Tag Archives: Lazarus Long

Yak butter redux….

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Ffolkes,
Thwarted! WordPress’ New Post Page thwarted my attempt to post on Thursday, 12/13/12. Three separate times I went through all the necessary steps, hit the Publish button, and proceeded to watch the damn thing drop out every bit of material in the post, save the title. Nothing that I entered into the text entry box was sent to the page, so all that shows is the title, the categories, the comment section, and the buttons. Complete malfunction ensued, destroying, or at least, refusing my 1800 plus words and two pictures, including a new original poem, sending them off to somewhere in cyberspace, to be lost forever in the internet cloud. What a waste of effort…. temporary, if I can make it so….. nonetheless, wasted time is still wasted. I suppose it could be said to be more futile than wasted, to be fair….

The above, written soon after returning from the library yesterday, in two separate stages, is pure truth, sadly. I don’t do well with futility, all in all, and it’s hard to accept missing a day due to a WP technical glitch. I noted new interfaces and buttons yesterday, and recently, which may have messed with the system somehow…. Today’s post will prove the pudding, or banish it to the trash, as may be….

This paragraph begins the new day…. fresh, and full of promise, just like a new day should be. Let us hope that the sense of promise holds true long enough for at least one event of good note to occur; it sure would be nice to have some good news for a change…. It is hard to get too enthusiastic about the chance of that happening, though, given the past’s record of disappointment in that area. Murphy, may he rot in the lowest portion of hell, has been far too ubiquitous for any such luck….. In sooth, it is getting almost comical, and would be so, if it weren’t so real, and so important to me, and my quality of life….

There are signs of improvement along those lines, but rather than jinx things, I’ll just let that go with a mention, and just say I’m glad to see any kind of change in that direction, and hope for more…. So, I saved what I produced yesterday, to post today, so I’ll make good use of my time now, and start on the next Pearl, which I haven’t decided whether to post twice today, to make up, or to just skip a day, and move on…. I guess that will actually be determined by the WP page, and whether or not it will be publishing me at all…. I really do hate technical glitches…. it indicates poorly written code, and there’s no excuse for that, to my way of thinking…. But, then, I’ve never written code, so, who knows what is real?….

This intro section has turned into a daily proof, I guess, that there is no limit to how far I can, or will, meander when I’m just blathering like this. Of course, some of this one was spit out yesterday, so it really doesn’t count that way, but, hey, it all works for me, as it gets me to the diving portion of the program, which is where I like to be…. looking for a reason to write, some excuse to get all the stuff in my head out into the world, where it might do something other than just drive me bats…. Shall we Pearl?…..
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— Bother! said Pooh, as he fried Piglet for breakfast. — Smart Bee

(Piglet, I hear, made an ill-timed humorous comment about Pooh’s “hunny pot”…..)

Oh, my! Pooh’s dark side is showing again…. In previous posts, I’ve told y’all how I discovered that Winnie the Pooh wasn’t the innocent little Bear of Little Brain that most people know and love. For years, it seems, Pooh has led a dual existence, on the one side wandering the 100 Acre Forest with his friends, undergoing simple, instructive events where no one gets hurt badly, and no one cries for long. On the other hand, in his alternate universe, Pooh makes Darth Vader look like a Boy Scout, helping grannies across the road…..

I’m sorry if your illusions have been destroyed, but, I thought you should know, as I believe that Pooh uses his faux-innocent disguise to lure attractive young children into his sphere of influence, then corrupts them in any of a thousand time-tested ways, sending them on the path to perdition, and a lifetime of pain and misery…. the evil git…. Here then, are some examples of the kind of things Pooh has been up to recently, for your education and elucidation, so that you may be warned to guard your own progeny from the depredations to which they could conceivably fall prey, by becoming fond of this extremely evil creature…. The Bear of Little Brain, and Less Scruple…. (My comments appear in parentheses after the quoted text…. just like this…)

🙂

— Bother! said Pooh, as he nuked Iraq!

(Pooh’s first term as a mercenary came during the Kuwait conflict, indicating even then his willingness to use nuclear weapons, in contravention of all treaties….)

— Bother! said Pooh, as he lobbed a grenade at the intruder.

(The intruder was his neighbor, Mrs. Graham, bringing him some mail brought to her house by mistake….)

— Bother! said Pooh, as he ordered Mr. Worf to fire all phasers.

(The other ship had just agreed to lower its shield to negotiate….)

— Bother! said Pooh, as he put on the hockey mask and started the saw.

(Oh, you didn’t know? The idea for the Freddy movies, and the other massacre movies, came from one of Pooh’s home videos….)

— Bother! said Pooh, as Eeyore mounted him from behind.

(He only said “Bother” because he had just finished mounting Roo from behind, and was tired….)

Need I say more?….. Be warned, ffolkes…..
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Danny O’Dare

Danny O’Dare, the dancin’ bear,
Ran away from the County Fair,
Ran right up to my back stair
And thought he’d do some dancin’ there.
He started jumpin’ and skippin’ and kickin’,
He did a dance called the Funky Chicken,
He did the Polka, he did the Twist,
He bent himself into a pretzel like this.
He did the Dog and the Jitterbug,
He did the Jerk and the Bunny Hug.
He did the Waltz and the Boogaloo,
He did the Hokey-Pokey too.
He did the Bop and the Mashed Potata,
He did the Split and the See Ya Later.
And now he’s down upon one knee,
Bowin’ oh so charmingly,
And winkin’ and smilin’–it’s easy to see
Danny O’Dare wants to dance with me.

Shel Siverstein
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Since the election last month, the political scene has gone typically quiet, as the politicians all figure out how to make their newly shaped garments fit. The obligatory conflict between the White House and Congress trudges on toward the next subject of dire consequence, this time the tax structures inherited from Bush, and Medicare/Medicaid. As usual, the GOP wants to take all they can away from the weak and vulnerable, and give it to Wall Street, while the White House tries to cut a piece of that out for the middle class, and tries to protect the seniors. Meanwhile, the incipient erosion of rights being silently and stealthily taken from us citizens, by BOTH parties, goes on in the background, while everyone pretends they aren’t noticing….

So, any who, I just felt somewhat nostalgic for all the outrage and energy that gets bandied about during the election months, and thought it would be a good idea to put out some little reminders of how dishonest and egregiously avaricious ALL politicians are; even the ones you like are in office for their own reasons, not for your interests. Oh, they’ll tell y’all anything you want to hear, as long as you keep voting for them, but, mark my words, they will pursue their own agenda as soon as the election is over, guaranteed…. So, remember, these “jokes” about politicians and the like (preachers/priests and unscrupulous lawyers usually fall into that category in my mind….. Besides, these days a law degree is a required prerequisite for politicians who aim for high office….) exist for one simple reason…. they’re usually TRUE….. If not strictly so, there is ample evidence that they are based on true events….

“Crime must pay, or politicians wouldn’t seek re-election.” — Smart Bee

“When you’re around it all the time, you don’t notice it so much.” — Garrison Keillor, “Lake Wobegon Days”

“So many lawyers, so few bullets.” — Smart Bee

“Election time is that period when politicians get free speech mixed up with cheap talk.” — J. B. Kidd

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

(Oops, sorry, that one slipped by me…. but, then, it kind of fits, don’t you think? Okay, it can stay….)

“Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.” — Lt. Col. Ollie North

(I must apologize again…. Ollie wasn’t a politico, but he played one in real life. I thought it rather nice of him to share his expertise and wisdom with his co-conspirators like this….)

“I’m a fellow who bleeds every time a tree is cut down.” — Ronald Reagan, Fresno Bee, 4/28/66, while Governor

“If you’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all….” — Ronald Reagan, while President, recorded prior to a speech he made regarding proposed environmental legislation.

“California is proud to be the home of the freeway.” — Ronald Reagan

(And he was considered The Great Communicator?….. Sure he was…. He always communicated exactly what he wanted people to believe…. when he could remember what that was….)

“Before I begin, I’d like to recite the Lawyer’s Prayer: Lord, please let there be strife and misery among your people, Lest your servant starve…” — Clonezone takes on lawyers, from “Badger”

“Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.” — Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’s “Time Enough For Love”

Okay….. I will show mercy. Obviously, there is no shortage of jokes and general lamentations regarding these less than stellar members of society, and one begins to get a hint as to why they are so reviled among their peers. Experience is the only thing that such vituperation could spring from, and the deeper the well of that experience, the more evidence one accrues to support the accuracy of the indictment of the reputations involved. Or, more simply, where there is smoke, there is often fire…. not always, mind you, but, …. often…..
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“Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love.” — Robert Heinlein

I’m not sure why I included the last statement, even though I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. I guess it just felt like a good closing thought…. and I’d be right in that. So, before such simple elegance gets away from me…..  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

Kowabunga!

A simple five-body orbital computation….

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Ffolkes,
A blank slate is filled with promise, and it is the fortunate man, indeed, who can view the new day as such a slate. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that I feel fortunate today, and look forward to the day with pleasure. I’m even feeling positive about this morning’s Pearl, as it seems to be falling right into line with the sense of hopeful anticipation I feel; the screen, and the potential Pearl, was, until I began typing this, completely blank, and therefore, filled with possibilities….. Makes me want to jump up & holler “damn skippy!”

Of course, that entails the risk of tweaking my injury, causing worsening pain throughout the day, so we’ll leave out the jumping part, but keep the rest. It does feel good to wake up in a positive frame of mind, to be sure. So much so, it makes me sad, for all the days of late that have not been so blessed. (Side comment: Yow!, as Zippy would say, some mornings the coffee just really hits the right spot……) I’m going to need to be careful when I go into public…. people will think it strange to see me in this state, given my normal curmudgeonly appearance….

Hell, who knows, I might even shave to greet the day, an act I’ve not performed in, well, a long time, possibly years. Normally, I shave when I feel grubby, which can take a couple weeks, in the right bacheloric frame of mind. (Not sure if ‘bacheloric’ is a word, but it should be…) In my full-on old curmudgeon bachelor cloak, I’ve been known to frighten small children, and cause dogs to bark frenziedly, so it might be a real treat for the neighborhood….. Of course, it will confuse them no end to see me with a clean-shaven, smiling face, anyway, so what the heck….

I can hardly wait to go check out Smart Bee, to see what it has in store for today. Brilliant quotations on profound ideas from the greatest minds in history will literally fall into my lap for inclusion in today’s effort. If it all lives up to its promise, this will be a very shiny one indeed…. And, whatever the poetry section comes up with is bound to be a good one…… Shall we Pearl?….

“Not all birds can fly. What separates the fliers from the walkers is the ability to take off.” — Carl Sagan
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“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.  You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.  Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there.  The only difference is that there is no cat.” — Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio…

Ah, Albert…. I love Albert. I hold him in the highest esteem of anyone, alive or dead, of whom I am cognizant; believe me, that is very high esteem, indeed… We’ll not see his like again…. This quote shows one of the reasons why he was such an outstanding human being, aside from his status as the brightest genius of his time. In a few simple words, he makes a complex subject understandable for those whose minds pale in comparison to his own, yet without showing the least bit of condescension. Not to mention, some pretty good humor…. “the difference is that there is no cat.”  I laughed out loud, myself, as it is just so appropriate to the subject…..

