A budgie in the hand, and two more on ice….

Posted on January 29, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Part III of Repercussions….

On a day in mid-August of 1984, I was working once again at Napa State Hospital (NSH) as a Psychiatric Technician. Since the adolescent program where I previously worked had closed, I was assigned to a unit designated T8. The T-building is a two-story edifice which encompasses enough space for 10 units housing up to 45 adult individuals each, an industrial kitchen with two separate dining rooms, serving meals in both rooms in rotation, for eight of the units, and several program offices for the Program managers and support staff.

The population was all male, in a program whose purpose was to treat a variety of different diagnoses. The residents of the program, who were diagnosed with Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar Disorders, Personality Disorders, along with a wide variety of other psychiatric conditions, were housed together on eight units with dormitories where they slept at night. On this particular late summer’s day, the men on T8 were relatively quiet, as everyone tried to cope with the stifling heat common to the area at this time of the year. The buildings at NSH were built in the 1950’s, all of concrete, and could be very uncomfortable.

A couple of hours into the shift, we escorted our charges out the door, downstairs to the hallway leading to the dining room for dinner. It is always the most dangerous part of the shift; the residents are hungry, and the walk to the dining room necessarily leaves the staff spread apart in order to keep an eye on everyone. The team I worked with was a good one, and with all of us staying alert, we got to the dining room and supervised the clients, who were conversant with the routine, until all were seated and eating, except a couple of stragglers still in line.

The phone on the wall rang, and one of the kitchen employees picked up to answer. She listened a moment, then turned to quickly address us nursing staff, saying in a strained voice, “T6 needs help, stat!” “Stat” is the medical code word for an emergency situation, requiring staff to respond as fast as possible to lend assistance. Two of us immediately broke into a run, out of the door to the left down the hallway to the stairway door leading up to T6. We hit the open hall door at a full run and bounded up the stairs, slowing as we came to the doorway to scan the situation before entering into the main day hall of the unit.

To the left was the medication room door, bottom half closed, top open to the room. A female staff member in the open upper half pointed across the day hall at a resident there, saying only, “that’s him” In the middle of the room, near the chairs grouped in front of the TV, lay another of the residents, curled into a ball and shivering violently. A female staff member could be seen in the nursing office, still calling for help. No one was in the TV area; most of the clients were on the way to the dining room, as were most of the staff, so my teammate, named Lee, and I were the first responders at the scene. I looked straight ahead from the door as I moved into the room, and saw a sight I will see in dreams for the rest of my days, burned indelibly on my memory in an instant that lasted forever.

I saw the body of a male staff member, obviously unconscious; he lay on his back straight in front of me about 10 feet away. I recognized him as the T-6 shift lead, a friend named Al, who had oriented me to the program when I first came on board. I observed that he was breathing, but his complexion had a very bad looking, chalky grey cast to it. Another 15 feet beyond where he lay paced the apparent perpetrator, who immediately began yelling at me in a threatening voice, shouting, ” Yeah I did that, come and get me!.” He was about 6’1″, approximately 190 lbs., appeared to be in good shape, and very obviously was in an agitated psychotic state, just coming down after an explosion of rage, and still pumped up to fight.

As I approached him, I had to step over the body of my friend, and very carefully moved toward the agitated individual, on full alert and fully adrenalized. Time had slowed to a crawl, and I could hear the harsh breathing from the aggressor as he paced in a tight circle, mumbling to himself between yells in my direction. Lee, the other staff who had come in with me, is an experienced PT, and like me, a veteran of such situations.

He silently crossed behind me to the left, quickly circling around to the opposite side, so we could approach from both directions. As I stepped up to the aggressor, I casually took his left arm, just as Lee did the same on the other side. Both of us had been trained to use a special hold which allows control of the arm without stressing it by putting it in unnatural positions, allowing you to use your weight to control the arm, quickly tiring the subject. He began to try rip his arms from our grasp, yelling obscenities at us, and flailing about.

Lee was experienced, but only weighed about 110 lbs. dripping wet, and I could tell he wasn’t going to be able to hold the right arm much longer, and I would then be the unhappy recipient of an attempted blow to the head. I had to think fast, so I dropped my weight while holding his arm, then lifted him upward until his weight went onto his toes, just enough that I was able to control the direction of our movement.

I quickly directed all three of us right into the chairs a few feet away, knowing that I could direct him hard enough to cause his legs to run into the arm of the heavy chair, causing him to imbalance and fall over to the floor, with me still on top grimly keeping a death-grip on his arm. This unfortunately left Lee underneath him, but as I knew he would, he wriggled free, still holding the right arm, and we were then able to use our combined weight to hold him securely on the floor until more help arrived.

Very soon after we got control of the still wildly struggling individual, more people arrived, helped us to restrain him, then per procedure, move him to a secure room, where he could be restrained with leather straps on a bed until he regained control, as the psychotic rage passed. Once he was secure, Lee and I returned to the day hall where Al still lay, being examined by the on-duty physician, surrounded by silent and worried looking staff. A paramedic team arrived with a gurney stretcher, Al was lifted onto it gently, and rushed to the emergency room at the nearest hospital a few miles away. The doctor was only able to stand there shaking his head sadly, with a grave expression, saying over and over, “it’s bad, it’s bad”. After writing up the incident reports, Lee and I finished our shift on our unit, quietly raging inside but still outwardly under control.

After our shift ended, we went to the hospital to see if Al had been stabilized and/or had regained consciousness; before we left work, we had heard only periodic updates that told us he was still in surgery. When we arrived, we were told he was in a coma, in critical condition, and being monitored for fluid pressure on the brain. His prognosis was serious and guarded, meaning the doctors didn’t know whether he would recover or not, only time would tell.

Four days later, Al died without ever waking up. The doctors explained that he had apparently been struck full in the face, a massive blow to the nose. The doctors related he had received in essence two blows, one to the face and nose, and one to the back of the head when he fell to the floor. In reality, he never stood much chance of a full recovery; even if he had lived, the likelihood of a severe loss of brain function would almost certainly have made him a full-time bed patient, requiring full nursing care to survive. He would never have been able to speak, or walk, or hold his family again.

Al was survived by his wife and four children. At the funeral a day after his death all of us who had worked with Al stood by his casket at the memorial service as we and his family bid him a tearful farewell. We could but stare in shock, and wonder at the terrible waste of a good man’s life, silent as the sadness filled us.

And I, I was filled with a such a sense of rage and sorrow, such waves of pain and anguish that I could barely speak for the clenching of my jaw. For the first time in my life and career, I had been unable to protect someone I had cared for, and I was filled with an immensely deep sense of regret for having arrived on the scene too late to save my friend…..

My equilibrium was completely shattered, and I could not find my center, nor even momentary peace, despite recognizing that we had done as much as we could, and held no personal responsibility for his death. That knowledge gave me no comfort, and I entered the realm of the “walking dead”, gripped by madness and and soul-deep pain….

To be continued…..

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

gigoid

Kowabunga!

Remarkably obscene patterns in the sand….

Posted on January 28, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Here is the second of four parts…

In 1973, at the age of 23, I attended school to study to take the state examination for a license as a Psychiatric Technician (PT). The classes were subsidized by, and took place at, Atascadero State Hospital (ASH) in Central California. College credits were given through the local J.C., Cuesta College in nearby San Luis Obispo. In conjunction with the classes, students were allowed, and encouraged, to work 20 hours per week in the hospital, as a supplement to the clinical hours required to complete the courses. So began my journey in the mental health industry, and unknown to me at the time, down the path to darkness…..

