serendipity, it did…. happen twice, that is…. Below, you will find a rant I posted back in early March of this year, which, given the information contained in the article attached to the above link, is astoundingly accurate as a response to the actions demonstrated by the administration in this entire scenario….

First, let me say that I’m very, very happy that a federal judge had the courage and integrity to stand up against the tide of administrative pressure, which, as we all should realize by now, originates from the dens of the shadowy corporate masters, and special interest groups who dictate society’s course to suit themselves…. If you haven’t noted this from what you see happening everywhere in the public sector, well, I can’t convince you, but, it remains, nonetheless, the truth, well-documented in the news….

The government, of this country, and just about every other in the world, is in the control of the corporate special interests who control virtually ALL the money, and, along with that, ALL the resources needed to keep society working. It has been this way for millennia, and they are only getting better at the controls they possess over the happenings in the world around us, honed by centuries of practice and deception…. They are so good at it, virtually nobody even realizes the true nature of their control, or the extent of it…. and, that is just how they like it….

But, there are moments when a bit of progress is made in keeping at least a minimum of mankind free of much of their influence, and this ruling in a federal court is one of those moments in history…. It still remains to be seen whether the rest of the federal courts, up to and including the Supremes, will continue to see the actual truth, or whether they’ll begin to color it, too, with the paint provided by the special interest groups, in whose best interests lie the abrogation of the amendments…. For the moment, though, we can be encouraged, at least a little bit…

I was especially heartened by two parts of this report…. First, the judge acknowledged James Madison, as one of the framers of the Bill of Rights, speaking of his obvious and well-placed mistrust of just this scenario, of corporate interests dictating the abrogation of civil rights, such as in this case, the Fourth Amendment, by those in power, and how Mr. Madison would be “aghast” at how far it has come true today….

Second, I was encouraged to see the steadfast dismissal of the reasoning by the administration’s lawyers on the basis of constitutionality, as it goes to prove the contention by Eric Snowden, that the laws and policies being perpetrated by the NSA would be found to be such, to wit: illegal according to the Constitution of the United States…. which would, in turn, prove his innocence under the laws of our country, which, theoretically, rewards those who speak the truth in defense of their fellows….

Good to know SOMEONE is paying attention in the judiciary system…. even if one of the Shrubs appointed him… That, apparently, didn’t turn him away from the Constitution, unlike the POTUS who gave him the job, who was on record as thinking some of the Bill of Rights went too far in giving people certain rights….

Further than that, the arguments presented below are the correct response to the above, which also goes to prove one small point, to wit: even nine months ago, I knew something was wrong in the pictures I was seeing out in the real world…. Enjoy!….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From 3/2/13:

He who imitates evil always goes beyond the limits of the example, whereas he who imitates what is good, always falls short.” — Confucius

Perfect! If ever a quote could be applied to fit one group of people, this one would; it fits the folks who occupy elected office in this country like the proverbial glove. Ooh! Ooh! Here’s another one….

“Ignorance: When you don’t know something and somebody finds it out.” — Jethro Burns

Okay, that’s a good start…. Now, we all know that politicians lie to us…. It’s what we’ve taught them to do, by our calm acceptance of all the other lies they’ve told, from the very beginning. We expect them to lie…. then, when we catch them at it, there is this huge public outcry, as if it had never happened before….. (Shakes head, sighs….)

Sometimes, the behavior of the American public toward the political beast reminds me of a shark…. to wit: no memory of the past to slow down their willingness to rush into dangerous situations…. For millions of years, sharks and dolphins have lived together in the oceans. For just about all that time, whenever a shark attacks a dolphin, it gets killed, unless the dolphin is injured in some way, or, it is a baby inadvertently left alone. Always, if things are even, the shark dies, because the dolphins are smarter, and faster swimmers.

After millions of years, you would think the sharks might learn to let them alone, but, they don’t, which is evidence of their lack of ability to learn. The American voting public has the same problem…. they never learn to expect to be lied to, and always seem surprised to learn that their elected officials are, shall we say, less than perfectly honest? It, quite frankly, drives me nuts…. What is it about people that does that to them? Why are they so unwilling to use the mind that sits between their ears, rather than just carrying it around from toilet to toilet, which is all most folks seem to do with it? I wish I knew….