This also demonstrates the power of his genius. He was able to look at common things in our universe, and see the physical implications of how it worked at its most basic level. He once was asked by a friend, as they walked along the beach, why he thought that sand was so strangely different when in differing amounts of water, i.e., on the ocean floor, fully drenched, it is loosely adherent, and the grains separate easily. When dry, it is also loose, and the grains do not stick together. But, at the ocean’s edge, it is hard, almost like concrete, and will form into any shape, and hold that shape until it dries out…..

Albert  paused, picked up a handful of wet sand, and gazed at it for a moment, then launched into what he thought was the reason, to wit: surface tension causes the different properties at the different levels of saturation. This, of course, is absolutely correct, and shows just how his mind almost automatically uses Occam’s Razor to narrow in on the most simple, and most correct, explanation for the question at hand. It is almost as if he was born with software for his organic computer/brain that the rest of us have never heard of, much less loaded onto our machines.

Albert Einstein, to me, is the most perfect example of how a human being can live with honor, integrity, and a deep love of both the physical universe, and for his fellow man. Every act in his life was carried out in a way that demonstrated his passion for living, and showed both the power of his intellect, the depth of his human compassion, and the steadfastness of his love for his fellows. I don’t think there is a better example in all of history to hold up for young people to admire…. Even without the genius which marked his inner life, his actions and statements all show that he lived a life of which anyone could be proud, and could do well to emulate…..
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Beauty crowds me till I die,
Beauty, mercy have on me!
But if I expire today,
Let it be in sight of thee.

~~ Emily Dickinson
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In the 17th century, Kikaku, one of the ten disciples of the great Japanese poet Basho, composed a haiku:

Take a pair of wings
From a dragonfly, you would
Make a pepper-pod.

Basho told Kikaku: “That’s not a haiku. You kill the dragonfly.”

Kikaku recomposed the lines:

Add a pair of wings
To a pepper-pod, you would
Make a dragonfly.

— Amal Naj, PEPPERS
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“Of all the things I’ve ever lost, I miss my mind the most.” — Smart Bee

Having spent the last three hours experiencing typus interruptus, while dealing with issues out in the Big Blue Room, I come back to find this as the first pearl to catch my eye. Such a sad lament, one I can identify with closely, as it parallels my own experience. I first lost my mind back when I was a teen, and have been misplacing it periodically ever since. The set of psychosocial circumstances that lead up to the actual misplacement are often somewhat bizarre, but, then, that could be said of both life in general, and my own in particular….

Brutha: “I mean about … what gods are … how gods came to exist.”

Barman: “Gods don’t like that sort of thing. We get that in here some nights, when someone’s had a few. Cosmic speculation about whether gods really exist. Next thing, there’s a bolt of lightning through the roof with a note wrapped around it saying ‘Yes, we do’ and a pair of sandals with smoke coming out. That sort of thing, it takes all the interest out of metaphysical speculation.” — Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods”

Terry Pratchett is very popular among hackers, among others, mainly for statements such as this, which I’ve included here because it gives the flavor, if not the actual texture, of what I’m trying to say here. This is a particularly apt metaphor for me, because I rail so much about the lack of rationality in religion, and the cupidity of those who choose to follow its precepts. In my way of looking at the Universe, or universe, if you prefer to be politically correct, if there are going to be gods, then they should act like gods, not like spoiled old men with odd ideas about, well, almost everything…. Most of the stuff that I was raised with in the Christian sect my parents chose to expose us to seemed to me to be the actions of someone that modern society would send for psychiatric treatment, not someone who either wanted, or needed, my worship….

“All authority is quite degrading.” — Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

When one couples the mistrust and disbelief, with which I view those points of dogma associated with Christianity, with this truism from the mind of Oscar, it helps to explain my own reason for that mistrust. The concept of God as espoused by those sects gives the ultimate authority to God, with the express implication that this authority extends to his representatives here on Earth, and THAT is ultimate degradation! Especially considering that those same representatives are supposed to also be considered as the ultimate authority on what God wants, or expects, from His creations.

You know, it just annoys me no end to capitalize the He, or His, when in reference to God, just for the sake of literary accuracy…. so, I’m not going to worry about it from now on, as I find the whole concept of a God who wants worship to be distasteful in the first place…. Just WANTING to be worshiped, to my mind, indicates that it is not deserved….

Any who, to get back to the  earthly reps of gods…. These charlatans, by the apparent sincerity of their own faith, and their skillfully enthusiastic words, all of which reinforce the underlying, inherent elitism, always manage to convince others that what they are spewing is the truth, and that they are indeed the voice of god, or that a book written by partisans is an unbiased account of reality.

To someone with my severe sensitivity to crap, this makes me itch, and has done so since I was about four years old, the age I first felt some doubts about the stories I was being told…. Even then, a lot of it tended to stretch my sense of rationality to the limit, and caused me to doubt the veracity of the tales we heard. Call me strange, it’s okay…. I’ve heard it before, from a LOT of Sunday School teachers…..

“Always store beer in a dark place.” — Lazarus Long

This kind of thinking is more along the lines of what I hold to be true, according to what I’ve observed in my life. It may seem a bit obscure, but this statement from Lazarus is one I’ve found to be one that grows larger the longer one considers all its implications, and all of its power as metaphor. And, if it has no other effect, it may help someone keep their beer in a drinkable state….. which I’ve found to be as important in the larger picture as just about anything else I can think of….

“It’s all there…. all there inside you already. Happiness, love, serenity, peace, all are waiting for us to discover them, right there where they have always been, inside us, abiding…..”  ~~ gigoid
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C’est bon! C’est un fait acompli! Boy, am I glad to finish this one…. It’s been a real experience this morning, and afternoon, what with trips to the pharmacy, surfing in Smart Bee, some rather convoluted reasoning and ranting, etc., I’m bushed…. It must be age-related fatigue, or perhaps just the normal daily letdown after completing the Pearl…. whatever, it’s done. I’m outta here…..  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

Kowabunga!

Save it all until the final tally…..

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Ffolkes,
One more down, for the count, and one more on deck for full waiting modality. Each day that passes without hearing from Social Security adds just a bit more fuel to the already huge pile of it waiting to ignite my ire into a full-fledged tirade. Actually, I’m not sure what is keeping it from setting itself off, as I have more than enough anger built up to supply the necessary heat.

I know I’m dealing with a federal/state agency (it’s a weird system…. apparently the state has an agency that decides for the federal government who is and who is not disabled, according to some arcane set of standards, none of which are known to the public. This agency claims it is so busy, it is 140+ days behind in its work, and continuing to fall further behind each day….), but it really shouldn’t be an automatic assumption that they are inefficient, even if they are. And, they are…. extremely…..

This may have to do, of course, with their incredible lack of efficiency at almost every level in the department. I was told, on the 14th of October, that the submitted reports on my functioning level had been sent to doctors for their review, but that any decision would be held until receiving the psyche report from the psychologist they sent me to on November 8. Well, that was done, and according to the psychologist, they have had his report now for at least two and a half weeks; it was the last one they were waiting on before making a decision. Well, no decision thus far, and no answer, apparently, since I asked my lawyer’s office to call them and request a time frame. It is getting close to my wanting to take some personal action…. SIGH…. I am a patient man, but they are testing that patience to the extreme…..

Ah well, I suppose I’d best find some other form of recreation for the day, as a rant against SS is not only futile, but somewhat nauseating to write, as it creates bile having to just keep their characteristics in mind, and the longer one rants, the more sick one feels, not from the work, but from having to deal with SS at all. For an agency that is supposed to take care of senior citizens, it certainly puts them through a lot of shit. I’ll leave it at that for the time being, and try to refocus on something else….

How about the weather, eh? Pretty confusing, to say the least…. Summer weather all the way through November, then deep winter weather pattern, skipping past autumn completely. The leaves are beautiful in their colors, finally, while the weather itself has turned cold and wet, common for February, not necessarily November/December, though we do get some rain in the fall some years. Just not like this, one storm after another, in a very winter-like pattern.

It all goes to show that all the shouting and worry about global warming is not a false alarm, as weather patterns all over the world are showing signs of breaking down the old stable, predictable patterns, and showing veritable waves of unusual events. It is only going to get stranger, ffolkes, so you may as well gird your grids for a big one….

Okay, we’ve touched all the salient points that are required in an intro, and probably went way too far, again…. Oh, well…. Such is life, or as the French are fond of saying, c’est la vie, which, translated precisely, means, “such is life”….    🙂     Shall we Pearl?…..
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Where will you spend eternity? Heaven or Hell? — found in Smart Bee, most likely copied from some Christian Sunday School lesson, or perhaps some preacher’s sermon…. And, definitely used as an opening line by any number of sidewalk preachers….

This will be a relatively short pearl, just to take a moment to point out the kind of insidious manipulation that is the common habit of most preachers (as previously defined….). First, let’s examine the first sentence…. Where will you spend eternity?  Eternity? Eternity? Who mentioned eternity? Actually, I had no intention of going there at all, so asking me this question is rather silly to begin with. Eternity is a very, very long time, and I’m not sure I really want to spend my time sitting there, in either of the given choices…. Moreover, who says that, a) I’m going there, or b) you’re going there, or c) we have to decide? I didn’t see that in my manual…..

So, they want to know where I’ll spend eternity…. as if it is their business what I do. Even if it were any of their business, why should I answer? Is it mandatory now to suffer fools? I don’t get these people who insist on proselytizing their religions. They seem to believe that their piety, or their status as believers, gives them the right to throw out all standards of public politeness, and act as if they are entitled to accost anyone they choose, to demand answers to ridiculously biased questions, and generally make nuisances of themselves. As if it isn’t rude enough to try to engage perfect strangers in order to manipulate them, they also will solicit money or time for their cause, showing no sense of shame whatsoever…..

If they are insistent enough to badger us into engaging with them with their intrusive questions regarding their beliefs, (which is the point…. they aren’t interested in YOUR beliefs at all, they only want to force theirs onto you….), then you get hit with the second part…. Heaven, or Hell…. I have to admit, sometimes, just for fun, I tell them the truth…. that I’d much rather spend the time in Hell, where all the independent ffolkes with a measurable sense of humor go to spend eternity, than to have to spend that amount of time listening to their prattle and carrying on about how grand things are in Heaven… what a massive bore!…. Of course, I tell them, that is assuming there is any truth at all to the proposition that going to either place is really what happens, something for which there is no evidence at all….

Smart Bee shows me a quote occasionally that says “If I had property in Texas and in Hell, I’d probably live in Hell, and rent the place in Texas.”, but I forget who said it. Nevertheless, it is closer to what I feel than any other quote I’ve found on this particular subject. I know this will come as a bit of a disappointment to my older relatives, (those valiant few that remain….) and any Christians who are my friends (there ARE some who aren’t entirely hidebound….), but, they’re used to me by now. For any others who may find these comments to be offensive, well, oops, too bad, so sad….. Around here we deal only in the truth, (as I perceive it…. it’s only fair, since it’s my blog…..) and we don’t worry a lot about where the chips may fall….