The hospital at Atascadero is a maximum security facility that houses up to 1200 individuals, who are committed to the bleak, prison-like hospital by the state courts, having been judged as being either unable to stand trial due to being unable to understand the charges, or because they were unable to cooperate in their own defense, due to mental illness. Some of these men (it is an all-male facility; women in the same legal categories were housed in another facility) were also committed by the courts as being Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, or were those who had manifested symptoms of mental illness after being convicted of crimes and sent to prison. A very few of them were not insane, but were master manipulators, career criminals with very good lawyers who had convinced the court to send them to the hospital rather than prison. These individuals caused a great many problems, as they would manipulate their less functional peers into giving up their property, or doing their will, or incite them to violence, just to watch the results from a safe distance, for amusement.

Working in a maximum security facility as a therapist is possibly one of the most difficult jobs man has ever created. A prison-like environment makes it difficult to create the ambiance necessary to allow the men being treated to feel safe and comfortable enough to deal with their individual problems. The danger of housing so many people with mental illness is an ever-present and overriding concern, as one of the primary characteristics of those with these types of diagnoses is a lack, or even absence, of impulse control. As a result, managing assaultive behavior becomes a necessary adjunct to treatment.

The Department of Mental Health, working with employees from all the state hospitals, developed a policy for dealing with the issue; subsequently, training in Management of Assaultive Behavior (MAB) was given to every employee who came into contact with the committed individuals. Since the facility was classed as maximum security, the training was especially important for the Hospital Police, who were responsible for maintaining the security of the physical plant, and for the therapists (psychiatrists and psychologists, nurses, psychiatric technicians, and ancillary staff such as occupational and rehabilitation therapists) who were the primary care-givers for the individuals. These teams were taught specific techniques for recognizing the warning signs of impending violent behavior, how to re-direct when possible, and methods for physically controlling individuals who were acting out in a violent manner, without causing or sustaining injury.

Most of these principles and techniques, if not all, were very similar to the Judo and Kung Fu that I had been taught, so my prior training and experience became valuable tools for me, helping me to be skillful in keeping safe both the aggressors and victims involved in the violent episodes so frequently found in settings such as ASH. I became one of the people who specialized in MAB, which necessarily meant that whenever a violent incident broke out, I was one of the first to respond, as I was adept at controlling the situation without any of the participants sustaining injury, the primary goal in such instances.

Working in such a high stress environment as a maximum security hospital was both physically and emotionally draining, and after three years at ASH I had had enough. I moved north to work at Napa State Hospital, in order to get back to being a therapist rather than a glorified cop. I obtained a position as a PT in a treatment program for adolescents at NSH in 1976. To me, it was a wonderful change; the kids in the program, lived ina co-educational environment, and were smaller as a rule than the full-grown men I was used to; in addition, there were far fewer individuals who had already learned to resort to violence, compared to those who were housed at ASH. It was also different for being co-ed, as I had previously not worked with any women, or girls, in a therapeutic setting. Because of my experience in MAB, violence on the unit where I worked became a non-viable behavior for the adolescents, and after a few months the number of incidents that took place on the unit were greatly reduced.

After a few years at NSH, I decided to take an extended sabbatical from working as a PT, and traveled around California for a few months, until not working became a bore; I was raised to be productive, and needed to get back to work. I applied to and was hired to work in another state hospital in Camarillo, a relatively small town near Ventura in Southern California. At CSH I once again worked with adolescents, as they had a similar program, patterned after the one at NSH. My martial arts training, which I had continued all this time, once again proved to be a valuable tool, and I again became the first responder at any outbreaks of violence among the individuals under treatment.

I met my wife at Camarillo; she was another PT in the adolescent program. We worked together, began dating, fell in love, married and started our family. It was a challenging period for me; between work, parenting, maintaining my marriage, home maintenance, and the myriad of little things that are the activities of daily life in this country, I was a very busy, very stressed individual. But I loved it that way, and was happy and content for some years.

The economy at that time changed for the worse; we were unable to keep up with our mortgage payments, and lost our house to foreclosure. We decided to move north, to the Sonoma Valley, to raise our children in a country setting, with very well-respected schools, and a much lower crime rate than the southern California area in which we had lived.

I eventually hired on back at NSH, but the adolescent program was no longer open, so I began working with adults, on an all-male unit, with a group of individuals with a wide variety of diagnoses. As the level of security at Napa was not maximum, and the degree of MAB training was not up to the higher standards at ASH, the units in the program where I worked were very dangerous, a situation which ultimately led to my downfall.

It was about this time when I calculated that, in my career as a PT, I had worked in the most stressful environments in the entire world, outside of battlefields, constantly in danger, and my martial arts background had become not just useful, but absolutely critical. I estimated the number of violent incidents in which I had been involved, and found that over the years I had an average of one major incident (translation: a knock-down, drag-out fight, in real-time, with real opponents, who are actively engaged in trying to hurt or maim me, or someone else) per week since I had started as a PT at ASH. My calculations came to a minimum of 728 incidents. I was appalled, but also somewhat proud of this figure; in all those incidents only one of the individuals had sustained a minor injury, and I had sustained one minor injury myself. Not a bad record, all in all…2 partial failures and 726 successful outcomes.

However, the damage to my psyche that had accumulated through the years had by this time reached an unprecedented and dangerous level, and I was finding it extremely difficult to maintain the now uncertain equilibrium I had achieved. My experiences had left me burdened with an indelible, hidden wound in my soul, in my very center. The experiences to which I’d been exposed eventually culminated in one specific incident that brought all of my pent-up stress to the surface, and affected me so deeply that I still feel the effects today……I became, quite literally, one of the “walking wounded”, a condition with which my generation, due to the Vietnam War, had become all too familiar. It was a single incident, that happened one night in 1984, and to this day I have never fully recovered…..

To be continued…..

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

gigoid

Kowabunga!

Who ordered the asparagus with hollandaise?….

Posted on January 26, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Lazy doats and mersey boats moved silently past the statue, but I saw them. They were dark, and evil, and up to no good. So, in the burgeoning night, I sent them all back to hell with gusto……

Whoops….sorry, wrong crowd….some days, the key is to just jump in without even checking the water temperature; it’s the shock that gets the old heart moving, albeit reluctantly. It’s not as effective as a good cup of coffee, but it serves the purpose adequately. Can’t always have everything just the way we like it, can we? Learning to live with that idea is one of the keys to reducing one’s overall stress level, and it’s probably good karma to not bite anyone before breakfast…..
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Some random thoughts I picked up here and there, on everyone’s favorite controversy…… the images were found on Facebook, so I’m not sure of the original attribution…… but both are pretty mainstream, and most likely intended for the public domain….

“As a man can drink water from any side of a full tank, so the skilled theologian can wrest from any scripture that which will serve his purpose.” — Bhagavad Gita

“What is it the Bible teaches us? – rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? – to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.” — Thomas Paine — The Age of Reason

Relaxed Agnostic–I don’t know any answers–I’m not looking very hard, either.

“It [the Bible] is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.” — Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (1835-1910) — Letters from the Earth (1905-1909)

Oops! I think I just heresied on several important religions. Oh well, Clint will protect me, never fear…..My take on the above? The library, or a forest, or a lake; all are good places to spend a pleasant Sunday.

“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.” — Bob Dylan
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“Say not unto thyself, “Behold, truth breedeth hatred, and I will avoid it; dissimulation raiseth friends, and I will follow it.” Are not the enemies made by truth, better than the friends obtained by flattery?” — Akhenaton? (c. B.C. 1375)

Note the date the statement was made; 1375 B.C. That is three thousand, three hundred and eighty-six years ago (3386). I find it to be an encouraging note when I contemplate the subject matter, for if mankind was thinking about such subjects as honor, truth, and dignity so long ago, then there is hope that we can find a way today to make it reality.