“There is one way to find out if a man is honest – ask him. If he says yes, you know he is crooked.” — Groucho Marx

I’m starting to feel a bit of anger, actually, and I have a hard time not letting it out on the voting public, the idiots. But, it really isn’t all their fault, as the people who run for office are the ones who are actively imitating evil, and, obviously, exceeding the limits of their example. And the voting public can’t help never being able to quite reach the good for which they reach. This is why I get angry about it…. The folks who run for office tell the public they are going to work for the people when they are elected; we all know they are lying, but we elect them anyway. Now, how stupid is that? Pretty stupid, in my book….

On the one hand, the stupidity displayed by the politicians is deliberate, in its adherence to principles of theft and prevarication; on the other hand, the stupidity displayed by the voting public is, perhaps, not deliberate, but at minimum, misguided, and, ultimately, just as evil, in placing its trust in evil people. In the dispassionate view held by the universe, stupid is as stupid does, and the sentence of death is the same for both types of stupidity, deliberate and unconscious. It doesn’t care about why, it only looks at results….

What can be done about this? Not a damn thing…. Not only do I find that most people are unconsciously stupid, but they are stubborn about it, even when it is clear how being stupid is hurting them. Rather than use their minds to find a new way of dealing with these issues, they retreat into platitudes and dogma, and run right back out to vote for another idiot who promises them manna from heaven, or, more accurately, from Washington D.C. If confronted with their idiocy, they become even more stubborn, as they are unwilling to accept they might be wrong, and refuse to either examine any evidence of being wrong, or, will deny its existence altogether. (See quote # 4 in section one, above… Plato knew this about people, hundreds of years before Jesus was born….)

The politicians, who choose to live in stupidity, by lying and cheating and stealing from their own people, don’t even WANT to choose otherwise. Why should they? They’ve got it easy, with a ready supply of host bodies on which to practice their symbiotic parasitism, a body that not only accepts all their lies, but encourages them to even further depredations with their complete acquiescence with whatever the politicos want. All the politicians have to say is that the public is in danger, from this, that, or the other, and the public will allow them to do whatever they choose, as long as they feel safe from whatever fictional fantasy they have been told is dangerous….

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift; the rational mind is faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” — Albert Einstein

It’s an interesting spectacle to observe from the sidelines, but it arouses in me a strong feeling of sadness, with the anger underlying, as I watch, day after day, as so many millions of foolish people get taken advantage of by a few assholes. It definitely makes me want to buy a gun, even though I would only use it if pressed; I have a feeling I may get pressed some day, if I continue to make noise about all this.

I’m fairly well protected thus far by a lack of notoriety; the BRC and the PTB aren’t going to worry about me until I have an audience a lot larger than a couple of hundred folks, of which perhaps fifty regularly read my work. If what I am saying began to gain popularity, and was being read by millions, I’d be in danger; until then, I’m as safe as I can make myself with the tools at hand; which, if I say so myself, are not entirely inconsequential….. If I said any more, I’d be giving away my precautions, and that wouldn’t do, so, just rest assured…. I am ready to deal with anything short of assault weapons, with what I have on hand….

“Many, if not all, of my presidential opponents are certifiable idiots.” — Miriam Defensor Santiago — The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1993

See? I’m not completely alone! Actually, if you pay close attention, you will note this was uttered by a politician, about their peers, so it really doesn’t count as support of what I’m saying here. What, exactly am I saying here? Hmm, okay, since I’ve already written about 1200 words or so on this, it’s a good place to wind it up…. so, here goes….

Ffolkes, you are being lied to, daily…. hell, more like hourly, by those who have been elected to office to look out for your interests. I hate to tell you, but those folks never intended to do anything of the sort. So, it would be a good thing if everybody in this country would OPEN THEIR FUCKING EYES AND GET A DAMN CLUE!!!!!….. I don’t think I can say it any clearer than that…. That’s all, for now….

“Ignorance kills daily. “– Smart Bee
_____________________________

I know, I know, I’ve been getting carried away the last couple days, letting my inherent loquaciousness get the better of my self-control…. But, it’s all stuff that I feel compelled to say, since the stuff that prompts it keeps happening, right there in the news….

Ah well, it’s all getting to be a moot point, as will be seen by my post tomorrow….. It’s not one I’m looking forward to, for it will discuss some hard truths….. As will be seen, however, it’s all stuff that can wait no longer to be said…. With that teaser delivered, I’ll give up on today’s effort…. It’s an epic, and will fly, even with all that weight to carry up into the upper reaches, where the cool breeze of reason flows….. 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

Only the finest of hydrogenated motor oils served here….