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: “Of course it is none of my business but–” is to place a period after the word “but.” Don’t use excessive force in supplying such moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.  — Lazarus Long
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Ode To Psyche

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?
I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:

Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!

O latest born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Ph{oe}be’s sapphire-region’d star,
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
Nor altar heap’d with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir’d
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir’d.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!

John Keats
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“Love is that state where the happiness and well-being of another person is more important than your own.” — Robert A. Heinlein

There are some who say that love, ungiven, can wither and die. I don’t agree with that, unless they are speaking of a different kind of love than what I understand. What Bob Heinlein says above is as close a definition that I have ever seen, for a word that everyone seems to define differently, yet believe that they alone know its meaning, while still trying to share it with someone else. For me, true love, once given, never dies. It may become shriveled and old, if neglected or rejected, but it doesn’t die completely. Not in me, anyway…. and I’m the only one I can really speak for, aren’t I? Yes……

Another question that seems unanswered to anyone’s satisfaction is the one raised by Tom Robbins in his book, “Skinny Legs and All”, which asks, “How do you make Love stay?” Again, to me, this is a critical piece of information, and one that I’ve yet to find an answer to, outside the evidence of my own family and friends. With a woman, I have never been able to experience having one remain stable in the relationship, instead choosing to sever acquaintance at some point, and live their life without me. There are, of course, many reasons that could be ascribed for those occasions, but, in my perception, they all boil down to the fact that I was not the one who chose to end the relationship, and I didn’t know exactly what I’d done to cause the other person to choose as they did….

Sure, I can make guesses, but, mostly, after much consideration, I found that it came down to THEIR issues that made them choose their path, and it didn’t have anything to do with what I did, or didn’t do; that was merely the convenient excuse, and easier for them than admitting their own denial of feeling, or taking responsibility for their choice. In essence, they lied, to themselves, and to me. Which, it could be said, is all for the best for me, in the long run…. At least I don’t have to live with lies, as apparently I was for a long time…. Love really is blind, when it is real…

“I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.” — H. L. Mencken

By predisposition of nature, and by experience of my family life as a child, I believe in long-term, loving relationships, where each party is fully engaged in living their life in tandem with another, and has no doubts about that choice. I’ve witnessed many such, as well as the opposite, and don’t feel as if modern culture is such that it is no longer possible to maintain such a relationship; the only factor that matters in the end is the love that the two feel for each other, and what they are willing to do to keep that love, and to nurture its existence for as long as life endures.

Old as I am, I’m still looking for that kind of honest commitment, and have not given up hope of finding a woman who feels the same way….. I guess I should apply some of the skills at waiting that I’ve developed in my quest for SS benefits to the search for love…. and in some ways, I have, I’d say. I’m still here, and still looking, so that’s something, isn’t it?….

“The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.” — George Santayana (1863-1952)
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I’m not sure how to take this one….. It seems okay, but…. I can’t seem to put my finger on it, but it doesn’t seem quite finished somehow. Ah well, I’ve been over it enough times now that I’m sure that whatever isn’t there will remain a mystery…. I can’t find it (logical, I suppose, as it isn’t there…. ). There seems to be enough to call it a Pearl, once the poem is in place, so I’m going to let if fly…. Stick a fork in me, I’m done…..   Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

gigoid

Dozer

On the rooftop, stealing wax…..

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Ffolkes,
Oddly enough, time continues to pass, whether or not I care to acknowledge it or not. Of course, that has always been true, but I never really thought it deserved comment before now. Why now, you ask? Hell, I don’t know…. I am in the dark probably half the time, or more, when I’m writing anything, so why should this morning be any different? Maybe it’s because time seems to be passing more noticeably today; kind of like the stubble on one’s chin, you only notice it after a couple of days, when it achieves just that right state for scratching an itch on the hand…. and, if this is the kind of material we have to work with all day, I resign….

Whoops…. I can’t do that; it’s my blog. Well, I can sure complain about the material, then. But, I won’t, because that would be just too self-serving, and obvious; I’m already skirting the edge of reality by writing like this, just as if I were on a sail boat, tacking into the wind, instead of sitting in my lonely garret, feeling my artistic angst, and trying to convince y’all I’m a writer….. Fantasy abounds everywhere, n’est pas?….. It’s no doubt a good thing I don’t have to depend on my writing to support myself right now, or I’d definitely starve….

Of course, starving is still an issue, at least part of the time, but one that I refuse to worry about until it is imminent. I have enough to eat for the rest of this month, and that is far more than many folks who are my age, and in my somewhat precarious financial position. When I am feeling sorry for myself, I just think about how much worse it could be, and feel thankful for the friends I have, who have already proved that they won’t allow me to hit rock bottom without them for company. So, as can be seen, I am indeed, in reality, a very rich man….

“A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” ~~ Smart Bee

Once more, I’ve managed to blither and dally sufficiently to make up a four-paragraph intro section, all without ever saying anything meaningful, or even entertaining, I’m sure…. It’s getting to be pretty old hat, all things considered…. Besides, it’s much simpler than trying to come up with something worth the effort, just to get to where we will end up anyway…. Hmmm….. Did I just say that? Does it mean anything? I’m confused, which, considering where we are in today’s program, is probably not a good thing… But, here I am, just as real as a hive of bees living in my head….. Shall we Pearl? It may be the only thing that can save us…..
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“Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe.” — W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938

Funny, isn’t it? Whenever anyone, such as Mr. Maugham in this instance, says something that is a core truth, it sounds rather rude…. or, will be said to be so by those hearing it, because it speaks so close to home. It might be said that it is fortunate for Man that he has an imagination with which he can make believe whatever he likes, otherwise he could not survive. I’m not sure what it says about the universe to say that acting in such a selfish way would be more successful than acting in a more righteous manner, but I’m sure it’s not a good recommendation. I suppose it’s best to say the universe doesn’t give a damn one way or another, and only the results count at the final reckoning…. A shame, too….

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anais Nin

Of course, the reckoning may not take the form that most folks would believe will happen…. Actually, that uncertainty is a given, since it hasn’t happened yet, and nobody at all really has any knowledge of what MIGHT happen, or whether we ever will have to justify ourselves to some reckoning agency/entity. There is, in reality, no evidence at all to be found that really says anything concrete about the subject; the future just doesn’t yield well to prescience, much as some folks would like you to believe it does. I’m pretty certain myself that I don’t WANT to know what’s coming, beyond some of my own concerns regarding events to come; those are related to human agencies, and have no bearing on this subject, anyway. The rest of it I can wait for…. knowing would spoil the surprise, too…. Who doesn’t like surprises?….  🙂  Well, some surprises….

“It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.” — The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Silly as it sounds, this statement fits what I am saying here…. which, as I’m sure you noticed, is still a bit unclear. To put it most simply, I’m trying to say what philosophers have been saying for so many years it is useless to count them, to wit: Selfishness isn’t going to work as a successful primary motivation for determining what we do, or what happens to us, in this universe. Period. It isn’t working, and it has never worked, for anyone except those who live by it, and then only in the short run of their life. In the long run, the universe, and truth, will assert itself, in all its harsh and unforgiving reality, and nothing we do will be capable of changing it. I’m no seer, but that much is obvious, given the state of the world, and the intransigence of its current inhabitants. All it takes to make such a prediction is an understanding of basic physics, which, in spite of our increasing understanding of its natural laws, does not allow us to make editorial changes in the way they work….  Hence, just potatoes won’t solve the problem….

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

Albert is correct, again…. We are all in this together, and only by the efforts of all of us can we ever hope to survive our own foolishness. There is no other way to say it, and no better time to make the decisions we need to make. Soon enough, those decisions will be out of our hands; by not changing, the decisions are made for us…. and I’m pretty sure nobody will be happy with the consequences…. Of course, I’m a cynic, sometimes to my chagrin…. It’s a good thing I’m also an optimist…. We are right less often, but we have more fun……

“If you never assume importance you never lose it.” — Lao-tzu
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If you were coming in the fall,
I’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spum,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I’d count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

~~ Emily Dickinson
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I first read a Robert Heinlein novel when I was about 10 years old. Then, when about 11, I read his masterpiece work, Stranger In a Strange Land, and my mind was forever changed. His characters were real to me, and the words they spoke were filled with Meaning and Truth, capitalization required. Over time, he has continued to be my favorite author, and I was saddened beyond measure when he passed on, as was the entire Science Fiction world of readers and authors (I’m sure his editors and publishers were also saddened, but for different reasons, the ghouls…). He was considered, by all of SF fandom and all the other writers, to be the Grand Master of the genre, and deserved every bit of praise he garnered in his lifetime.

His character, Lazarus Long, continues to be my favorite of all his protagonists, though it is a close race with Miss Friday…. Lazarus’ character is one that gave Mr. Heinlein unlimited scope for the wisdom he wished to impart to his readers. At the beginning of the book, Time Enough For Love, Lazarus has just reached the age of approximately 2600 years, having been born in 1912, with that age somewhat skewed by some travel through hyperspace, which does funny stuff to Time. But, as near as he can remember, he has survived through all those centuries, and, in the course of the book’s plot, agrees to share some of the wisdom he has collected over the years, in the form of his Notebooks of Lazarus Long, a short chapter in Time Enough for Love. Here are a few of the most cogent aphorisms in the Notebooks; all of them are used by me on a daily basis, if not more often, and one can do no better than to keep them in the forefront of their mind, to ward off the insanity the world can foist upon us with no notice…..

“Beware of the “Black Swan” fallacy.  Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out of it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones.  If you fail to remember this, it can trip you – with perfect logic.  The designers of the earliest computers called this the “Gigo Law”, i.e. “garbage in, garbage out”.  Inductive logic is MUCH more difficult – but can produce new truths.” — Lazarus Long

“Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.” — Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’s “Time Enough For Love”

“The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: “Of course it is none of my business, but –” is to place a period after the word “but.” Don’t use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.” — Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’s “Time Enough For Love”

“One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.” — Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love

“A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.” ~~ from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

“If you don’t like yourself, you can’t like other people.”~~ from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

“Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don’t have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.” — Katharine Graham
(Okay, not Lazarus, but, it’s one he might have said, perhaps in the character of Lorelei, or Lapis Lazuli, his cloned twin sisters, had he/she/they thought about it…. )

“Always store beer in a dark place.” ~~ from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”~~ from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

That’s enough for one day; his ideas are not as simple as they may appear at first read, and should be absorbed only after considerable rumination over their meaning…. like any chocolate for the soul, it needs to be thoroughly mixed into the milk….   🙂
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Another NTS result, making it consecutive. There’s a word…. a good word. Solid, descriptive, precise in meaning, yet with built in possibilities of growth…. I know, I know, I’m a strange guy…. Sorry, got distracted. Any who, I’m content with this Pearl, and will be posting it as soon as I decide where to do so…. Rain happening here, so logistics are crucial…. I hope you enjoy today’s effort, scattershot as it is…..  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Forays into alternate unreality….

