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

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

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

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

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

Shall we Pearl?…..

“I am only one, but still I am one.  I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.” — Edmund Everett Hale
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Here is yet another example of how much I procrastinate…. I KNOW I need to get the rant done, and I know it will be a hard one to write, as it is a subject close to home for all of us, and my emotions will take a beating in getting it all down…. but, first, we’ll go old-school, because I can, and because I want to…. which is the underlying reason for ALL I do, now that I think of it…. I’ll have to think about that…..

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

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

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

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

— Nagarjuna (c. 100-200 A.D.)

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

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

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

I love it when the last pearl is so perfect for the grouping…. Besides, in this case, we can only agree with the sentiment, observing that it is a far better arrangement than the alternative…. as far as we know….
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Kitten:   small “homicidal muffin on legs; affects human sensibilities to the point of endowing the most wanton and ruthless acts of destruction with near-mythical overtones of cuteness.  Not recommended for beginners.  Get at least two.” — strata@psyche.mit.edu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This ain’t no technological breakdown. This is the road to hell.” — Smart Bee
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So, I’m a bit unhappy with the rant…. I wanted it to be even more of an indictment, of the BRC, of the Priestly Hierarchies, of the Shadowy Master Class, and all their myrmidons in the police and military forces of the world…. I wanted it to be an indictment of all the rapacious, evil assholes who have controlled our society right into the dumps, cackling over their profits and indulging in their perversions, fondling their religious icons before fondling small children…. But, I just didn’t have enough in me to do it right…. this time…. I have a feeling I’ll be writing this rant again a few times, with a different approach, but a similar message… For now, let’s see how it floats…. or flies…. either one will do….

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

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