Of course, that is the optimist in me speaking; the pessimist would note that it is a very long time to have passed without having come up with some kind of reasonable answer to such a basic question. And I don’t think all the funny words he used were enough to confuse the issue; I think it has more to do with our tendency toward laziness when it comes to hard work…..
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“I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.” — Pogo, character in “Pogo,” comic strip by Walt Kelly

The curmudgeon in me just adores this! I’ve been using it for many a year as a means avoiding superfluous arguments or power struggles with people who have difficulty whistling and walking at the same time. As a matter of fact, on more than one occasion I have said this to some ignoramus trying to pick a fight, and had them blinking at me in confusion, then walking away muttering to themselves. In all this time, however, I never knew where it originated.

It pleases me no end to know that Pogo was the first to put it into play. Now I can use it without any feelings of guilt for misappropriating someone else’s intellectual property; I’m sure Walt Kelly intended it to be used, as he put it out there for the entire country to see….. plus, as we all know, Pogo was written with the intent of providing folks with ammunition in the age-old war against stupidity…… and this one is definitely a .457 Magnum hollow point with a maximum powder load, for use in close quarters……
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You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there ‘s nobody at home.
— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Epigram

Consider this an accurate picture of gigoid attempting to write poetry……
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“I admire men of character, and I judge character not by how men deal with their superiors, but mostly how they deal with their subordinates, and that, to me, is where you find out what the character of a man is.” — General Norman Schwarzkopf

A picture is worth a thousand words…..Q.E.D……
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Hack, thppt, bbbolloks! That went well, eh? Sometimes it just moves along better than what is the usual case. I imagine that’s a good thing, though now I’m uncertain what to do with the rest of the day……oh, well, I’ll figure out something. Meantime, y’all take care out there…..,

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

Kowabunga!

A bag, a bone, and a cookie….

Posted on January 25, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
For those who may, or may not, have wondered, the titles of these Pearls never have any meaning. At least, not deliberately. Picking a new title or subject line for the email I send out each morning used to be a complete drag; it would take almost as long as writing the post some days. So, rather than trying to be creative, and making it fit with the subject matter below, I opted for being nonsensical.

The phrases I end up using are made up by picking random words out of my head and flinging them together at the screen. The ones that stick get used. Sometimes it is very pretty; other times not so much. Some are cute, some are weird, and some are just plain stupid. But they work, and they take less time than trying to find something that fits appropriately. (Always hated having that word applied to me anyway) Some days, like today, it just pops up in my head, already strung together, so I just go with it. It never has anything to do with what is written below it…..and that’s how I like it……
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Everything is matter. Matter is electricity. Electricity is invisible, intangible. Therefore it is nothing. Therefore everything is nothing.

I like this. It is a perfect example of how circular logic works. Each statement but the last, taken alone, is not merely true, but obviously true. String them together, and it all becomes nonsense. This process has been described as using logic like a hammer, rather than as a scalpel. It is also an unfortunate reality that many people accept this kind of logic just as readily as they do the veracity of scripture, and with the same amount of verifiable evidence, i.e., none.

It’s how politicians get elected in this country, and probably in others as well. All they need to do is find some catchy phrase easy for people to remember and repeat, based on a line of reasoning such as above, and say it enough times that it is accepted as true. No matter how untrue it is, if its repeated loud enough and long enough, there will be some folks that will buy into it. Isn’t human nature grand?…..

“Zero raised to the nth power remains zero.” — Pop Baslim
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“It’s getting harder and harder to act weird.” — Zippy the Pinhead

One would think, based on the generally accepted meaning of the word ‘Pinhead’, Zippy and his ilk would be unfamiliar with Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. But this poignant complaint from Zippy is compelling evidence that they are not merely familiar with it, but understand its relevance to real life. It is indeed becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd by being weird. This is another natural result of overpopulation; the more people there are, the more weird ones there will be. The percentage per capita is rising also, as the stress of modern life pushes more and more folks to react to life just as if they were a Pinhead, in order to retain what little sanity they possess.

All in all, I think this trend is a good one; believe it or not, weirdness is a powerful antidote to oppression of the spirit. It is a figurative, and literal, way of throwing off the shackles of normality we are all forced to wear, due to the power of peer pressure. And it’s a good way to loosen up those gluteous maximus muscles a bit……which is always a good thing….
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“A serious public debate about the validity of astrology? A serious believer in the White House? Two of them? Give me a break. What stifled my laughter is that the image fits. Reagan has always exhibited a fey indifference toward science. Facts, like numbers, roll off his back. And we’ve all come to accept it. This time it was stargazing that became a serious issue….Not that long ago, it was Reagan’s support of Creationism….Creationists actually got equal time with evolutionists. The public was supposed to be open-minded to the claims of paleontologists and fundamentalists, as if the two were scientific colleagues….It has been clear for a long time that the president is averse to science…In general, these attitudes fall onto friendly American turf….But at the outer edges, this skepticism about science easily turns into a kind of naive acceptance of nonscience, or even nonsense. The same people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of laetrile to eye of newt to the movement of planets. We lose the capacity to make rational — scientific — judgments. It’s all the same.” — Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper — Company-Washington Post Writers Group

There isn’t a lot I can add to this, and the reasoning is tough to pick apart, as it is logical, and verifiable by physical evidence. Not being the sort to gild a lily, we’ll let it fly solo, and merely add this……

“Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.” — Frank Dane
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“If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” — Abraham Lincoln

Abe was not just another pretty face, obviously. And he had a pretty good sense of humor about that, too, as he is said to have made this observation, “If I was two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” Not a bad attitude for one whose face, which, by all reports, could stop a clock just by asking the time. He also is credited with some decent insight, with this gem, “Most folks are just about as happy as they’ve made up their mind to be.”

Not to belabor an obvious point, but we could use a President with this kind of inner strength today; the batch we’ve been saddled with over the last 40 or 50 years has been somewhat of a disappointment, to say the least, with perhaps two exceptions. (Which ones, you may ask? In my mind, only JFK, who wasn’t in office long enough to screw up badly, and Jimmy Carter, who was prevented from doing much by a partisan Congress. Clinton had a chance to be included, but he committed the unpardonable sin of getting caught being stupid) Yeah, old Abe would be a welcome change to the folks we are forced to pick from, even if all the mirrors would have to be removed from the White House……
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Lament for the Bill of Rights

Insidious, and silent, oppression steals away
most precious gift, our enduring legacy.
Sing no more bright songs of laughter and play,
pride of spirit fled with our democracy.

No more protest, no more comedic rant,
only silent obedience to the master’s word.
Our only hope becomes completely insignificant
Best to fly away, as a once-free bird.

–gigoid
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More evidence that becoming the world’s greatest poet may take a bit more time than I had suspected. Ah well, since I can’t exercise any of my no-longer-extant rights, I may as well go out and see what kind of trouble I can cause. Y’all take care out there…..

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

Kowabunga!

Kindness and compassion are addictive…

Posted on January 24, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
T’is a fine line indeed between madness and genius; a line so fine that the two bleed into each other’s meaning, distorting the sense of reality we depend on to anchor us. It is almost as if they are inter-dependent, one not possible without the presence of the other. In a way, it makes sense, as the only progress humanity makes is when people act abnormally; one must break eggs to make a ….an omelet (I wanted to say another dish, but spell checker refused to use it).