Posted on December 20, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Though my morning hours are becoming more regular, my brain is not, and the fear, unwelcome, unwanted, yet remains…. Paralyzing, unreasonable, it strikes me each day, as I gaze in terror at the blank screen, wondering how the hell I’ll come up with something new and fresh, when every thought in my brain feels old and wilted, like a three day old salad…. I probably resemble that remark more than I realize…. I’m not green, yet, though…. I’m guessing that’s something about which to be encouraged…

Encouragement seems to be the only positive to be found just now, so, we’ll take it and run with it…. I’ll just keep repeating this affirmation to myself, “I’m not green yet!”…. I’m not green yet!”…. I’ll say that over and over to myself, and somehow, about an hour from now, I’ll believe it… Of course, I’m going by what I’ve been told by some New Agers, followers of some guy named Jack Handey, who’s supposed to be the newest guru of the self-enlightenment crowd…. Having achieved my own enlightenment many years ago, while sitting under a baobab tree, I …. wait, that wasn’t me, that was the Buddha!…. What was I thinking?….

Hah! I guess I fooled you this time, didn’t I? You thought I was going to take credit for the Buddha’s enlightened words, didn’t you? Hah! So there! You can’t catch me like that! I’ve been boasting, er, sharing, yeah, sharing, that’s it…. sharing my knowledge of enlightenment, for many years now, and you won’t catch me so easily as that! You may as well go look for some other lightweight, sucker….

Where were we? Oh, yeah, enlightenment…. Yes, many years ago, I found inner peace. I was actually looking for some aliens I heard had landed near there, but found it laying under a rock…. I sold that batch to a guy on Forty-seventh Avenue for forty bucks, which bought me some very nice ganja uptown. The next time I found it, I couldn’t find a buyer (it was during the Bush recession, the first one….), so I just tossed it in the river, as it wasn’t doing me any good there on the streets….

Sometimes, I actually feel as if a lot of people in today’s world would react the same way as I did, if they did happen to accidentally find inner peace…. Hey, many of them most likely wouldn’t be able to recognize it anyway…. Today’s modern person lives under such pressure, with so many mental distractions from the internet, TV, radio, and now smart phones, they would find it hard, first, just to know they were in need of some inner peace, and second, what to do with it if they found it….. But, not me…. I happen to know there’s a good market for it on the street… the hard part is finding a sucker, and one of those comes along every few minutes, especially in the parts of town where I hang….

For now, though, shall we Pearl?….

“An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.” — Konrad Adenauer
_____________________________

Today’s Pearl was partially constructed ahead of time, due to an irresistible need to rant that snuck (that’s my new/old replacement for the just-plain-silly “sneaked”…..) up and struck me, right upside the head, of all places, all of a sudden, yesterday, just after noon…. Since the rant that spewed out onto the page at that time inarguably fulfills any possible requirements for length, by a factor of about, oh, three or four, I’ll just put together a bit of an old-school pearl here, of the random, harlequin style, which I’ve found to be the set of parameters that best fits the need for a fresh, yet well-balanced pearl that we have here today…. Balance, as we know, is the key, as is timing…. hence, I give you this fine little grouping, freshly picked from only the finest of oysters…..

“There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.” — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), “Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant”

“Truth and falsehood are both whatever, and simultaneously not so, rather than not.” — Tim Larkin, March 31, 1993

“Faith does not offer the least support for proof of truth.” — Nietzsche

“I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.” — Thomas Jefferson

“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.” — Agnes Repplier

“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.” — Albert Einstein

“There is the state religion of mindless consumerism, which is the real message of all advertisements. The state religion is more powerful than any other force; the wise person practices patience and stealth. The wise person creates images that can be unpacked to deliver other messages.” — Jon Carroll, S. F. Chronicle, March 7, 1996

Aha! I see that it turned out to be a Miss Manners pearl, giving advice on how to live with honor, dignity, and a bit of good, clean fun, taking pot shots at political and/or religious pundits at every opportunity….
_____________________________

There is just something charming and attractive to my mind about the image that Li Po presents, historically…. An amiable, brilliant, always drunk poet, wandering around the Chinese countryside, observing the world in his own inebriated way, composing poems from the depths of his genius, poems describing the beauty he saw, in all he saw, for the rest of us to enjoy…. which we have, for the past thirteen hundred years, or more…. Even if he lived a life completely different than the stories one hears, it wouldn’t matter, for his poetry is timeless….