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Ffolkes,
It is now the Ides of November, and the news is reverting to its pre-election year format, which includes, of course, a great deal of stuff that means nothing, other than to draw the attention of the folks who watch it to wherever there is something new to sell. The kind of reports that tend to stimulate my outrage, supplying the fuel to rant, will be buried on page three and four, rather than right up there for all to see, which makes it hard for those of us limited in our access to the Net news outlets.

For the rest of this month, it will be hard for me to send out the daily email via gmail, as I’ll be posting most often from the library, and my gmail still refuses to function there. So, for those who receive this daily Pearl via email as your primary source for my drivel, please be aware that each will be posted online, at http://www.gigoid.me  (provided I get my domain name renewed in time…. gonna be close….) If you don’t get one in your inbox by about 2 PM or so, then go look online, and you should find it there….. If not, then I’ve missed a day, and am probably at home, curled up in bed, with enough pain to prevent a trip to the library. SIGH…. So far, so good, and I’m doing my best to see that doesn’t happen….

Now that the housekeeping is out of the way, I would guess it would be a good thing to go for a dive. I never know what Smart Bee will be like on a daily basis; it’s frustrating, but it’s reality, so whattya gonna do?…… This copy of SB is pretty new, only installed last weekend, and has been polite and helpful thus far, but, with all the Zippy and Pooh quotes in there, it tends to corrupt itself periodically, so I have to keep a sharp eye on it in that respect. When it gets a wild hair, it can frustrate me for hours before I tip to what it is doing…. Ah well, y’all probably don’t care what foibles are involved in the actual formation of one of these pieces, so, rather than continue to bore you senseless (not good to have insensible readers lying about…..) we’ll be off into the wilds of my inner mind…. Shall we Pearl?…..

“If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re missing the joke.” ~~ Smart Bee
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“Timing is everything. In everything.” ~~ gigoid, paraphrasing many different authors, all of whom agree that, well, timing, in everything, is everything. Not to belabor the point or anything….

In the instances of cooking, fighting, any sport I’ve ever played, learning, and love, I can personally vouch for the absolute truth of this assertion. (Actually, almost anything works here as example, but even I have to limit how many points I try to make at once…..) Timing is the difference between rubber, shoe leather, and heaven, when it comes to things such as scallops, or any seafood. And the difference between a 3-minute egg, and a five minute egg, can be startling. I won’t mention at all that, without timing, such dishes as souffle’s would be completely impossible…. In fighting, obviously, timing  can mean the difference between a trophy and a stay in the hospital, or worse. There is a vast and important difference between being fast enough to block a punch, and missing it, a difference that registers itself firmly, usually on some delicate part of our physique….

Anyone who has played baseball, basketball, football, volleyball, handball, racquetball, ping pong, tennis, cricket, golf, hockey, rugby, or any other sort of sport knows how important timing is in the playing and the outcome of a game. (Don’t forget poker, or Parcheesi, either…..) To anchor that thought, just think about “balls”…. their shape, their size, how they bounce, or fly, all play a part in how we end up chasing them around. The physical skills, and the timing, for catching a football out of the air are much different than how one tries to catch a baseball. And the skills of ping pong differ hugely from those involved in golf, even though the two balls are of the same approximate size.

In learning, one must be where the information is, and be open to receiving it, before it can be acquired, in certain instances, and timing can be a crucial factor in achieving that end. Arriving late to a lecture means lost effort, as does not arriving at all…. timing is everything….

I don’t think I need to enumerate the number of ways that timing can have an affect on love; we all have had our own personal experiences that, no doubt, taught us that lesson already. You can thank that assumption on my part for saving you from what could have conceivably become a never-ending tale….. Whew! Lucky you!…..

Achieving mastery of the skills involved in any of the above mentioned pastimes requires experience over time, and the learning of all the separate ways that timing is important to each separate activity within the sphere of the craft. It is not a simple task, nor should it be. It requires attention, and concentration, and a willingness to admit one’s own inabilities, in order to acquire the skills necessary to mastery. Once these skills, and the sense of timing necessary to their implementation, are learned, then one can accomplish things that would otherwise be impossible, or merely mundane…..

“It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another – but which one?  Differences are crucial.” — Lazarus Long

Lazarus gives us here an adjunctive concept to that of timing; to know the proper time for each act, learning and knowing the differences between things involved can be critical. Think, for example, of the difference in the two balls used above, ping pong and golf; merely dropping one on a hard surface will demonstrate the vast difference in the behavior of each type. The sound, the bounce, the capture in the hand, all are completely diverse, in spite of the close resemblance of the two in size and shape…..

For this type of knowledge to be obtained, it must first be admitted that one does not know; only then is the mind open to receiving the instruction needed to add such skills to our tool bag. In addition, one learns that close attention to details is important in any field; as Lazarus so aptly  points out, the answer to the question of WHICH horse is faster can affect our lives heavily, if one is betting on them. Noting that one is limping, or carrying a heavier load, can mean the difference between celebration and sorrow, not to mention a lighter wallet…..

Life on this planet is wondrous indeed, and our part in that wonder is one of great diversity. We can live in such a way as to make ourselves, and everything around us, stronger, smarter, and more content with life…. or, we can live such that every step is uphill, and every act brings us pain or misery. Learning how timing, and attention to detail, can be of service to us are important lessons to be learned, whether we know it or not…. Me, I prefer knowing stuff like this, because it sure makes life easier, and more pleasant, overall…. and it’s much better than the misery that accompanies the fact of NOT knowing such skills…..

“One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs — but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.” — Professor Charles P. Issawi
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Remembrance

To what can our life on earth be likened?
To a flock of geese,
alighting on the snow.
Sometimes leaving a trace of their passage.

Su Tung-po
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Today’s search for appropriate pearls has been somewhat idiosyncratic….. By that I mean Smart Bee has apparently been pursuing its own private agenda regarding what is offered up for review. There have been a number of good ones, but, none were quite right for today, in my gestalt vision. I’ve saved several to future days in my own Doctorish way (I don’t have a sonic screwdriver, but I know my way around temporal anomalies…..), and came to a decision, a welcome, if somewhat unusual event. I’ve collected a number of random pearls that gave me a quick smile when I read them this morning, or a quick spurt of recognition of truth, as the case may have been. You’ll find them below…. As well, you will find, if you read them all straight through, just letting them wash over your awareness, you will end up feeling a little lighter of heart…. and if not, well, you still can…. Just loosen your metaphoric shoelaces…..

“Eek!” — Smart Bee

What do you call a potato that commits a crime? A perpetater.
(I have not offered attribution for this wonderful pun, as I felt anyone who contributed this wouldn’t want their name published…..except, maybe, me…..Alas, I didn’t do it….)

“Being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”
“It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.
“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice;
“but when you have to turn into a chrysalis —
you will some day, you know —
and then after that into a butterfly,
I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”
“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.”

— Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter V

“Art is anything you can get away with.” — Marshall McLuhan.

“Yesterday I saw a chicken crossing the road.  I asked it why.  It told me it  was none of my business.” — Steven Wright

“Artificial hearts are nothing new. Politicians have had them for years.” — Mack McGinnis

Fifty flippant frogs
Walked by on flippered feet
And with their slime they made the time
Unnaturally fleet.

~~ Smart Bee

“While my BRAINPAN is being refused service in BURGER KING, Jesuit priests are DATING CAREER DIPLOMATS!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Okay, then…… kick those shoes off, and relax. The sun came up, and is likely to keep on doing so….. No worries!

🙂
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It occurs to me that today’s effort is a pretty good reflection of reality…. and if I have to explain THAT impression now, we might never get out of here…. so, I’ll just leave it at that. This Pearl does have the inimitable characteristic common to all of my best, and worst, Pearls, that is to say, it is done. Done to death, some might say, but done, nonetheless, and as such, according to my ongoing policy, it is also finished, and will be submitted to the Gentle Readership for their perusal, and any entertainment they may find in it….. I, such as I am, shall go post it at the library, and be done with it, which, as I say, is the best part…. Timing, remember, is everything….  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Grimly, he held on to the truth….

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Ffolkes,
Today’s Pearl will be a strangely constructed one again…. It is Sunday, and today I get to go visit for a short time with my grandson, while he visits with his dad. It is a sad situation, all in all, due primarily to the mother, who is, quite simply, a viciously vindictive, incredibly self-centered young woman. I try to view not being able to see him much as being the same as if I lived a long way away, such as back East. Then, I’d see him only by photograph or video…. so, getting an hour with him every month or two is better than that. Later, when he is older, and more independent of his mother, he will wish to know this part of his family, and we will get to know each other better then….

But, this means getting this done has to happen in between, or rather, outside, the visit hours, which are 11-12 this morning. I started a bit of it last night, but have yet to search for any other material for this morning. Should be interesting, to try to cobble together something that appears seamless, when the creation process will be anything but….. SIGH…. This means I have to be focused, and efficient…. boy, I HATE that! I’m retired, and I shouldn’t have to do that unless I want to…. Oh…. right, I do want to do this….. Okay, in that case, Shall we Pearl?…..
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Violence always settles everything. — Smart Bee

Violence never settles anything. — What most, if not all, of us were told as children….

I was cruising through Smart Bee, looking for oysters from which to extract pearls, when the first line above came up. I almost went past it, as the very short, unattributed quotes are often mundane or useless in some fashion or another. Then, I stopped, went back, and re-read it. After a moment’s thought, I decided that it was somewhat of an unwanted, but absolutely correct truism, if reality is viewed with certain restrictions of an ethical bent. History is rife with examples of how violence has been very effective in settling any number of issues; ours has been a history of constant warfare, someplace in the world, from the level of nations, to the personal.  All of these events to which I refer tend to be motivated by an insanity that is part of human nature, i.e. greed. Violence is the favorite tool of the avaricious, because it works, as long as one is the best at being violent.

The second idea is one that is promulgated by those among us who would manipulate us without violence; greed for power over others is the motivating factor here. Preachers and priests are fond of trying to pass this one off on people, using the famous quote by Jesus, re: turning the other cheek, as their justification for counseling people to use any other method than violence to achieve their ends.

From a purely ethical viewpoint, this is correct thinking; but, it does not allow for any other options, just in case one’s estimation of the risk of violence is wrong, and that is just plain stupid. Yes, violence is the last refuge of the incompetent (thanks to Isaac Asimov’s Salvor Hardin for that insight…. from “Foundation”), but even the most competent person must accept reality, and when reality is a fist flying at your face, well, my choice is to duck, and strike back hard and fast, not to turn my cheek…. unless it is a spinning move to bring my own fist around from another direction…. No, what the religious pundits would have their believers do is called appeasement; they counsel obedience to worldly governors, and have right from their beginnings, as they knew the only way to gain the trust of the ruling class was to help them to protect their hold on the public, and the keys to the treasury….

I admire Mahatma Ghandi, but I cannot agree with his policy of non-violence, for the simple reason that it is not consistent, and fails the test of reality. He makes the assertion that answering violence with violence can only breed further outbreaks of the same, and there is some truth in that assertion…. However, it is only true if the oppressor is stronger, and better at the violent skills that are employed.  At the same time, I have a philosophical problem with the concept of resistance with passivity, as I have always thought it to be just another form of aggression, called, naturally enough, passive aggression. I believe non-violence to be dishonest in its inability to face up to its own brand of aggressive response to an aggressive stimulus. You see, even saints can come to believe their own hype after a while…. While Ghandi’s methods are an effective method for a population unaccustomed to and unskilled at violence to resist a strong oppressor, for a person, or group of people, who are familiar with the skills involved, the matter becomes rather a question of who has the superior skills, tactics, and strategies.