I have long understood this, as many of my best moments in life came when I allowed my madness free rein over my perceptive judgment. But it isn’t wise to allow that too often; it has a tendency to produce concepts that alarm the natives……let’s get on with the day’s musings, eh?….
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“From stupidity there is always something to be learned, but it’s always the same thing: don’t be stupid.” — Robert M. Adams

Again, the saddest part of this is that it has to be said at all. I don’t know about you, but I stopped drinking my shampoo many years ago, and haven’t felt the urge to bite into an electric cord, or see if the stove is hot since infancy. (There are, however, a number of people I have had the urge to bite, on several occasions) But, because our society has the unfortunate habit of repeatedly passing laws intended to “save ourselves” from our own stupidity, regardless of how richly the consequences of acting so might be deserved, our beloved ruling class benevolently bestows upon us a law to “keep people safe.”

This is called legislating morality, and has been attempted by any number of governments throughout history; each and every time we end up with many more problems than the one for which the solution was created for. It’s all just a piece of human nature, (Robert Heinlein calls its proponents Mrs. Grundy, the old neighbor who watches out the window to gather gossip and judge the morals of everyone else), and has probably caused more deaths than sheer stupidity alone. Being human nature, what can one do? Well, not much…. but, ignoring Mrs. Grundy on a consistent basis can at least make her go bother someone else for a time……

“If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life.” — Robertson Davies
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“Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth…But in today’s technical vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different.” — The Firesign Theater

What, you may ask, is he talking about now? Primitive myth? What myth?……Well, lemme tell ya….. There is a commonly held belief in this country that the people who are elected to political office are honest, concerned citizens who will work tirelessly to make society a better place for all. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but this belief is sheer caca….(that word, btw, is the word most common to all languages on Earth; every single culture has this very word, or a close variation with the same sound, and they all mean the same thing…..caca) (you though I was going to say s__t, didn’t you? Shame on you….)

Oh, I’ll grant that there are a few Congressmen from small states & districts, or are new to the national scene, that still might retain some of the shiny idealism they had when they first came to D.C., but just a couple years watching everyone else getting rich, and never being able to get any real reform legislation discussed, much less passed, will generally rub off most of that shine. The great majority of the folks in power are there because they have figured out the easiest gig on the planet, i.e., ripping off the rubes, legally.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The ubiquitous ‘they’ do NOT have your interests at heart. Hell, they don’t even care what your interest are, beyond knowing what they need to lie about. Proof? Ever hear this joke? How do you know a politician is lying? His mouth is open. All humor has a piece of truth at the core… And once they are in office, it’s rather like hitting a golf ball. After it’s in the air, you can’t control it at all, no matter how you twist your hips and grimace……

“Will this never-ending series of PLEASURABLE EVENTS never cease?” — Zippy the Pinhead
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“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sometimes, in the hands of creative genius, prose is almost indistinguishable from poetry; this is a perfect example of that, although F. Scott can only marginally be called genius. His work sometimes seems to me to be channeled into him from some other source, as if he were merely the vessel that contains the ambrosia, not the ambrosia itself. But, who cares, eh? If you like it, it won’t matter what anybody thinks about it, so go ahead and enjoy.

My point here, though, is that this particular phrase is one of those that I can personally admit to feeling; I’ve spent many a night pondering why I was up at 3 AM, again. All too often, the reasons which make us restive at that hour have their source in despair, or fear, or even anger, all emotions that affect us strongly. But as the animals we are, we also retain a lot of leftover evolutionary habits, or species memory. Our bodies know that 3 AM is the most dangerous part of the night, and being up and awake at that time makes the body/mind nervous, for no apparent reason.

So, we awake from a nightmare, or to answer the call of the porcelain throne, and to our own turmoil is added the signals of danger, flashing across the background of consciousness, with subliminal undertones of our most ancient fears. In a corner of our soul, we cower in abject terror of the horrors in our imagination, until our mind clears well enough to throw off this unintended consequence of wakefulness. We may not live in the forest anymore, but you can’t convince that piece of you that the monsters aren’t out there, just beyond the light of the fire, waiting for us to foolishly leave the cave…..
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“The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper” — Thomas Jefferson

If we consider this to be correct, it bodes ill for our society; if it was true 200+ years ago, it’s all too true now. Advertisements are deliberately misleading; outlandish claims of superior quality are normal and completely untrue. We all know this; we’ve always known this. It’s just that most folks ignore it, and pretend to believe what they hear. So, if the ads are the most truthful, what does that say about the rest of it? Nothing very flattering, to be sure. Sure, everybody claims to not pay attention to all that garbage, and it may be partly true. But people soak up a lot of stuff they are not aware of, and won’t admit to, even when confronted with irrefutable evidence, like a video of them snarfing Cheetos while riding a stationary bike.

The other problem brought to light by this concept is that exposure to this barrage of untruth insidiously conditions people to accept it as truth. Or maybe they just rationalize it as an alternative truth. I don’t know; not a frigging clue. I’ve never understood how people can give up so much control over their minds to other people. Offhand, I forget who said “If you don’t control your own mind, someone else will”; it wasn’t me, but it is bottom line truth, in my not so humble opinion.

Through circumstances not entirely my choice, I haven’t had a television, or cable, or a DVD player other than my computer, for close to two years now. I’ve caught a few games at other folk’s places, or while I am enjoying an adult beverage at the neighborhood watering hole, but mostly, I am completely out of touch with that whole medium of “entertainment”. I don’t miss it a bit….and it cuts my crap intake by at least 40%. Makes it easier to defend against the rest of the crap, online and in newspapers, and is very helpful in reducing the number of times per day I feel like turning homicidal…..

“In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds – that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.” — Justice Robert H. Jackson
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“Never try to out-stubborn a cat.” — Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’s “Time Enough For Love”

This is an important little piece of advice, based on well-earned experience, backed up by ongoing physical and observational evidence. One good reason to avoid this egregious sort of error is that learning to coexist with a cat can teach one the finer points of diplomacy and negotiation. Plus, it is well to remember that cats do not own shoes that you can pee into, in the middle of night when they aren’t looking. You do, and I’ve never known a cat who was shy about expressing their displeasure with their pet human……
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Why is it that, having misplace an object we need, everyone always says that what we are looking for is always in the last place we look? OMG, tough one…..doh! When you find it, you stop looking, which automatically makes it the last place you looked, even if it is the first place you’ve looked. The only way for this statement to be untrue would be for us to keep looking after we found it….doh! But people always repeat this as if it were a new concept they just discovered, trying to give the impression it is the first time they’ve ever heard it. I guess we humans are just easily amused….. y’all take care out there….

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

gigoid

Kowabunga!

As the plan developed, Murphy laughed….

Posted on January 23, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Lost again in reverie, I gaze blankly into space, imagining beautiful words parading across the screen, words so poignant, so powerful, they bring tears. The words speak to the part of each reader that is within me, that common ground of fellow-feeling, that spark of humanity that connects us all. The tears are not always sad; often they are (in my mind’s eye) full of such joy that the tears fall of their own accord, as if the morning sun had arisen in our very souls. Whether sad or joyous, beauty remains, always there for us to reach out and touch, and be touched. And when the words have worked their benign magic, the world turns again, and a new day begins…….
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“Life is cruel? Compared to what?” — Edward Abbey

One of the better methods for identifying wisdom is to learn that it is generally close by the person who asks the questions that occur to no one else. I’ve noticed this a lot with Edward Abbey’s writings; he has a pretty powerful grip on what is important to know, and a very deft touch in putting it into a palatable form.