Alone And Drinking Under The Moon

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,
and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon
accompanies me; then if I
dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are
friends I can always count on
these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way.

~~ Li Po ~~

_____________________________

I intended to write a rant about the following article (see link below….), about how the White House has been yanking the chain of the American people over this whole issue right from the start of the problem, when Eric Snowden first released the information he took from the NSA (an act of sublime courage, with full knowledge of how he was affecting his life, destined to be labeled a criminal by his own country, in turn itself engaged in criminal acts, on a much larger scale than his alleged theft……), thereby embarrassing the administration….. THAT is the offense for which they cannot forgive him, as it undermines their license to lie with impunity….

I like to follow up on any intentions that I believe to be righteous in nature, so, let’s rant….. Mr. Snowden’s release of information, reportedly taken from his former employer, the NSA, is, because of the nature of the information, in my mind, and the minds of many Americans, not an act of treason against the people of this country. Rather, it was an act I believe to have been one of high patriotism, based on his concern over what the government was doing to normal people like him…. I would love to see him get the civilian equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, though I know it will never happen….

So, how does the administration respond when his act of courage brought on an outcry of indignation and anger, from the public, from Congress, from other countries and their leaders? They promised to form a committee, to “review the signals intelligence policies” that they have been using SINCE 2008! Ooh, boy, that’s going to resolve the issue, isn’t it? A committee…. Well, I suppose it COULD be considered a start toward a resolution… except that a committee, no matter what it finds, has no legal binding on the administration’s actions….

This committee was picked by that administration, no doubt with the intent of hearing a favorable report, but, instead, the group managed to come up with a report that showed, essentially, that A) they lied, and continue to lie B) they exceeded their authority and C) they need to consider stopping…. However, since the administration PICKED them, they aren’t bound by any law to follow their recommendations…. an event whose unlikeliness to have EVER occurred approaches the infinite…. Face it, ffolkes, they never meant to stop, or in any way discontinue what they’ve been doing without compunction for five years now….

Ffolkes, this administration, which promised to be the “most transparent ever” has been spying, much more than they want to admit, for the entire time they’ve been in office… This, despite the clear mandate by the American people that they wanted a “change” from the policies of clandestine activities and secrecy that characterized the previous administrations, run by a former CIA director, and his son….

Instead, they not only adopted the Bush policies on spying, they increased them tenfold, all by having the NDAA, the underlying authorizing document for the spying, signed as an executive order, on New Year’s Eve, with Congress recessed, and the nation drunk, at the behest of the retailers…. all without the authorization of Congress, or the courts, or the voters…. just the POTUS and the now unassailable, hidden commanders of the NSA, the Cyber Command, and the ever present CIA….

They won’t discuss any leniency or immunity for Snowden, not when they won’t even ADMIT they’ve done anything wrong…. see the language used by the White House yesterday, when it met with all the leaders of the tech giant companies who have been the biggest victims (in terms of amount of data stolen) of the spying…. There was no admission at all of any wrongdoing on their part, or that they may have gone too far…. none. They don’t intend to do anything but stonewall this, and hope the public will forget, as is the usual case…. Well, not this time, not if I can help it…. I’m really pissed off at all of this, and am really tired of having the people in whom I expect a high standard of behavior, as the recipient of my trust as indicated by my vote, essentially and regularly, piss on my trust….

By now, I suppose, I should know better than to place ANY trust in ANYONE running for an office, but, I had hopes during the last two elections, that perhaps things might just have a chance to change for the better…. I have to say, however, that hope has been pretty thoroughly dashed by the revelations of the past three or four years, more so by the reaction of the administration, than by any of the revelations themselves…. The denial, the refusal to accept responsibility, the repeated and ever-increasing lies, the stubborn refusal to see or accept the public’s displeasure and disgust at their actions, all of this has been more disturbing than the actual information presented…. because it is ALL making them look even guiltier than we know they are, yet they don’t seem to care….

There is a simple reason, ffolkes…. and I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell y’all…. It doesn’t matter… They will do what they will, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it, because WE ALREADY GAVE THEM THE POWER…. and, guess what? They won’t be giving it back, that’s for sure and for certain…. not without a severe struggle…..