I’ve had a lot of experience in my life with violence, in most of its forms. I was raised on Army bases, while my father was a member of the service, only moving away when he retired after 20 years in 1961….. so, violence was not a new subject to me, even at the age of 10. All of us, growing up, are exposed to some violence; kids aren’t pacifists by nature, and physical arguments are not uncommon among children. School, parents, sports, organized activities, all help to monitor and teach control of the violence within us, in their own ways, but experiencing violence is the most valuable teacher, as is always true for us humans. For myself, I learned early on that the most formidable weapon we all possess is located between our ears, and learning to use it, both as a tool, and as a weapon, is the most valuable lesson we can learn….

In college, I started on the true path of the warrior, when I started studying martial arts, which included reading the history and philosophy of the different styles and forms. This reading took me to areas of thought I had never entered, and I learned a LOT about myself, and, as a natural result, also learned a lot about other people….. All of what I learned is good material to use in AVOIDING violence, which, after enough experience, is always the ultimate goal of any warrior….. Dealing with violence is dangerous, and carries a risk of injury, and death. This risk is mitigated by our skill, our knowledge, and most importantly, by our attitude and alertness. The longer an incident of violence goes on, the higher the risk, so once begun, the goal is to end it as quickly as possible. The ultimate defense is to turn potential enemies into allies, before actual violence occurs, a goal which requires patience, intelligence, compassionate insight, and a willingness to compromise, to be flexible….

After studying martial arts, I later became involved in mental healthcare, in which field the actual physical use of my arts became habitual, and helpful to an extreme. Knowing how to deal with any kind of violent behavior exhibited tends to reduce the fear one feels in facing such events, which allows one to deal with the violence efficiently. I became expert at controlling people who were out of control, without injuring them, and without being injured. This expertise has cost me a lot, as I now suffer the long term effects of exposure to violence, i.e., PTSD, stemming from the death of a co-worker during an incident at Napa State Hospital, in 1984….. but, I can look back on my career, and know that nobody ever got hurt during my take-downs, and the only one affected in the long run was myself…..

I hate drama, and emotional turmoil, and, in the final analysis, violence. My life has, by my own unfortunate choices, contained far too much of all three. I learned to deal with violence and its effects because of that dislike, and that can be viewed as a form of cowardice, if you like. But, that knowledge has kept me relatively safe, and gave me the ability to deal with those kinds of events with dispatch, thus minimizing the overall negativity of the results. When I speak of violence, and its effects, I KNOW what I am saying…. and I say that trying to totally eliminate it from life is foolish. It is too much a part of human nature. In my world, it is best to deal with it quickly, and get it over with…. in the long run, this shows the most favorable results, for everyone involved….

This little pearl/rant/discussion could go on forever, and seems to have already made a goodly effort to get there. Life calls, however, and there are more pearls to find, including a poem, which may be inside me somewhere, thus requiring the opening of a vein or two. So, we’ll leave this here, with no further forays into the realm of violence for the time being. When one has the opportunity, one should always find something else to do, rather than focus on that side of human nature; it will manifest all on its own, all too often in the course of Life, and does not need our assistance to do so…. Stay alert, and stay safe out there ffolkes, and may the violence in Life continually pass you by…..

“Even in war, moral power is to physical as three parts out of four.” — Napoleon Bonaparte
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Well, I didn’t find it inside me, but, all things considered, this will do quite nicely…. enjoy!….

Fragment

I WALK’D along a stream, for pureness rare,
Brighter than sun-shine; for it did acquaint
The dullest sight with all the glorious prey
That in the pebble-paved channel lay.

No molten crystal, but a richer mine,
Even Nature’s rarest alchymy ran there,–
Diamonds resolv’d, and substance more divine,
Through whose bright-gliding current might appear
A thousand naked nymphs, whose ivory shine,
Enamelling the banks, made them more dear
Than ever was that glorious palace’ gate
Where the day-shining Sun in triumph sate.

Upon this brim the eglantine and rose,
The tamarisk, olive, and the almond tree,
As kind companions, in one union grows,
Folding their twining arms, as oft we see
Turtle-taught lovers either other close,
Lending to dulness feeling sympathy;
And as a costly valance o’er a bed,
So did their garland-tops the brook o’erspread.

Their leaves, that differ’d both in shape and show,
Though all were green, yet difference such in green,
Like to the checker’d bent of Iris’ bow,
Prided the running main, as it had been–

Christopher Marlowe
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Since I’m short on time today for the proper degree of cogitation, due to the above mentioned visit, (as well as the somewhat massive outpouring of stuff in section one…), this will be an old school pearl, and a fairly obvious one. All of these reflect my own beliefs, and are important pieces of the philosophy I try to live by…. Anyone could do worse to do the same…..

“As to values, I was taught — and still believe — that a sense of honor is necessary to personal self-respect; that duty, recognizing an individual’s subordination to community welfare, is as important as rights; that loyalty, which is based on the trustworthiness of honorable men, is still a virtue; and that work and self-discipline are as essential to individual happiness as they are to a viable society. Indeed, I still believe in patriotism — not if it is limited to parades and flag-waving, but because worthy national goals and aspirations can be realized only through love of country and a desire to be a responsible citizen.” — Lewis F. Powell (Former Supreme Court Justice)

“If you are patient in a moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.” — Chinese Proverb

“The best rule of friendship is to keep your heart a little softer than your head.” — George Santayana

I’m not crazy. I just have a unique sense of reality. — Smart Bee
(That’s me all over!!!…)

Living Dead
the path is
chosen, to live forever is to die
forever.

To not know when you’ll
die
is to find
life
wherever you are.

— Alagad

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” — Plato

“It is our responsibility to live with as much gusto as we can and to cause as little grief as possible.”– Smart Bee

Well…. Smart Bee is being particularly fruitful today…. quote after quote that fits this category keep popping up, and if I’m not careful, this could run as long as the first pearl, which, as you know, got away from me a bit…. So, one last good one, and we’ll be off to visit with Zack….

The sage manages affairs without action
And spreads doctrines without words.
All things arise, and he does not turn away from them.
He produces them, but does not take possession of them.
He acts, but does not rely on his own ability.
He accomplishes his task, but does not claim credit for it.
It is precisely because he does not claim credit
that his accomplishment remains with him.

— Lao-Tzu
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Done…. and well within the time frame…. there’s something to be said for the organizational and time-management skills that come with aging…. stuff that would have been a spectacular fail in my youth is now a piece of cake, and not just some simple sponge cake, either! All this needs now is a poem, and it’s good to go. Of course, having that extra hour this morning helped immensely, once I realized I had it….. You DID remember to turn back your clocks, right? I didn’t, naturally, so I discovered the extra hour available to me when I glanced up at the computer and saw that it was different than my clock…. that reminded me, and I changed the rest of them, and celebrated the time by, well, you don’t want to know…. Onward….

I’m going to go against normal policy and not worry overmuch about the grammar and spelling…. the spell checker seems to have handled everything I wrote so far without going bonkers, so it should be fine. The subject matter may be a bit stiff for some, but, hey, gotta go with what bleeds out…. In spite of how it may seem, I’m a pretty easy-going guy, and only aim to entertain, never to offend (unless deserved…. and They know who They are…. none of Them would be considered as ffolkes….ever….). Ah me…. enough for one day…..   Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Plainly, it’s a case of diet reality….

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5

Ffolkes,
As the moon looked down with massive disdain, several large specimens of domestic droid came rolling down the street. Each the size of a large dog, the droids bristled with cleaning arms and brushes, rolling on a strange assortment of wheels that looked like rubber balls on racks. One by one, they peeled off from the street to move toward houses on each side of the street, most rolling around to the back to enter. The spare shadows from the moon’s pale light gave the scene a soft, romantic air, as if the droids were off to visit their own true loves. But, even in this, a deep winter night in 2088, droids didn’t yet have girlfriends, and the man watching the parade of mechanicals was not interested in fanciful thoughts of droids in love. He only had one thought, and that thought was murder…..

Well, J.D. Robb could probably use it as a start to another novel about Eve Dallas and Roarke, but who knows if Lt. Dallas will still be a cop in 2088?…. She would only be in her late fifties to early sixties, and given the state of medical science, most likely would still be on the job. But, maybe Roarke will have convinced her to retire with him to another planet, where they’ll raise exotic food plants and little Roarkes and Eves…. Just as well, as this intro paragraph is well away from her usual opening chapters, which generally start after the murder is done…. But, it got that stuff out of my head, and that is all that really matters at this point….

Today will be another oddly constructed pearl, as I still haven’t finished the poem, and no other material has surfaced as yet….. Thus, we must begin the day searching for something about which to write. With the election so close, it might be time for a rant on politics, to drive home the need for everyone to make sure to get out there to cast their opinion, wrong-headed though it may be…. Just let me ask each of you heading to the polls to use your noggin to make you choices, not your fears or bigotry, should you be saddled with such.

Use that brain for something other than sitting on, and make the logical choice to vote for the incumbent. No President, good or bad, ever gets much done in just four years, and this one deserves more time to continue with the positive changes that he’s been able to accomplish, in spite of all the partisan opposition he has suffered due to the Republican party’s stated racist platform….. Don’t blame me, just go read what it says, and the racism is obvious…. even their own pundits are getting disgusted with it, as one of them so lucidly stated the other day…

Okay, wrong place to start ranting…. I’ll leave it for later, if that is what comes up in this morning’s dive…. I’ll quit fooling around now, and get on with the program…. Shall we Pearl?…..

Were I so tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul:
The mind ‘s the standard of the man.
— Isaac Watts (1674-1748) — Horae Lyricae, Book ii, False Greatness
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“Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves?  Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.” — Isaac Asimov, The New Hugo Winners

In the intro section above, I started a rant, which mentioned the four years that the current President has had to try to accomplish his reforms. In that short rant, I mentioned the partisan opposition he has suffered at the hands of the Republican party. What Mr. Asimov states above may be considered as a large part of the reason that the Republicans have been so dead set against allowing him to make any progress. Bigotry and racism are a direct outgrowth of ignorance; this is not something disputable, or subject to debate. It is fact…. and bigotry and racism are the real reasons that these people are so set on defeating Obama. They don’t care at all about how he is doing, or whether or not his policies are good for the country or not…. they don’t even attempt to address those issues, other than to create great outcries at every little issue that comes up in the news, when it suits them to make noise about it.

The Republican party has spent four years blocking all legislation proposed by the White House. This is legislation that would have created millions of jobs, and gone a long way to repairing the damage that eight years of Bush’s unlimited spending and economic disaster caused, but, his opponents have blocked all of it, in spite of the millions of Americans who might have benefited from the bills. Their stated purpose, as outlined four years ago, right after the election in 2008, was to make Obama a one-term president, AT ANY COST, and using any means, including lying. Especially lying…. they’ve reduced that particular act to a science, and are not afraid to use it to their purpose at all. In pursuit of their ignorant, racist agenda, they have absolutely no shame…. It’s quite disgusting, actually, to those of us with more than two functioning brain cells….