This, as it turns out in reality, is a valuable characteristic, and one of the ways society passes knowledge from one person to the next. Not everyone is curious, even if they should be. All too many folks spend the greater portion of their mental energy just coping with everyday life, with little left over at the end of the day to put into “frivolous” activities. Sad, but true.

But, fortunately for society, not everyone can curb their curiosity; some of us just HAVE to know what is out there to be found, or seen, or learned. It’s like breathing; you can stop if you like, but you won’t enjoy the outcome at all. By learning to put questions to the universe in perspective, they are shared with others, thus sharing the product of their curiosity with their fellows, who don’t have the time or inclination to use their mind for anything other than mundane pursuits. I’m awfully glad that those folks are out there; the world would be a lonely, and confusing place to live if they were not……

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” — Voltaire
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“There is the truth, and there are lies, and there is nothing on Earth or in the Netherhells that does not fall under one of these two headings, with the exception of politics.” — The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. LXXXVIII

Watching the political scene in this country unfold over the last few months has been enough to place the impulse to make political commentary on a par with repeatedly banging one’s head against a brick wall. Hell, there are times when the brick wall looks like a better way to spend time than trying to either make sense of the circus, or waste time criticizing it.

I don’t yet have enough of a reading audience to spread my particular brand of ideology to the great unwashed masses, and I often feel like a blind man in a dark room, trying to hit a piñata with a wiffle bat while listening to bad mariachi music (which is, come to think of it, an oxymoron). I think, in fact that I will have to take a sabbatical from political discourse; it’s beginning to have a deleterious effect on my sleep patterns, and I’m certainly not going to allow such nonsense to affect my health.

Have no fear though; I am sure that the antics of the talking heads leading up to the election in November will pull and push me into commenting before too long. But, it’s so depressing….. makes me wanna go take a nap, and hope it goes away while I’m dozing……fat chance of that, though…..
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Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she
With silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me…
— Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

As most know, this is the poem that was written for the Statue of Liberty, to show the rest of the world how tolerant and free American had become; it espouses the (supposedly) American ideal of society. Today, I’d wager a significant amount of money to bet that 75% of the Americans not only couldn’t tell you the source of the poem, but would tell you they disagree with it. Our leaders, and much of the populace, no longer believe in the melting pot; they would rather seal the borders, and keep the rest of the world out.

Diversity, while already fully ensconced in the structure of society, is being systematically attacked by the forces of ignorance and intolerance, who would rather keep freedom to themselves. They don’t even realize that they have already lost; there are too many outlooks and cultures assimilated into this society to be removed without destroying themselves along with those members of society of whom they disapprove. The pot has already melted the disparate parts into a homogeneous whole; the folks who want to make this a “one-book” society are already in the minority. They just refuse to admit it, which creates a lot of hassle for the rest of us.

Sometimes I am unsure whether to be optimistic, or pessimistic; both have their uses. Optimism feels better, but pessimism is right more often. Oh, well, I guess I’ll go take a nap…..
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“You can always tell an old soldier from the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges: the old ones, grub.” — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), “Arms and the Man”

Though I managed to avoid that whole mess in Vietnam, I was raised as an army brat, living mostly on bases where my father was stationed until he retired from the Army, when I was ten years old. Having been raised on army bases, I was made fully conversant with how the army works, by the process of osmosis; you can’t help but pick up a lot of abstruse knowledge living around soldiers all the time. Thus, I can say with some degree of confidence that although Mr. Shaw’s statement is true, it is only true as far as his knowledge goes. And, it is clear that he himself never served in an army, or he would never have made such a simple mistake.

Yes, an old soldier will carry food, but even more important to him (and his mates) would be to make sure he was carrying toilet paper and clean, dry socks. THOSE are the most highly prized items for a soldier in the field. Bullets and guns are never in short supply, unless a troop has an inept company clerk, and food will eventually show up (or you can commandeer it from the citizenry), but once the TP is gone, it’s gone, and there is no good replacement in nature. And, to an infantryman, dry socks are better by far than gold or jewels, for foot soldiers live only as long as they can still walk…..comfortably……
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These in the days when Heaven is falling
The hour when Earth’s foundations fled
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended
They stood and Earth’s foundations stay
What God abandoned these defended
And took the sum of things for pay.
–A.E. Houseman–Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

It is said of people that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In the case of my daughter, that is both true and not true; but mostly it is true. She followed my example and learned to read by age four. By the second grade, she was devouring books at an alarming rate, books well beyond her grade level (she read the Hobbit at age six). I say alarming only because she was reading so far above her grade level that I was worried it would cause problems in relating to her peers. But, she indeed didn’t fall far, because instead she learned to use, and still uses, what she has read to help her in dealing with the surprises that life brings.

The above is a a poem that she wrote down for me, from memory, one day when we were on a high-flying discussion of some of what we had read in common. She feels the same as I do about poetry, and for much the same reasons, in that she appreciates the poet’s ability to use the language in such a powerful way.

Both she, and her older brother, learned to read at four years, although he is of a personality type that, while he enjoys books and literature, and reads well beyond the average, he prefers to partake of the bulk of his learning from experience. Both of them make me proud, and glad that they will always have the comfort of books to ease their path through the mazes of life. And I am content that, if no other way, I gave them tools that will always serve them well……
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Thus ends another morning’s musings. Hopefully, you have found some food for thought, or at least a humorous snack. I have been up since 5 AM again, so I may just take my own advice, and go back to bed until a more reasonable hour. Hmm….sounds attractive. Unless something pops up before I can get comfy, I can’t see any reason to deny myself that little indulgence. There ARE advantages to this retirement stuff, besides having a lot more time to write….good thing, too, as there are other parts that aren’t as pleasurable, like aging…..y’all take care out there…..

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

gigoid

Kowabunga!

Bright polyester swatches never disappoint…..

Posted on January 22, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Okay, then. Another day is dawning (almost; it’s 5 AM), and I’m once again up and ready to type. If only my brain were as ready to spew! Mostly, what is floating to the top of the pool indicates that some stagnation has set in, and it might be a good time to clean out the filters. Not to worry though; I can do that on the fly……
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“I’m not intending to imply insult or judgment here but I am curious to know in order to be able to respond to your posts in an appropriate manner, so please forgive what appears to be, but in fact is not intended as, an insulting question: Are you stupid?” — Melinda Shore

This is a thought that goes through my head several times a day; it seems to pop up whenever I read a new story on the current political scene. I picture myself in one of the crowds flocking to see some Presidential wannabe, forging to the front, and asking the candidate this question in front of cameras. I get quite a charge imagining what their responses might be. No matter what his answer may be, it will reveal a lot about the character of the candidate. (I can say “his” now because both Bachman and Palin have faded into the background; Ms. Palin never filed to run, and Bachman dropped out after Iowa, or Kansas, or somewhere out there in the Midwest)

I know, I know, it’s hardly cricket, but they are the ones who wanted to go out there and have everyone microscopically examine their every twitch, and every word. I figure it’s their lookout, not mine. I’m just a guy trying to have fun…..and to survive with my sanity intact, in this mad, sad world they have created…..
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Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
— Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867)
— On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake

I don’t think I could find, or think up, a finer epitaph. If someone can say this about me after I die, then I will have lived my life well. At least, by my standards. But, I think, it would also be anyone’s standards, because the highest form of human love is to live in service to mankind, and such altruism as indicated by these lines would be recognized by all who knew such a person. We all remember those people who give their all, especially when our own lives have been touched by them. Though humans generally will remember an insult far longer than praise, no one forgets kindness, when it is applied to them.