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/White-House-task-force-urges-limit-on-NSA-snooping-5074958.php

If y’all don’t see, from the tone and words used by the White House, that they know they’ve got the upper hand, then, I encourage you to go back to wherever you have the little piece of sand, where you have the hole in which you prefer to hide your head in the presence of danger, and put your head in there for a good long while…. Things out here in the real world aren’t bound to change, except to follow the course away from liberty, as it has been doing for some time now, all with the approval of the most ignorant set of voters to ever grace a planet…..

Okay, so, today, you get a two-fer…. The above rant was based on the article, but, the thoughts and some of the evidence isn’t new; it’s old, like I’m getting to be, with some reluctance, but hopefully, some dignified acceptance for the process, if not the end results…. where was I? Oh, right…. the following rant is constructed upon the same base, but using the thoughts going through my head in July of this year…. I had intended to use them to support the article, but, that seems to have stimulated its own support, so, just view this as “more thoughts on the same subject”….

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

“One of the merits of democracy is quite obvious: it is perhaps the most charming form of government ever devised by man. The reason is not far to seek. It is based on propositions that are palpably not true — and what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true.” — H. L. Mencken

With this statement, Mr. Mencken has put his finger on the pulse of America, that is for certain. It goes a long way toward explaining why so many people in this country are so willing to believe the outright, egregious lies that are told to them every single day by the officials they elect every year at the polls that characterize our alleged republic…. They do lie, you know, with almost every statement that comes out of their mouths….

They begin with the most important lie they tell, from which all the others spring, and that is the lie they tell when they tell you that they want to be elected so they can work for YOU! Each and every politician learns early in their career, if they are at all to be successful, they MUST portray themselves as a public-spirited, honest, and tireless worker whose only purpose is to make life better for their constituents….

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth…. NONE of them are at all concerned with any of that nonsense; they are there to carry out their own agenda, which has very little to do with what is good for the general run of mankind…. No, they are there to serve the interests of the men and women who pay them, those lobbyists and special interest representatives who run the businesses of the corporate masters.

The people on the street cannot provide them with the perks, or the cash, that the clandestine rulers are able to come up with, other than peripherally, by electing them in the first place…. Once elected, their true colors come out into the light of day, and it can be easily seen how their actions are never congruent with what they have promised to the people who elected them….

It’s all about power and money to these folks, not service. In my entire life of observing politics around the world, I have yet to see a single elected official who could be shown to be honest, not at the national level. The one who came the closest was Jimmy Carter, and his presidency was marked by how little got done, because he was so honest that the true politicians in Congress blocked every reform he tried to institute during his time in office. His actions during that time showed him to be the exception to the usual rule for politicians, which is why, I believe, he was so ineffective as a legislator….

“Invest in America — Buy Japan!”– Smart Bee

Other than Carter, I have seen concrete proof that EVERY President of this country has lied to the American people, not just once or twice, but continuously, about nearly everything. Time and time again, public outcries are heard or seen in the news about some new revelation regarding something some politician lied about, just like it is breaking news or something, when it is actually the normal state of affairs….

I don’t know why it is, but if a man on a TV set, wearing a suit and tie, makes a statement to the public, the general public will believe it, sometimes fanatically, without ever examining it for whether or not it is true…. Then, when it turns out they were lied to, they get all upset and vocalize their displeasure, never once admitting it was their own cupidity that allowed the lie to occur in the first place…. It makes me wonder what happened to people in this country, to make them go soft in the head….

“Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.” — Anton Chekhov

Did you ever notice how many politicians were lawyers, first? Most of them, as it turns out, for the simple reason that learning to be a lawyer gives a politician two advantageous types of training…. One advantage is that law school teaches the student how to lie in every imaginable way, in order to ascertain which kinds of lies are legal…. The other advantage is their primary motivation….

If asked, a very large percentage of lawyers will tell you their reason for becoming a barrister in the first place is that it is a good way to get rich, (without mentioning, of course, that this is true only as long as one doesn’t give a shit about other people, and what that might do to them). In other words, they make their money by taking advantage of people’s misery, holding them as hostages against their own destiny, in order to gain resources, i.e. money, and its sidekick, power….