“The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.” — James Russell Lowell

I have been noticing the people on Facebook who are posting political articles for others to read, and have noted a distinct difference in the two styles each side has shown. The liberals who support the incumbent post videos, mostly, that show the Republican candidates stating one of their asinine, dishonest attacks on the President, or an inspirational message from a supporter of the President. In addition, there have been a lot of videos of Republican candidates around the country who have bee voicing their party’s war on women lately, with these idiotic statements about rape, which, quite simply, is something to which they are not even entitled to an opinion, much less policy making powers. Any who, the liberals post this kind of stuff about half the time, along with another half that is supportive stuff that shows off the progress made by Obama, with a message of unity and hope for the future….

None of the Republican supporters I see have come out with anything at all on the “rape” issues…. no comments at all. It’s like they are in total denial, and think that if they ignore it (hmm… wonder what ignoring leads to?…. could it be…. ignorance?) it won’t be true, or will go away. I also see no ads that show Romney, or Ryan, as doing ANYTHING. Period. They have stopped talking to the public, and refuse to talk to reporters. They don’t want to make any more mistakes, as almost every time they’ve opened their mouths, it has benefited the liberals, because of the depth of stupidity shown every time. There are no admiring ads touting how wonderful a leader Mitt the Twitt would be…. There are no detailed explanations of his proposed policies, because every detailed study of those policies has shown them to be totally inadequate, lacking in any understanding of the issues involved, and in some cases, pure lies…. These were independent studies, by the way, not funded by the liberals.

No, the only things the Republicans are posting are negative attack ads on Obama, for all kinds of little BS, from the recent terrorist attack in Bhengazi, to birther nonsense (yes, it STILL gets thrown out there….), to thinly disguised references to his skin color, which just goes to show their real fear…. These people are scared to death because a BLACK man is President, and they will do literally ANYTHING to get him out of that position…. One of the most highly recognizable pundits from the Republican party recently came out to express his dismay at the outright racism and bigotry of the Republican campaign, and to acknowledge the despicable nature of the ignorance that is being displayed.

Yet, the polls (which I regard as purely fictional, and merely another attempt by the media to assert their own form of mind control….. I am of the firm opinion that publishing a poll before the election should be illegal…. let us go to the polls without any precognition…. which is how it is supposed to work, now, isn’t it?…)…. the polls say that the race is close, and that it may be decided in the electoral college, rather than at the polls themselves. Which is, to me, another opportunity for the Republicans to try to work their manipulation and voter suppression techniques to try to affect the outcome in their favor…. They did it successfully with GW Bush, twice, so it’s not like it hasn’t already been tested as a viable method of winning elections. It’s just that in this case, there is a distinct danger of the entire country falling back into the middle ages, should their cheating ways prevail again….

So, what I am suggesting, to all those out there with any shred of common sense and intelligence,  is that we remove that issue, by going to the polls in such numbers as to make their ignorance and bigotry immaterial. Let us show them that there are more of us than they think there are, and we are not going to allow them to drag us back over a hundred years, eliminating all the progress in social issues that we have struggled so hard to obtain in that time. The fate of millions of seniors, women, people of color, gays, and just about anyone who isn’t a rich white male will be seriously threatened by a Republican win in three days…. so let us remove their chances of winning, by going out to vote for Obama in record numbers everywhere, and make the electoral college  a matter of form. (Then we can start the process to get rid of the college altogether…. should’ve happened fifty years ago… it’s a relic of the past, and should stay there….)

Go vote, ffolkes, and please, get it right!…..
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Days and Nights of Eire

Wondrously comforting, a dream creeps oft into my mind
On the elven hills of Eire lives the vision I will find.
Elegant, gracious, everlastingly draped in beauty
Just payment of simple homage lives as joyous duty.

Fairies and druids walk abroad in ghostly parade
Gracing each hearth with its own welcoming shade.
Castles and heroes still live in tale and song
Proving love for the land in each heart strong.

From cold of winter into glorious young spring
Brown, and gray, to emerald green songs to sing
Soft rains always follow winter’s great tempest
As Eire dons an emerald coat from east to west.

Old and strong, connections call out in dreams
Nothing that was known remains as it seems.
Immersion in ancient runes and battle hymns
Offering sanity in place of grievous whims.

Time and place can tell a much different tale
Judgment should never be a final sale.
Yet something solid and real calls me to go see
Where dreams of loving beauty may actually be….

~~ gigoid

Whew! Finally…. Well, there you go… I hope it was worth the wait…. Actually, it may grow again; it’s okay, but feels not quite done, somehow… ah well, time will tell….
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:GIGO: /gi:’goh/ [acronym] 1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out’ — usually said in response to {luser}s who complain that a program didn’t “do the right thing” when given imperfect input or otherwise mistreated in some way.  Also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data.  2. `Garbage In, Gospel Out’: this more recent expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have to put excessive trust in `computerized’ data. — from The on-line Hacker Jargon File V423

Many years ago, I adopted the user name gigoid, taking it from the above definition, and adding an “id” for, of course, identification purposes; with that suffix, I am assured of human status, i.e. hominid, humanoid, etc.  I chose this acronym because it is the perfect reminder of the basic integrity that is built into all computers, i.e., they can only do what we tell them to do, and cannot lie. Thus, if our results are wrong, the error lies in our input, not in the computer; this automatically cuts in half the number of places to look for the problem. I like to think that my awareness of this principle characteristic of how computers work is what has allowed me to use computers without suffering many of the common difficulties such as crashes, freezes, and blue screens of death. Only once have I ever encountered one of those on my own computer, and that was the result of a virus my defenses missed… my fault, of course, I hadn’t updated soon enough…

Oh, I’ve encountered that famous blue screen before, when I worked as a computer tech back in the late 90’s, setting up LAN’s and office systems for H&R Block…. a significant percentage of machines were dead soon after coming out of the factory box. But, on my own computers, I am very careful never to break any of the basic rules that govern those kinds of mishaps…. and I owe it all to a wise choice of user name…. Well, it’s fun to think about it that way anyway….

So, who is gigoid? Well, if you’ve hung about this blog site for long, I’ve certainly given y’all enough of my inner workings to look at, in my rants, and in my old school pearls, as well as in my poetry, which is quite revealing, to me….. but, then, if it wasn’t, I most likely couldn’t write it…. Any who, to give the short answer to that question, I’ll post below some pearls that give insight into what I believe to be true, and how I try to live…. Like any weak human, I don’t always succeed at being as moral or ethical as I can be, but, I do try, and I do feel pangs of regret when I don’t, so cut me some slack, eh? Just kidding…. What I am is all what I am, though I’m not Popeye…. and these pearls are what I see in the mirror…..

“They are able because they think they are able.” — Virgil

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

“An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.” — E. P. Whipple

It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs. — Smart Bee

Computers can never replace human stupidity. — Smart Bee

“Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants “just a few minutes of your time, please — this won’t take long.” Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time — and squawk for more!
So learn to say No – and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you. (This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don’t do it because it is “expected” of you.) ” — Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love, by Robert Heinlein

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

Well, that’s enough about me…. Hope this helps clear up any confusion, and if not, well, hey, life goes on…. all we can do is all we can do, and no more….
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Odd, indeed…. and long, too. I wasn’t sure the poem was going to make it, and it may not be all the way done, but, it’s out, and will stand as is for now…. I’m not sure about it right now, I’m too close to it to judge impartially…. so, I’ll take a chance, and let it go out as it is. I’m brave, sometimes…. but,then, what can happen, besides somebody hating it? I can handle that okay, so…. any who, enough of my rambling for one day…. I see that I have possibly gone a bit overboard in that respect today. Such is life, or as the French would say, literally, c’est la vie…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Fabled moments of placid acceptance….

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1

Ffolkes,
Halloween has always been my favorite, as far as any holiday can be said to be so, given my opinion of most of them as corporate/government  manipulations of the economy. However, Halloween has two things going for it that most holidays don’t…. One, it is patterned after real cultural celebrations from history, giving it the veneer of authenticity, and, two, it is the day before my birthday, which is the Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos in Mexico (And, if you don’t think THAT was a point of pride as a child, you don’t know jack….).

As a kid, this gave it the advantage over other holidays, hands down, and that preference has carried over through my adult years, for much the same reasons…. Costumes are fun, too, but, a bit undignified to fit in with my self-image as a curmudgeon; I haven’t indulged in a costume since my kids still were enthusiastic about holidays…. I just dress as always, and tell people I’m a serial killer…. they look just like everybody else….  🙂

This year, Halloween finds me up early, for unknown reasons. Actually, my recent schedule, of sleep, write, read, lather, rinse, repeat, etc. has been all over the map; probably has to do with the stress levels that go up and down, depending on how long I’ve been in the dark re: SS and their machinations and contortions. I’m hoping this early up means something in there is clamoring to get out, rather than waiting for me to persuasively seduce it onto the screen. We shall see shortly….

It could get ugly this morning, as I’ve no real material stashed, and I never know how Smart Bee will be about providing proper quotes in a timely manner…. it tends to listen to Murphy a lot when I’m not around. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m scaring myself, and I think I should go see how it is going to be…..

While I’m doing that, y’all can take a breather for a moment…..

There, feel better?…. Hmm… I don’t know about Smart Bee…. this is what I came up with right away….

“Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.” — Elbert Hubbard

Which isn’t bad, all things considered, but, it isn’t going to make much of a pearl. It’s too finished; there isn’t any more to be said on the subject…. Well, it’s not encouraging, but it was something, which is better than nothing, I suppose. I’ll just have to take my chances…. Since there seems to be no further excuse for heading on out, I’ll bid thee adieu, until the final lines, and wish you a pleasant dive today…. Shall we Pearl?…..
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And here, poor fool, with all my lore
I stand no wiser than before.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

“This instant is thine; the next is in the womb of futurity, and thou knowest not what it may bring forth; maturity of the unborn is in the keeping of the Law. Each future state is that thou has created in the present.” — Akhenaton? (c. B.C. 1375)

“The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.” — Joan Borysenko

Living life well is a subjective goal, and, as such, whether or not it we are successful in reaching the goal is purely a subjective judgment. This kind of judgment requires introspection, which makes it somewhat of a conundrum for many people, as their skills at that particular activity are severely limited from disuse. Very few people today spend much time in self-examination, from what I can see. If they did, they sure wouldn’t act the way the do, or dress the way they are, or carry on such a foolish, self-destructive course of living….

“The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. . . No man is so wise but that he may learn some wisdom from his past errors, either of thought or action, and no society has made such advances as to be capable of no improvement from the retrospect of its past folly and credulity.” — Charles Mackay

Introspection, however, requires both honesty and ruthlessness, in being able to recognize those things within us that are not of value, and to remove them from our persona. As such, it is what most folks would term as “hard” or “difficult”, and they will avoid it at all cost, laziness being a rather common human trait. It is much simpler, and easier, to just take what all the powers that be, (otherwise known as either the beloved ruling class, or those most heinous of criminal manipulators, preachers/priests), are selling as moral standards, and use them, regardless of whether or not they are truly moral or not…. and I assure you, mostly, they are not….