Well, they don’t unless they are sociopathic, but sociopaths are not really like the rest of us, and shouldn’t be expected to react the same way. As a matter of fact, that is one of the ways that such a disorder is identified, i.e., by noting how they react to positive stimulus. A sociopath will take a compliment as their due, and attempt to use the feeling behind it to manipulate the other person to their advantage, as opposed to most folks, who regard compliments in a different light. Whatever the case may be, I would much rather have this poem on my headstone…. it’s like Plato said, “After I die, I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument, rather than asking why I do.”……
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“Mr. Coolidge is the best Democrat we ever had in the White House. He didn’t do nothin’, but that’s what we wanted done.” — Will Rogers

I have changed my mind. There is such a thing as the ‘good old days’, and here is proof…..Would that today’s society could claim the same!…But I’m 61 now, and I can truthfully say that the only President in my lifetime that deserves any respect at all is Jimmy Carter. And that is for the same reason as that stated above so elegantly by Mr. Rogers….. Of course, Jimmy also had to contend with a Congress with a Republican majority, so anything he tried to accomplish, as a Democratic President, was challenged at every turn, and so, very little work actually got done. But, as Will said another time, “The people never suffer so much as when Congress is full of ideas!” And that’s the truth…..thpppppt! Hak! Brrt. Sorry, hairball….
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“The Book says BURN and DESTROY repent and redeem and revenge and deploy and rumble thee forth to the land of the unbelieving scum ’cause they don’t go for what’s in the Book and that makes ’em BAD.” — Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa was one of the twentieth century’s most little known and unappreciated genius’. His patterns of thought, his art, his very being were so different, so strange compared to the normal, that most people just gave up trying to ‘get’ what he was saying with his music, or his words. I would wager a significant amount of money that he will, in 200 years, or possibly less, be universally considered as one of the century’s premier philosopher/bards.

One of his albums, released sometime in the 1970’s, I think, was called “Shut Up and Play”; the entire three disk album was instrumental, with Zappa playing many of the instruments. In the course of the album, he took rock, blues, pop, and contemporary jazz into entirely new realms, with melodies and structures never before seen by man. And, as he probably expected, the reviews were rife with complaints that the listeners could not understand the music.

But, if one looks at the evolution of music in the last 30-40 years, his insight into the future can be clearly seen. Hip Hop and Rap are both developments of stylistic touches in Zappa’s earliest works, though very few will admit to that. But, if you want to know what the future may bring in the way of musical evolution, go back and listen to some of Zappa’s material from the 1960’s, and you’ll get a pretty clear picture……and check out his thoughts on modern society, too. It’s pretty amazing stuff…..
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“Don’t take life too serious. It ain’t no ways permanent.” — Pogo, by Walt Kelly

Ahhhhh! Datsa nice! It’s been entirely too long since we had a taste of Pogo, one of the all-time best cartoon strips ever. Ever…. Walt Kelly had an amazing knack for feeling the pulse of American society, and remarkable facility for reporting on its health, or lack thereof, using humor as adeptly as surgeon with a scalpel. He set new meaning to the concept of political cartooning, even though the political remarks his strips contained were only a fraction of the understanding of human nature and human society that it displayed on a daily basis.

Cartooning is, in one perspective, a form of poetry, using a combination of images and words to create the desired point of view, rather than words powerful enough to create the images in the mind’s eye. Cartooning also has an advantage over poetry, or rather, an adjunct characteristic, of not requiring a lot of thought in order for the point to be driven home; it is obvious, right before the eyes, with the words supplying the frames for the pictures, defining their meaning without needing to ponder.

This characteristic is what makes cartooning a palatable alternative to poetry for the masses of people who either don’t have the educational background to appreciate poetry, or just learn differently than those who gather their knowledge from books. Some folks learn better outside a classroom; that’s been obvious for a long time. And those are the folks who most appreciate cartoons as their preferred method of political observation. Long live Pogo! And all of his ilk…..
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So, I’ve been told that my criticism of the little poem I wrote two days ago was too harsh. At least one of my faithful readers informs me that it was well received in that quarter. As this is the case, I must then withdraw my remarks, as I respect my readership a lot, and if someone liked it, then it was better than I thought. I guess this means that I get to be part of the 4% with an asterisk; that’s good enough for me; better than being part of the crap. I suppose at times I can be critical (No! Really?….hadn’t noticed..), and I am aware that I apply that faculty to myself much more stringently than to others. I have very high standards when it comes to my own work; I guess I can afford to show a bit more lenience in regards to myself. SIGH….

I don’t know, though. I’m very sensitive to crap, with a highly developed, elegantly defined crap detection protocol, and I tend to run everything I read through it, especially if I wrote it. I’m not going to lower my standards, but I can adjust the parameters I use for judging, and I’ll do that, if only to see what effect it has. So, thanks, Carolyn, for the kind words, and the stimulus for another couple hundred words today….. y’all take care out there…..

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

Kowabunga!

Celebrity slang sold here….

Posted on January 21, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
It may not always sound like it, but I am reminded daily of how lucky I’ve been in life. Drawing comparisons with other folks is a sure path to stress and pain, as there will always be some folks who seem to have it better, and many who don’t. Each of us starts out with the same set of rights, but what we do with them determines the direction our life will take. I feel I’ve been fortunate in several ways, the primary being the set of high-quality tools I was issued at birth. The mind/body that I was given out of the gate oh, so many years ago, is a good one, with a nimble, curious mind, and a body well able to cope with in whatever environment I found myself .

I must confess I haven’t taken the care of it in a way that perhaps I should, but then, I tend to avoid anything that contains the word “should” as a reason for acting in any manner. But, for the most part, it (my body) has always been capable of handling whatever I asked of it, even excelling at much of it. And I am more than happy with how my mind has performed; as far as I can tell, it has served me well. Sure, there are problems and issues that need to be considered and handled on a daily basis, but all things considered, I have to say, I’m a lucky guy…..
___________________________________

And of course, no soap, radio.

I have seen this little phrase, in this exact form, in several places over the years. The first time I saw it was in a science fiction story, one of an anthology put together to appeal to teenage readers (my daughter had it checked out from the school library). The story was pretty cute, and had some interesting characters in it. But mostly, the tone of the tale was intended to put a lesson into the reader’s mind, a lesson on how life’s problems can be handled. The lesson is most simply put to say: Life can be strange, so think outside of the box to find answers to questions that don’t fit into normal patterns. When dealing with issues outside our normal range of experience, it’s important to learn that not all knowledge is found in books, or in school; life itself is our most important teacher, and doesn’t always give the lessons in a format we can immediately fathom. So, you see, you must learn, learn, and learn some more; and, of course, no soap, radio……
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“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” — Philo

Such compassion and empathy! Who was this Philo person? A-googling I will go…..Well, here we are…. from Wikipedia,….James C. VanderKam writes: “Although many of Philo’s writings have survived, little is known about his life. We do not even know when he was born or when he died. The few facts about his life come from occasional hints in his own books and a small number of external references (e.g., Josephus mentions him).”

Ah, okay. Now I remember seeing some other examples of his quotes elsewhere, on previous pearl diving expeditions. This particular quote shows a great deal of insight. Each of us exists, alone, in our own little bubble of perception, and struggles alone with coming to terms with reality. For some, it is a long, drawn out affair; these are the folks who resist change the most, for change is the primary characteristic of reality. One cannot stop change, so learning to flow with those changes becomes a coping technique of primary value.