Then the lawyers realize that their training is perfect for politics…. The ability to lie with facility comes in very handy to anyone who wants to be in the public eye, as that is how one gets elected in the first place…. Tell people what they want to hear, and they will vote for you, every time, coming back to the same trough to eat, even though they get screwed, time after time…. Having the facility to ignore what happens to others, due to their own actions, is the other skill so important to the political set, and the training one receives as a lawyer fits right into that category….

“Watching the democratic party in a presidential contest is like watching a washing machine with a defective bearing: It starts up smoothly enough, but soon, it begins to wobble and shake, jumping violently from place to place, until it tears itself to pieces, spewing dirty laundry all over the room.” – Smart Bee

Some people will say that there ARE some good lawyers out there, and I won’t argue that…. but, they’re still lawyers, not politicians, aren’t they? They’re doing what they can to help ffolkes find their way through the morass of our legal system to get what they need, even occasionally finding some justice…. But, they aren’t going further, and going into public service, are they? They’re still in place, where they can help, but, they are so few and far between, they are hard to find, and so are very busy, seldom having the time or resources to work against their less honest colleagues. Plus, they really are very few in number, as altruists seldom become lawyers in the first place….

I can see that this has evolved into a full scale rant, and we’ve just begun the day, so I’ll call a halt here. I often feel as if I’m preaching to the choir, anyway, when I go through this stuff again…. It’s all familiar material around here, so it isn’t as if I’m presenting new ideas for your examination…. No, this is all old stuff, and, sadly, doesn’t seem to ever create the outrage that I feel in very many other ffolkes…. which is too bad…. I forget who said that “if you keep on doing things the same ways as you always have, things will always be the way they’ve always been….”, but, they were absolutely correct…. We are on a path to our own destruction, clearly, but, nobody seems to care.

Nobody, that is, who seems able to DO anything about it, and they are the ones who will need to make the changes…. The people in authority over the rest of us are wearing blinders in this respect…. The idea that what they are doing is wrong, and will eventually kill us all, doesn’t fit into their world-view, so they won’t believe it, and will continue to refuse to make any of the changes needed to re-direct our steps onto a path less dangerous.

It is up to the rest of us to get it done, and that may entail overthrowing the current crop of rulers, either by the vote, or by the less agreeable option of using the necessary force, while making sure the new crop will act in OUR best interests, rather than their own…. If it does happen, it will be the first time in history, which is fine with me…. just as long as it is not the LAST time in history….

“… democracy is not something you believe in, or a place you hang your hat, but it’s something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles and falls apart.” — Abby Hoffman
_____________________________

Well, I seem to have a problem with stopping, once I get started on a rant, don’t I?…. Today, I even extended the guilty piece with an even longer supporting piece, that, despite its length, is of such good fit, I can’t bring myself to leave it out…. it just makes the whole thing complete. I can see, though, that some ffolkes may not get all the way through it, which is okay, just this once…. Next time, it will ALL be on the quiz….

Besides, what I wrote today is of the category that people really need to think more about, because if they don’t start paying attention to what I’m saying, they’re going to reap the rewards of the inattention they’ve been putting into their lives, in regards their beloved ruling class, and the degree to which they allow them to victimize the public without consequence….

And there I go, right back into the rant…. Let’s go proof, and see if this is ready to fly…. One thing is for sure…. nobody can accuse me of not getting it all out…. which, as we know, is exactly WHY I do this…. Better out than in, I always say…. But, they also say, say what you have to say, then, shut up… so, I’ll do that now, so nobody can say I can’t take advice…. 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

Manifest destiny has been a persistent delusion…..

Posted on December 19, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

You’ll have to (grunt…wheeze….) excuse the mess around here this, (oof…) morning; we had an incident during the night. Look out! Duck! Whew! That one almost got ya! Sorry ’bout that, I thought we’d gotten all of them, but, them little suckers is tricky, they is….(Snap! A fresh plastic garbage bag is unfurled for use….) What? What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m cleaning up after an attack by creatures of the night; what does it look like I’m doing? (Picks up a full garbage bag, dumps it out the window….) They showed up about 3:30 AM, when they knew I’d be asleep (damn, I just realized…. Now I’ll have to start randomizing my sleep patterns, if they’re going to be watching me again….), and tried to bust through the front door…..

It was touch and go at first; I admit it, we were caught off guard, almost enough to have lost the day, were it not for a bit of luck…. I swear, I was never so glad to see a vampire hunter as I was this morning….. I’ll also have to remember to ask him just why he so conveniently showed up here at that moment in time…. it seems a bit of a coincidence, but, we’ll see…. This one at least doesn’t have the look of a council lackey about him, nor does he stink of money…. and he was an adept killer, so, I’ll listen to him, to see how these “coincidences” happened to come together so “conveniently”….