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

I often feel like Goethe, in what he stated above, as I believe myself to be one of the few who actually do use introspection on a regular basis. I believe this because, if other folks were using this process, the world would look a lot different. Women would feel safe walking the streets; old folks would feel cared for; gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals would not suffer discrimination for their orientation; racism would be dead, and religion would join mythology as a piece of mankind’s past, rather than its current status as our jailer/executioner…..

“Being good at being stupid doesn’t count.” — Smart Bee

All of these societal problems (bigotry, racism, discrimination, slavery, entitlement, misogyny, etc. )arise from the attitude of elitism held by those individuals among us who never look within, to see just how ugly their inner selves have become, from using the sick, twisted elitism as preached by the modern religious and political leaders. We, as a species, cannot afford to listen any more to the Judeo-Christian ethic as propounded by the beloved ruling class; this kind of entitlement and aggrandizement has led us to the very brink of extinction, as we continue to treat the planet as our toy, instead of as our home. We cannot keep pouring millions of tons of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere and expect nothing to happen, because what will happen is already happening…. our weather is changing, and not in a good way…. the planet is warming up, and when it is warm enough, the ice at the poles will melt, and everything on Earth will feel the effects….

“The faith in which I was brought up assured me that I was better than other people: I was saved, they were damned … Our hymns were loaded with arrogance–self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us, what hell everybody else would catch come judgment day.” — Robert A. Heinlein

As Akhenaton pointed out over 3000 years ago, what we do in the present will determine how the future will be. What our species is doing now will guarantee that most of us won’t be around to see what happens in that future, because we will be dead within a hundred years, or less, if things don’t begin to change TODAY…. Since it is unlikely that will happen, well, we may as well take the advice given to many school children in the 50’s, in learning to deal with an atomic blast…. to wit: bend over and kiss your ass goodbye….  I hate to be so cynical, but, introspection requires honesty, so….

“You were s’posed to laugh!” — Zippy the Pinhead
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A Brave and Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

Maya Angelou
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“Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, utters another.” — Homer (c. 700 B.C.)

I’ve gotta say, I’m with Homer on this one…. In looking back over my lifetime, in fact, just about every time in that lifetime that I’ve been subjected to emotional pain has been the result of this very thing, i.e., dishonesty, or betrayal of trust. My most recent example of such treatment at the hands of others took place about two and a half years ago, when I received a double whammy, from my boss at work, and from the woman with whom I had been in a relationship for nine years. My boss, without ever once indicating in any way she was unhappy with my work, had me bureaucratically removed from my job as “unfit for duty” as a result of my back injury and pain. In the same week, the woman I lived with went from telling me she loved me on Tuesday, to asking me to not call her for a couple months on Thursday, as she wanted some “space”…. a euphemism for “goodbye forever”….. Both of them stuck a knife straight into my heart, metaphorically speaking, and I bled pretty profusely from that trusting organ….

Emotionally, I’m pretty much over these two incidents, though I’m still dealing with the physical reality of the first one, but, whenever I think about either one, there is still residual pain, and the tears still flow freely with the pain…. What helps is to realize that a) I’m better off being out of each situation, even if I don’t know why either one happened, other than by speculation, and b) they won’t be able to do it again, at least not from that quarter of the compass…. It also helps being the age I am, as I’ve now been through this kind of pain more than once, and I know that I am not alone with that experience, and I only have to remain alone if I wish…. There are other people out there in the world who are worthy of my trust; the trick is to learn somehow to recognize them, and to learn how to judge the strength of their commitment to honor, and truth. Like Tom Robbins said in “Skinny Legs and All”, the question that needs to be answered is, “How do you make love stay?”…..

The tricky part, it seems, is how to keep on trusting, when so often it leads to betrayal. Society teaches dishonesty and cheating as skills to use against each other; witness our entire political scene, and then tell me otherwise. But, learning to trust is essential to being trusted, so it becomes a balancing act, with one’s fear of being hurt on one side, and the need for human contact on the other.  Somewhere in the middle lies the answer, and that is when love can show its face, even if only for a time. One just has to learn patience, for the search for an honest man, or woman, has been going on for a very long time, and as far as I’ve seen and heard, there has not been a great deal of success at finding one….

“…and I get on my knees and pray we don’t get fooled again.” — Pete Townshend
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Well, that certainly turned maudlin on me…. I could barely write my way out of that one. Ah well, at least, if nothing else, it is honest…. perhaps, some might say, shamefully so, but I gave that up years ago, so, hey…. In any case, it’s done, which is something, given how things have gone this morning. Not to complain, but it has been tough to grind this one out…. I did start a poem, but, only got two lines in before stalling; it’s just not ready yet. The first two lines are good, though, so I’ll stick with it….

Any who, I can’t think of how to cause any more damage than I already have, so I’m going to consign this one to the place where I can’t get it back, and publish it…. Don’t hate me for it, I beg you…. And, if so, well, sorry ’bout that, but, that’s the way it goes around here….  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Who will pay the price for sanity?….

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2

Ffolkes,
Times of great import are approaching, it is told. Events are to take place that will rock the foundations of our world, while I, an old man with sharp eyes, sit and watch the important people scurry about, involved in their important jobs, communicating their important ideas….. Only us old men see the truth, though…. Nothing is important, it is all an illusion, and nothing will ever change…. So it has been, for centuries, and so it will remain, as long as men wish to feel important…..

I don’t think it will come even close to winning the Bulwer-Lytton Award, but it’s pretty bad, nonetheless, don’t you agree? Sadly, when I wrote it, I wasn’t trying for bad, but was in fact, until the very end, shooting for a grim sort of eloquence. But, after one read-through, that goal went by the wayside….. Not everything can be worth writing, I suppose, and that paragraph certainly falls into that category…. We’ll just pretend it didn’t happen, and go on, okay?…. No need to mention this to the doctors, or the overseers, now is there?….. I wouldn’t want to lose my privileges over it…..

Actually, I’m sitting here this morning, a bit dazed…. I feel pretty good…. The pain pill I took two hours prior to getting up might have helped a lot, but, all in all, this is the best I’ve felt of a morning in, well, a long time… in recent memory at least, and damn if it isn’t encouraging! Payday is near, I have food left, thanks to those friends who won’t seem to let me go under, the coffee tastes like ambrosia, and I’m not feeling any blockage of my writing mode…. there is HOPE! It’s amazing, really, how much feeling better will improve the attitude we face the day with; I must say, it’s awfully nice to NOT have stuff to complain about….

I’m thinking, since I feel so good, even if only in a relative sense, I should get started without further delay. I’m actually looking forward with glee to this morning’s dive for pearls, which hasn’t happened in far too long…. In any case, Shall we Pearl?…..

“Three out of five people aren’t the other two.” — Smart Bee
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“How people play the game shows something of their characters. How they lose shows all of it.” — Smart Bee

This is SO true! Not only is it true, it is beyond true, because it also implies another truth, which also happens to be true…. Funny how that works, eh?…. Any who, what I mean by that is this: How people approach the idea of playing a game at all indicates a lot of things about their mental status, in short, their attitudes, as well as their character. I spent more than a few years providing psychiatric therapy to adolescent and adult individuals, and using games was one of my favorite therapeutic tools. It became a valuable one indeed in being able to gauge a young lad’s, or lass’s, mental attitude, after tossing them a ball, of some kind, and seeing what they did with it….. Within a minute or so, they would reveal a lot about themselves, that would often be useful later in figuring out how to help them.

If they missed catching it, or showed a lot of awkwardness, it would give an indication they hadn’t played much with balls, and perhaps were not sports oriented. If they caught it, then that showed they had some experience and/or interest. How they tossed it back also showed things about them, and the expressions and body language they displayed, while performing the basic physical skills, indicated their degree of familiarity with the movements involved in the different tasks of moving, catching, and throwing. Whether or not they reacted with pleasure, or fear, or surprise, or whatever emotion they display when the ball is tossed to them (a simple, easy toss, not a fastball…. give us a little credit….) also gives some pretty accurate data on how they deal with such surprises, showing how they feel about themselves in the process….

In a basketball game, one could observe to see whether the player understands the team concept, and how to adjust their own play to flow with others. How a person spends the slack time in baseball, while waiting for a pitch, or a delay, can indicate their inner state, as well as their investment in the game…. And if they refused to play at all, then that showed something about their social adaptation skills as well….. Almost everything these young individuals did in relation to playing games, of any kind, whether physical, or table, party, or other types would tell something about their psycho-social development stage, and even give clues about where problems might be encountered in helping them.

Humans have a very long history of experience with games, and though other animals have been noted to have created games, no species has been anywhere near as prolific, or creative, in the ways in which they test themselves, against each other, and against themselves. Historically, of course, many games were designed to develop the skills needed in the culture for warfare, or for business, or for other sorts of competitive interactions with others of other cultures, tribes, or nations.

In the modern world, of course, the business side of games, and the impulse to compete in every human is highly developed, in hundreds, even thousands of different venues…. Professional sports, amateur sports, computer gaming, Olympic sports, mountain climbing, all tests of various degrees of difficulty in the quest to improve the human spirit by improving the mind and body, under the most trying, demanding conditions that can be devised.

Games, whether we actively play them, or sublimate those impulses in other ways, are a part of human culture and society, and permeate all levels of societal interactions…. How many soccer moms are there who never played a game of soccer outside P.E. class in their lives? How many people enter the business world, and pit their minds and will against others in the financial arena…. No one can tell me that the whole stock market isn’t based on gaming theory, not without a lot of charts, easels, and time to expand equations…. and I wouldn’t believe them then….

Our society spends literally TRILLIONS of dollars each year on professional sports, with all their merchandising and high pressure sales of every single physical item involved in either the playing of the sport (Football, baseball, basketball, tennis, hockey, soccer, and literally hundreds of others….), or involved in the following the sport, equipment to play, equipment to watch the professionals play, tickets, posters, jerseys, and other fan merchandise, including the watching of the sport on the entertainment media of choice, also for sale at a store near you….. It is a HUGE part of the American economy, even the world-wide economy, at least in countries that are connected to the media world.

The impulse to play games, however sublimated it may be, is a basic piece of human nature, stemming from the inherent need for the species to improve itself, thereby improving chances for survival. Though society has advanced enough that not everyone has the need to be able to throw a spear or run fast to survive any more, we still have the part of our nature that says we do need to be able to do that…. so we want to practice somehow…. Games are how we practice those skills; always have been, and always will….

Today, practicing survival skills for many involves sitting in front of a TV, with a beer and like-minded former game-players, to watch a game of their favorite sport on TV, and cheer for the good plays…. Or it means taking your kids to soccer practice every week at three different fields around town, “because sports is good for them”…. Or it means a teenager becoming pale and wan from playing a video game for 36 hours straight….. Or, it can mean calling your broker when you’ve received a good stock tip….. We all find our ways to practice the age-old skills we no longer need, one way or another….