I’m not sure what it is in human nature that makes it so hard for some people to deal with the changes that are thrown at us repeatedly; nor do I understand why it is so difficult for them to learn how to cope with it. It seems crystal clear to me that learning to accept, period, is one of the best tools we have to deal with the vicissitudes of life, and is easily recognized as one of the first lessons that needs to be learned. As long as one learns to deal with change, living the life we choose is not unreasonably difficult to achieve. But when one fights against the current of time, life becomes an unending struggle just to survive intact. As always, the choice is ours…..
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“This is no time for consensus government. It’s a time for leadership. The average citizen doesn’t know what the stakes are in Vietnam.” — Richard Milhouse Nixon, February 11, 1965

Excuse me? No time for consensus government? I was under the impression that consensus government was what we already lived by. I don’t recall any major changes to the Constitution for at least 75 years, or more, and that is what it promises to us. But Nixon, like many, or even most, of what we now are calling the 1% (I like the one from an author whose name slips my mind; he calls them the beloved ruling class…) actually believe in what he said; the rules are for other folks, not the elite. Moreover, it is how they act, and we, the people, have now allowed them to put their preferences in writing, thereby running an end-run around the Constitution to take away most of what we thought were our rights. We, or many of us, have forgotten that we only have those rights that we can defend; we gave up that defense to our leaders, trusting that they would honor the bargain. But they never had any intention of doing so, and we are now reaping our harvest of despair…..

“The people came to realize that wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized protected robbery.”– Frantz Fanon
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“Rapoport’s Rule of the Roller-Skate Key: Certain items which are crucial to a given activity will show up with uncommon regularity until the day when that activity is planned, at which point the item in question will disappear from the face of the earth.” — Dan Rapoport

I’m amazed. I didn’t know this had been documented sufficiently to become an accepted natural law, on a par with the Murphy syndrome. But, I can testify to its veracity, because, believe it or not, this happened to me in my youth, before I had matured enough to either shave, or consider girls as other than cootie-bearing demons.

I’d gotten a pair of roller skates for Christmas, the old fashioned metal clamps that fastened onto the shoe, and required the Roller Skate Key to tighten them enough to stay on for more than two strides and a fall. Within two weeks, the key disappeared, of course, and wasn’t seen for two years. On the day I found it in some place or other, I looked for the skates, as I could now see myself, much older and more physically adept, sailing away down the sidewalk to the park.

Well, you know the rest. There was only one skate in the back of the closet where they had lived for the last two years; no way to tell when or how the other had made its escape. So, like the mature young man I was, I tied the key to the remaining skate. and tossed it back into the abyss that was my closet, never to be seen again. By the time I might have found the other skate, the technology had advanced, and shoe skates had replaced the old metal contraptions, no key required…..I guess I wasn’t the only one it happened to….
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‘It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.” — Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Now, there is something I could wish; to hear what Oscar would say in today’s culture, wherein we are drowning in information, a great deal of which is useless, both generally and specifically. In fact, one of the fastest rising job markets today is for people who know how to manipulate the information that is available in such staggering quantity. It has become a very valuable skill to be able to sift and organize all the data that flows across the Internet Cloud.

A lot of folks my age (61) and older are having a hard time adjusting to the new pace in society; they’ve been out of the loop long enough that learning what they need to learn to deal with computers is a task they are unwilling to take on. Some, like myself, have been waiting all our lives for this technology to reach the stage it is at today; I grew up reading about the technology, in science-fiction stories, and in Scientific American, and as soon as possible I jumped on that wagon with glee. It is a source of amazement to me that this laptop I’m using to write this has more computing power than there was in the entire world when I graduated from high school!

Learning to be adept with computers is a skill that everyone now needs to learn at an early age, or they just won’t be able to keep up. And, if you stop to think about it for a moment, you can realize that a computer is merely a very sophisticated hammer; just another tool we’ve created to assist us in our constant quest to control the universe around us, and as such, can be learned by even the most resistive student…..in fact, it can be regarded as a “must-learn” skill set…..

“Buy a rifle, encrypt your data, and wait for the Revolution!” — .sig of Travis J.I. Corcoran (TJIC@icd.teradyne.com)
___________________________________

Yesterday, I wrote a little poem to make a point. When I looked at it today, I thought to myself, “What were you thinking?” I suppose I’ve seen worse, but I can’t recall when. Just a bit too trite and smarmy for my taste, and just another example of why I don’t usually try my hand at traditional poetry. Oh well, I guess I’ll stick to haiku; I feel much more comfortable creating them, and they all seem to come out better. But, meantime, we come to the end of another morning session of exposition, so I’ll bid thee adieu for another day….. y’all take care out there…..

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

gigoid

Kowabunga!

Playing with a crooked cue….

Posted on January 20, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
I realized as I sat here this morning that it has now been a year, just a bit more, actually, since I started this particular series of Pearls of Virtual Wisdom. It originally started as a way to blow off steam built up by caring for Mom when she was so ill last January, and eventually morphed into what you see before you today. This constitutes, as near as I can figure, 365+ days straight of writing a Pearl. All of a sudden I’m exhausted…..:-) Let’s go have some fun…..
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“…and before I knew what I was doing, I had kicked the typewriter and threw it around the room and made it beg for mercy. At this point the typewriter pleaded for me to dress him in feminine attire but instead I pressed his margin release over and over again until the typewriter lost consciousness. Presently, I regained consciousness and realized with shame what I had done. My shame is gone and now I am looking for a submissive typewriter, any color, or model. No electric typewriters please!” — Rick Kleiner

Often, after composing one of these morning Pearls, I can empathize with Mr. Kreiner very closely. I’ve been known to take myself right back to bed some mornings, as there is nowhere else soft to crawl to….writing every day in a creative manner is a much harder thing to do than it is to imagine. A lot more goes into the things we read online, or in a newspaper, or even on TV, than we know of, looking from the outside.

The writer must not only write creatively, but within certain guidelines that can, at times, limit the creative urge. Once it is done, then it must be edited for errors and syntax, for style, for clarity. After at least 3 edits, it will finally be in a form suitable to be published. This, of course, makes no mention of research beforehand, or searching for pictures, videos, or links that may go with the material. It is a lot more work than it looks like from the outside, for sure. This could be why so many give up trying to write; it’s more work than they wanted. I suppose one could say that’s a metaphor for life, eh?……
___________________________________

“One must not be mean with the affections; what is spent of the fund is renewed in the spending itself.” — Sigmund Freud

Boy, you can sure tell Freud was a psychiatrist, and too-heavily influenced by his own reputation. What a long winded way of saying you can’t get or give too many hugs! Even that long-winded story about Warm Fuzzies I read about 40 years ago was easier to understand than this one sentence from Siggy.

And that, I think, points to the problem encountered by a lot of philosophers, or doctors, or any other well-educated people who share their thoughts with others when they write. They have read a lot, and thought about what they’ve read; to many of them, this is a source of pride, and they tend to use the language far too formally, constructing long, meandering sentences, with lots of commas and semi-colons, that take the reader on a walk through the dictionary (sort of like this sentence).

The difficulty with this is it tends to take away from the actual content of what is being read, focusing the reader’s attention on the words and how they are put together, rather than on what the words mean. Siggy’s sentence above is a perfect example of this; all he really needed to say is; Hugs feel good, and you can never run out of them……and that’s the truth, so there, thpppppt!…..
___________________________________

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” — George Washington

It makes perfect sense to me that the founding fathers of this country, Washington included, would be wary of a strong central government. After all, that is what they endured for many years leading up to the Revolutionary War. They had a profound distrust of a government that had unlimited power over the populace, and used that power to oppress; that distrust eventually brought them to the point of action.