Well, I’d ask him, if he were really here, or if I were interested in carrying on with this beginning to a story, but….. it was mostly just an exercise, to get the juices flowing, to pull y’all into the web of my interest, and hold you here while I worked my wiles upon your unsuspecting minds…. Is it working? God, I hope so…. something has to work! I’m getting pretty tired of meandering and blathering every morning, and the occasional outburst of actual fictional writing is too occasional to count on each day. I’d find and stick to a template, but, that never has worked very well for me… it works okay for the closing lines, but, here at the start, I need more…

Exactly what that ‘more’ might be remains a mystery to me, and therefore, to you as well…. I know, it’s probably just as hard on y’all as it is on me, but, I really don’t see how, as I suffer a daily dose of fear, followed by panic, followed by an outburst of writing, followed by depression…. Well, no, that’s not accurate, either…. it’s not that simple, nor that straight-forward…. In fact, I’m not sure just WHAT it is, which is probably the root of the whole issue…. If I knew what should be here, then I’d put it here… As it is, I have to conduct a search each morning, and never know just what might happen…. Fun, at times, but mostly just a worry for me, until it’s done…

Why, look, I do believe it’s done again! How ’bout that? Here I was, all worried and full of angst, and I was getting it done the whole time…. Golly Gee, Mr. Wizard! That was fun! Can we do it again? No? But,….. oh, okay, we’ll just go on to today’s effort, and forget about the intro…. damn things, always giving me fits…. pshaw!

Shall we Pearl?…..

Hompu’wIj ghorlaH ‘oy’naQpu’ je naghpu’ ‘ach jiH mu’oy’laHbe’pongpu’ — Klingon phrase, roughly translated as: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.’ — Smart Bee
_____________________________

I wasn’t going to rant today, again, because I just don’t feel the correct degree of outrage to do it justice…. more’s the pity…. because they’re still at it out there in the world of politics, confusing the art of being an asshole with the governing process, and getting the dirt all over the rest of us…. I found this article, and it gave me a quote I couldn’t resist using… it will appear below the link, which leads to the article in it’s entirety….

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2013/12/17/silicon-valley-tech-leaders-to-obama-aggressively-reform-nsa/

“Today, the President and the Vice President met with executives from leading tech companies in the Roosevelt Room. The group discussed a number of issues of shared importance to the federal government and the tech sector, including the progress being made to improve performance and capacity issues with HeathCare.Gov. The President also announced that Kurt DelBene, who most recently served as president of the Microsoft Office Division, will succeed Jeff Zients as Senior Advisor to Secretary Sebelius who will lead our ongoing efforts to improve HealthCare.gov and the Health Insurance Marketplace starting this Wednesday. The group discussed the challenges surround federal IT procurement. The President made clear his continued focus on improving the way we deliver technology to maximize innovation, efficiency and customer service, and encouraged the CEOs to continue to share their ideas on how to do so. Finally, the group discussed the national security and economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures. This was an opportunity for the President to hear from CEOs directly as we near completion of our review of signals intelligence programs, building on the feedback we’ve received from the private sector in recent weeks and months. The President made clear his belief in an open, free, and innovative internet and listened to the group’s concerns and recommendations, and made clear that we will consider their input as well as the input of other outside stakeholders as we finalize our review of signals intelligence programs ”

This statement, the official press release by the White House in response to the meeting with the CEOs of the tech giants, disturbs me intensely, in many ways… as did the statement by the giant tech companies in a joint announcement of purpose, to wit: “We appreciated the opportunity to share directly with the President our principles on government surveillance that we released last week and we urge him to move aggressively on reform.”

Have you ever heard two more self-serving, mealy-mouthed, cowardly statements? These words were, supposedly, the best they could come up with, to discuss the most controversial issue that has been addressed in the past year? The White House’s statement is a masterful eye-fuck, that says NOTHING…. including the grammatical error created by a misspelling. It said NOTHING significant regarding the security breaches, not even to deny wrongdoing…. they pretty effectively ignored the whole question put to them, with one minor throwaway statement at the last line, that their “input” would be “considered”, after the President “listened to the group’s concerns”, along with the input of “outside stakeholders”…..