“It’s all a game — play it to have fun.” — Price’s Advice

“Life IS a game, but the rules are written down in so many different ways, there tends to be as many interpretations as there are players…. Do your best to play fair, by anybody’s rules, by keeping to a level field of play, and you stand a better chance of not only winning, but of enjoying the game…” ~~ gigoid
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A new poem from gigoid is still in the cooker, simmering until it is done. As you may know, I can’t rush it, or it will disappear, never to be seen again, at least in my fears, so it will be left to finish without any interference from my conscious mind…. In the meantime, here is something from another poet of no little note…. Enjoy!….

The day came slow…

The day came slow, till five o’clock
Then sprang before the hills
Like hindered rubies, or the light
A sudden musket spills

The purple could not keep the east,
The sunrise shook from fold,
Like breadths of topaz, packed a night,
The lady just unrolled.

The happy winds their timbrels took;
The birds, in docile rows,
Arranged themselves around their prince
(The wind is prince of those).

The orchard sparkled like a Jew, —
How mighty ‘t was, to stay
A guest in this stupendous place,
The parlor of the day!

— Emily Dickinson
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Old school! Old school!…. and all the better for it, eh, what? Since tomorrow is Halloween, we will celebrate by blowing away some of the cobwebs of ignorant fear associated with so many of the symbols of the holiday’s featured religion, Wicca…… from which much of the lore of this date is drawn. It was merely hijacked by the Christians as their own, back when they rewrote all the history books to suit themselves….. They’re good at that….

Below you will find a number of quotes, all targeted and locked on one of my ongoing peeves, deliberate ignorance, and the exploitation of that by the world’s religions…. Well, you know what I mean…. people are mean, sometimes, you know?….. They just like to cover it up with talk about redemption for original sins (of which I swear I have no recollection), and penance for sins, and confession of sins,  and hellfire, and such. I think they’d be better off getting a real job…..

“For “ignorance is the mother of devotion,” as all the world knows.” — Robert Burton (1577-1640) — The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part iii, Sect. 4, Memb. 1, Subsect. 2

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority.  Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.” — Giordano Bruno (1548- burned at the stake, 1600)

“Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.” — James Randi

“I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great intrinsic depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, *petty* — I call it the *one* mortal blemish of mankind.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

(Just threw this in to make it clear exactly “who” we were discussing…..) (Plus, I happen to agree with Freddy on this one….)

“It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price… One must abandon altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with both arms… One has to embrace the world like a lover… One has to accept pain as a condition of existence… One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.” — Morris L. West, “Shoes of the Fisherman”

(Oops, sorry, this is 180 degrees from all of the above, talking about the other end of the scale of human nature….. Well, just use it for contrast, okay?…….)

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

(Hmm…. Freddy seems to have a problem with Christians, doesn’t he?….. Can’t say as I blame him…..)

In regards to Oral Roberts’ claim that God told him that he would die unless he  received $20 million by March, God’s lawyers have stated that their client has  not spoken with Roberts for several years. Off the record, God has stated that  “If I had wanted to ice the little toad, I would have done it a long time ago.” — Dennis Miller, SNL News

“The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.” — Lazarus Long, aka Robert A. Heinlein

Enough! I could do this all day, and not get the point across any better…. Plus, Smart Bee is getting testy, so we will now leave off our regularly scheduled daily battle against the advance of DUMB in society…… Stay alert, ffolkes, the world needs more lerts……
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“I’m having a BIG BANG THEORY!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Well, all things considered, it could be worse…. That third section almost got away from me there for a while, but, all is well that ends well…. Life is good, except when it isn’t, and that’s about the best we can expect, I reckon….. I’ll take it….. Can you just wrap that up for me? Thanks…..  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Banyan trees make good umbrellas….

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3

Ffolkes,
How, then, shall we greet the day? With burly confidence and positive mien, shrugging aside all discomforts and obstacles, working hard to produce the finest prose/poetry that abides within me? Or, with heavy emotions and grim countenance, shall I unmask the evil minions that seek to drag us down, posing as ministers of Heaven? Or, should I explore the depth and beauty that lives in every act of compassion between people, holding up for review the finer characteristics of our nature, inspiring all with sacrifice. SIGH…. there are times when having so many things about which to write can be a problem in and of itself…. when one is struck with ambiguity, making a choice is complicated by how we FEEL about what is written….. a dilemma common to all writers, I would imagine….

I have read, in many, many novels, how writers say they hate it when they are asked about how they know what to write…. I can relate, in the sense that I JUST DON’T KNOW…. Often, even mostly, I don’t have any idea why I write something, until after I’ve written it. I tend to see a quote, or an idea, and just jump in, giving my own unique take on whatever it is. I don’t stop to ask myself why that particular subject grabbed my attention, or why one idea may stimulate a rant, while another may cause a poem to leak out. I don’t know about other writers, but I refuse to even examine that entire aspect of the writing process; I feel, somehow, that if I look at it too closely, it will just disappear altogether, and I will never again be able to decide ANYTHING about which to write…. and I’m not willing to take that chance…..

Now, whether or not that is a good thing is something that I will leave up to history…. but I’m not going there, not while I’m still certain that there is more in there that needs to come out….. Writing has become as important to me as breathing; I just don’t feel right if it doesn’t happen…. It also is providing a much-needed focus of purpose at a time when I need one badly. We men don’t do well without a purpose; we tend to drift into troublesome habits when we don’t have a chosen Duty to fulfill.

Unfortunately, being retired seems to be a time when such purpose is blunted, or made hard to find, by the very fact that there are so many to choose from…. so, the fact that I stumbled into writing has been a beneficial thing for my psyche, all in all…. I also find that, since I started blogging about 18 months ago, I’ve written over a million words, and well over a thousand pages of material….. I find this degree of output to be a strong indication that I had something I needed to say….

It’s kind of like what I said to a neighbor recently, as we discussed the concept of blogging…. “For almost 60 years, I’ve had a lot of dangerous stuff running around in my head, and I kept my mouth shut…. I’m done with that…..”  On that note, shall we Pearl?…..
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How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.

— Robert Browning (1812-1890) — After

Death…. “the solemn and strange surprise of the change.”  For most of my life, death has assumed no great part of my concern. Whenever I took time to consider it, from a personal point of view, my mind would skitter away after distractions, like water on a hot griddle…. Perhaps I am afraid to think about it…. if so, I would no doubt join the major part of humankind, for it is our most common experience, though not one we remember very well, and one of our least favorite to think about. It’s curious, I think, that we, who only can say for sure we are alive by noting that we are not dead, do not remember our time in that dimension of consciousness. I mean, how would we know we were alive, if we had not once been dead?….

My fear, as with us all, arises from that unknown factor, that lack of solid information on which to base our thoughts and feelings about the change we undergo when we pass on from this plane. Many, of course, choose to believe what one of the major religions will say about the afterlife, and, if it serves them to soothe their fears with faith, then, more power to them. It certainly is soothing to believe that one will be given special privileges after dying, as our lives here are often not what could be called “special” in that sense.

It is also, I’m sure, quite comforting to believe that whatever one does in this life, those special privileges will be ours, as long as we follow the subjugation protocols, to wit: acknowledge the belief, including the exclusivity of the belief, (i.e., accept Christ as the only begotten son of God, and as your savior….., or Mohammed, or Buddha, or Krishna….), whereupon, all of your sins are forgiven, and you get in to Heaven…. As I noted, a nice deal….. a lifetime of good living, without the acknowledgment, and eternity in Hell.  A lifetime of manipulation and thievery, with repentance on the deathbed, and you win the eternity lottery….. Hmm…. something is wrong with this picture, I think….

Okay, so dying makes me fearful…. but not that I’ll spend eternity in Hell. It is the fear that comes before entering any new situation, one I’ve never experienced before…. and in this case, the odds are, at the least, even that I HAVE experienced it before, since I am alive now. It doesn’t strike me as a balanced approach to assume that the time spent in the death state is eternity, when the time spent here in life is not…. It seems more logical to me that they are more balanced than that, either in a recurring pattern of one, then the other, endlessly, or something else completely beyond my current imagination.

Hey, maybe we get one shot at this, as humans, then one at death, and then we start as something else entirely, like an intelligent fungal growth on a planet in a distant galaxy….. who knows for sure? I’m not buying the stuff I’ve seen in most of the holy scriptures of ANY of the major religions…. their versions of Heaven seem to pretty boring to me, especially if one had to spend eternity there….. I don’t care how good the temperature control is, I’m not wearing those robes without pants….. and I never did like wearing sandals…. my toes feel exposed….

“I want to live forever. . .so far, so good.” — Smart Bee

It’s like Robert Heinlein had my favorite character, Lazarus Long say, in his Notebooks…. “There is no real evidence that proves life after death, just as there is no solid proof there isn’t. Soon enough, you will know, so why worry about it?” He was also insightful enough to note, “More people have died from worry than ever bled to death….”  So, relax, ffolkes, Death will be along, when the time is right…. we just have to make sure we are ready to die with honor and dignity when he shows up…..

“I’m in direct contact with many advanced fun CONCEPTS.” — Zippy the Pinhead
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I thought for a time this morning that a poem was lurking about, waiting patiently to come out, if I would only open a convenient vein…. but, all that did was make a bloody mess on the carpet…. what was in there was a joke, just fooling with me. So, you will have to settle again for whatever I can find through the judicious application of Google and my preferences in poets…. Hmm….. whom shall we subvert today?…..

Forgotten Language

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?

~~ Shel Silverstein
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“We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major prophet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God. But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual resources.  If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology, the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.” — Norman Cousins, from his book “Human Options”

This most excellent statement has saved you….. This is so clearly stated, and is so obviously truthful, I find that anything I might add to it would be merely fluffy ruffles, and would add nothing of value; therefore I will NOT use it as the basis for an interminable rant….. this time.

I would, however, just like to point out that it also is a clear explanation of why trying to achieve any sort of ecumenical feeling amongst the differing philosophies of the world’s major, and minor, religions, always proves to be problematic. It almost seems at times like they all LIKE to fight over this stuff! As noted, it is difficult merely to get them to agree about the basic tenets of their faiths that are similar, or complementary to each other; trying to get them to agree to any further likenesses seems to go against their grain, and they refuse categorically to entertain any such notions, no matter how much truth they may contain….

Ah well, I guess it goes to prove the old saw, about people always managing to pick the things in life that are the worst for them…. perverse little creatures, we are, there is no doubt….

“Our father who art in heaven..  I sincerely pray that SOMEBODY at this table will PAY for my SHREDDED WHAT and ENGLISH MUFFIN… and also leave a GENEROUS TIP…” — Zippy the Pinhead
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This has been a classically constructed Pearl, with elements of style, formatting, and attitude from a number of differing periods in the history of Exploring Consensual Reality…. it is what I like to call a “peach”, because it is so Sweeeet!  Okay, so I’m silly….. I get to see my grandson on Sunday, so I’m practicing that particular grandfatherly skill…. But, today’s Pearl, though perhaps not one of the all-time greats, is one I am content with, as it conforms to my standards of strangeness, and hopefully, wit….. If not, well, there’s always tomorrow, right?……  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!