We, however, the beneficiaries of their work and wisdom, have neglected to follow through with the responsibility they left us, i.e., to remain informed and alert to any wrong-doing by government officials. We didn’t pay close enough attention, and allowed their worn-out, frightful rhetoric to stampede us into abject fear, thereby allowing them (the government) to legislate our rights into dust. We have no one but ourselves to blame, and if society continues to allow the government to dictate to them what is right and wrong, then we deserve our chosen lot, i.e., slaves…….

“If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” — Will Rogers (1879-1935)
___________________________________

Terror at Constitution Hall

Standing quiet, waiting on hope’s bright wing,
a stranger heralds the gift of Time.
Lyrical, spherical melodies we sing,
yet with silence, as a mime.

If fortune favors the bold and free,
truth may be spoken with courage unveiled.
But fortune oft is capricious and cruel,
and truth is naught but cold, with freedom failed.

Humanity has rights, ’tis often said,
if courage and truth can prevail.
If fear and ignorance are the diet we’re fed,
Life without liberty will be the end to this tale.

gigoid

“I think that 95 percent of what passes for art in this world is complete and utter shit. And 4 of the other 5 percent is shit with an asterisk. But oh, that 1 percent makes you proud to be a human, doesn’t it?” — Dennis Miller

I feel humbled, yet human….. I think it’s worth an asterisk, at least….
___________________________________

“If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?” — Steven Wright, 1994

So that’s why the spell-checkers never work right! Heisenberg sticks his nose in everywhere, eh? And if I need to explain that, well, I’m afraid you’ll be waiting a long time, because learning what I needed to know in order to make the reference took a long time, too, and would be inappropriate in this venue. Besides, I’m not entirely certain that I know, either. Just because I make a joke doesn’t mean it has to be funny, now does it? Of course not….but it is pretty funny, so I’d suggest you look up Heisenberg’s equations, and an explanation of what they imply….. here’s a clue…

— ‘Shit Happens’ according to… Heisenberg: Shit happened, we just don’t know where.
___________________________________

Well, I think I’ve done enough damage for one morning. I’m gonna go play Whack the Mole for awhile (I pasted politicians’ faces on the moles), then go back to bed. A great start to a rainy day….. y’all take care out there…..

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

gigoid

Kowabunga!

An unfortunate tendency to wobble….

Posted on January 19, 2012 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
I hope everyone who visited yesterday took a moment to register their disapproval of SOPA and PIPA to Congress and/or the President. We’ve already lost the Bill of Rights, we can’t afford to lose any more of our freedoms. It already has a cost which it never had before the NDAA was signed…….Today’s version will seem somewhat disjointed, I should imagine. It’s the only way it could be, considering the state of mind I’m in this morning, which might best be described as funky. In it’s exact medical definition……I have been funkified; no quarter will be given, and none will be sought…..
___________________________________

“You can’t legislate morality. We tried to outlaw consumption of alcoholic beverages. We found that violation of the law led to bigger crimes and bred disrespect for the law.” — Jimmy Carter, 1976.

“The cure for capitalism’s failing would require that a government would have to rise above the interests of one class alone.” — Robert L. Heilbroner

“What would happen if the President, the Supreme Court, and all members of both houses of Congress were stoned out of their gourds twenty-four hours a day? The chilling truth is, it might be an improvement.” — Allan Sherman

The United States Supreme Court has handed down the eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not, in any classroom, read the first ten.”

“Whether you have an abortion, what you put in your own body, with whom you have sex – these are not the affairs of the state. A government does not exist to control the citizens. When it does, it is a tyranny, and must be fought. The tree of liberty, Jefferson warned us, must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots.” — Gore Vidal

The conclusion here is left as an exercise for the gentle reader….. think about the effect of the age-old battle of entropy versus will, and avoid underestimating the power of human stupidity…… it’ll come to you in time….
___________________________________

The silent snow fell relentlessly, unceasingly, mercilessly from the sordid, sullied surreality of the sky as if some enormous, ethereal diner were shaking grated parmesan on the great, soggy meatball that was earth. — 1988 Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest, runner up

This doesn’t require explanation or discussion. I just liked it. And I think I probably would like the first place winner, too. This one is what we like to call “pure crap”, and deserves all the scorn it garnered, and more…..
___________________________________

“The Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide conversation. The government may not, through the [Communications Decency Act], interrupt that conversation… As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion… The government, therefore, implicitly asks this court to limit both the amount of speech on the Internet and the availability of that speech. This argument is profoundly repugnant to First Amendment principles.” — U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell, 1996

Two bills currently in Congress are making another attempt to curtail free speech on the Internet. These two bills (SOPA and PIPA, by acronym) want to have the authority to shut down any American web site for having on it a link to another site that pirates music or movies, even if that site is in another country. It would also limit what people could say or do on the internet, and in conjunction with the NDAA (the latest version of the Homeland Insecurity Act) means that almost any citizen of this country can be taken to an undisclosed location, without benefit of lawyer, to be tortured according to law, and without the agency doing the kidnap having to justify why to anyone (there is no oversight written into the NDAA; they don’t have to even tell anyone they are doing it).

It is now possible for this kidnapping to be done because someone writes an article criticizing the government, or advocates protest, and posted it on the Internet. In other words, freedom of speech, freedom from unjust accusation, freedom to address our grievances, freedom to do any damn thing, all have been eradicated. You no longer have those rights. And now, they will try to completely shut down any opportunity for anyone to disagree with their new policies.

Sure, they say they are doing it to protect intellectual property, but what they are really doing is making sure that no one takes away any of their profit margins. I’m seriously considering moving to another country, where at least the government is honest about what they keep from the people. Our own government has lied us right into slavery, and we let it happen…..fuck ’em!….fuck them all! I want my rights back, and not tomorrow, today…..who else is down with that?……..Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
— William Butler Yeats, “The Stolen Child”
___________________________________

SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

The saddest part of this definition lies in the fact that most of the people who see it will think it makes perfect sense, and completely ignore the irony of the statement. It never ceases to astonish me to what depths the power of deliberate ignorance can take us. It always produces a sense of amazement in me to realize that not only do most folks never question what they are told by others, they actively reject any kind of interaction that would cause them to either change their minds, or one that merely asks them to consider another opinion as a viable subject for discussion….

Boy, I sure wish I could see some hope for us, but every day brings news that clearly indicates how grim the situation is, and doesn’t leave much room for hope…..intolerance and deliberate ignorance are winning the day just now, and look like a lock to continue in that vein……SIGH…… let us lift a toast, in memoriam. R.I.P. US Bill of Rights…… it was all a dream…..Hope, of all ills that men endure,
The only cheap and universal cure.
— Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) — The Mistress, For Hope
__________________________________

DISCLAIMER — I said it. I must’ve meant it. There is nobody else to blame.

There is a bit less here than normal; chalk it up to the discordant state of mind I mentioned above. This will have to do, ‘cuz it’s all I’ve got today…. y’all take care out there…..

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

Kowabunga!

gigoid

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

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gigoid

Exploring Consensual Reality

Tag Archives: Life

A budgie in the hand, and two more on ice….

Remarkably obscene patterns in the sand….

Who ordered the asparagus with hollandaise?….

A bag, a bone, and a cookie….

Kindness and compassion are addictive…

As the plan developed, Murphy laughed….

Bright polyester swatches never disappoint…..

Celebrity slang sold here….

Playing with a crooked cue….

An unfortunate tendency to wobble….

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