That last phrase is the most disturbing…. WHO are they referring to when they say “outside stakeholders”…. Does that refer to other countries, and the spying they’ve been doing on their leaders? Or is that US, the American public, on whom they’ve continued to spy and mine data, despite the obvious concerns the public has over this…. Are WE the ‘outside stakeholders’?….. Oh, right, we’re supposed to be soothed and reassured by their insistence that they are performing a “review of signals intelligence programs”…. Sure they are…. they’re also grooming that herd of pigs to fly, probably planning to have them take off from the White House lawn, I suppose….

These tech “giants” did NOT act in our best interests by making such a namby-pamby statement of purpose; they should have played hard ball with Obama…. but, he figures he’s got them over a barrel, because all he has to do is reveal how much those same companies have been cooperating with all the illegal, unconstitutional activities being carried on by our government, giving up the data before they were even asked to do so…. They only started making noise AFTER Mr. Snowden released all the stuff that is so embarrassing to the talking heads….

Yesterday, I mentioned how those who live life with less than the average amount of IQ points have a tendency to throw out the facts when they don’t fit the theory they favor…. and this is a perfect example of it…. The politicians in Washington aren’t mad because they were breaking the law; they’re mad because they got caught at it. They’re also still doing it, in spite of all the obvious disapproval from the public….They KNOW we don’t want them to do it, but,they know what is best for us, right? They believe that, so they just go on ignoring the Constitution, and taking away more and more of the civil rights we have heretofore enjoyed….. because nobody is stopping them, ffolkes….. We are, as I’ve said before, going to hell in a hand basket, and we have no one but ourselves to blame for it….

“Man is not disturbed about things, but by his opinion about things.” — Epictetus
_____________________________

This poem has long been one of my favorites, as it states exactly how I feel about the subject of discussion, i.e., honor, or, as they say in England, honour…. As with any true classical poem, no further adornment is necessary….

To Lucasta, Going To The Wars

Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee (Dear) so much,
Lov’d I not Honour more.

~~ Richard Lovelace ~~

_____________________________

Today’s rant, above the poem, got me going pretty good; I’m still full of the angst needed to pull it off with passion…. It just pisses me off SO MUCH when these people ABUSE the power that we give them when we elect them… It also pisses me off that we continue to elect them, time after time, when it has become so patently clear that NONE of them have our interests at heart…. NONE of them.

They’re all pursuing some personal agenda, often one that is only acceptable to a tiny portion of the public, but they don’t care, as long as they can continue to rob the public treasury at will, and not have to suffer any significant consequences for lying in public, for cheating their constituents, or for actively harming their own people…. In fact, they often get rewarded for just those things….

I’m so incensed at this point, I want to bite one of them…. which is always a good sign, telling me it’s time to start gathering pearls for an old-school format, to give me the space to pull myself down from the heights of black, hot, anger, back into the lower, calmer realms of cool reason…. Let’s see if Smart Bee can find something to ease me through this emotional crisis, once again….

“A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.” — Eric Hoffer

“The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.” — Cicero

“Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.” — Rousseau

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” — H. L. Mencken

“Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us: we regard every person whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows.” — Octavio Paz

“One of the most perverse things about the universe is that it doesn’t care what you believe.” — Smart Bee

The Journey is the Reward,
Not the Destination.

— Zen Koan

You gotta love when a plan comes together…. If, after considering the wisdom entailed in the first six aphorisms, you consider the last koan as an answer to the question, “How do I live a happy life?”, all will be well in your world, as it will be in mine…. Well, the odds are improved, at the very least….
_____________________________

Well, that was something of an ordeal…. let’s see how it turned out today…. I am reluctant, at this point, to make any hard and fast judgments as to quality, but, I can definitely pronounce this as done…. or finished, or whatever concluding description you’d care to use…. The point is, I’m done with it, so, it’s done…. See ya tomorrow…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid

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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That ghost just flattered Nadine!….

A delicate motif, in gold filigree….

Don’t pry, MacDuff, it’s clan business….

The magical life of Welsh budgies….

In the domain of the demons of democracy…..

I hear the death bell tolling…. it tolls not just for thee….

Squeeze the trigger, don’t yank on it….

As the black cat watches, the ritual begins….

Only the finest of hydrogenated motor oils served here….

Manifest destiny has been a persistent delusion…..

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