Ffolkes,
Finding just the right words for an opening statement, after repeated attempts to do just that, for what is now getting close to 3 years, can frequently become, not merely a conundrum, but a chronic pain in the ass, at least until Reality steps in to lend a hand…. which it did today….
Just as I sat down to begin, I noted a light playing on the wall of the house across the street, a spot-light moving along, until it found and highlighted a tall, hooded figure skulking on the porch…. The light, which was coming from a police squad car at the corner, pinned the hooded figure, and apparently issued instructions I couldn’t hear, as the figure froze, put up its hands, and walked slowly out to the street, where two police officers met him, frisked, him, handcuffed him, and took him away in their car….
The entire scenario took about one and a half minutes to take place, start to finish, though, afterward, they sat in the car for quite a while, probably running the Unsub for priors, and starting the paperwork for whatever charges they were arresting him, obviously to include trespassing…. It wasn’t overly dramatic, or a particularly gripping scene, but, it isn’t every morning I get to witness crime being fought, and defeated, right here on my street…. It almost makes me feel safe….. Well, that would probably be stretching the truth farther than is good for it, so, I’ll take it back, and just say it was interesting to watch….
At least it didn’t turn into another Rodney King episode…. I’m not sure I can figure out yet how to work the video capture on my new smart phone, so, that’s probably a good thing, as I didn’t have the expertise to be able to film it, whereupon it would have become another in a long series of acts of egregious violence from police upon relatively undeserving victims that DIDN’T slide through the public’s awareness….
Oh yes, it happens…. In fact, NOT hearing about bad things happens, I would wager, far many more times than ever get reported, or captured on film, or digitally, on somebody’s phone, in the modern world….. It has always been so, it’s just not something people like to talk about, or admit…
That, by the way, is something I’ve never understood…. the reluctance of many people to report unethical actions by public servants like police, or firemen…. It’s as if people accept the sense of entitlement that often goes with such service, and automatically, and unquestioningly, give the privileges and perks that so many officers take as their due, without any real justification, other than their own power of authority…. which, in my mind, should produce the exact opposite effect…. It should make the person who holds any such position humble, and grateful, not make them feel powerful, and special, and deserving of all honor, merely for holding a certain kind of job….
However, if I start going into all that, I’ll get all worked up, as I already am, and begin to rant….. Since we’re just getting to the end of the intro, it wouldn’t be appropriate to start one now, so I’ll let that go, for discussion at another time…. or not, who cares? There’s always a new example to pick from, with the police…. The institution, as it exists now in our society, attracts the very worst sort of asshole to its ranks, men, and women, who are only there because it gives them the wherewithal, and the excuse, to be bullies, to assert their authority over others at every opportunity…. THAT type of personality is drawn irresistibly to police work, as it offers them the perfect outlet for their aggressive natures….
Ah well, I guess it’s only natural, but, that doesn’t make it right, or acceptable, in my book…. It does, however, make it enough material written to form the nucleus of an intro, which, after all, is what we were up to….. In fact, I’m going to go ahead, and just drop you here, so I can get on with stuff…. I think you can find the next section without my help…. I’m gonna go dive…..
Shall we Pearl?…..
“I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation.” — Dr. Albert Hoffman
(I am forced to comment on this: While I am in complete agreement with the good Doctor on this matter, I fail to see how his uplifting, accurate, totally cool expression of what is needed for us to survive will convince a single person to take it up as truth, or how it will get people to make the necessary changes in human nature…. Telling people that they need to “feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation.” is going to lose everyone who hears it…. In fact, it is such an off-putting, airhead kind of statement, I’d wager that, in spite of the fact that this is absolute truth, and will help people to save themselves from a certain death, nobody is going to hear it, because they automatically turned off their ears as soon as they heard the words “spiritual crisis”, followed by “spheres of Western industrial society”, and “world view”…. That kind of New Age babble-speak will shut off most folk’s heads in a New York minute….. Too bad, ‘cuz its’ totally true….)
“FUN is never having to say you’re SUSHI!!” — Zippy the Pinhead
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My urge to rant today is blunted, for some reason, which I’m not at all willing to try to find…. Life’s like that sometimes; we don’t feel like doing what we know we SHOULD be doing, and don’t care that we don’t…. But, y’know what? It’s okay, for a couple reasons…. One, to me, the word “should” is one I try very hard to avoid either using, or allowing to have any influence over my decisions…. When we use that word, it is virtually ALWAYS something I was told by someone else, and is something that follows the limits of its own rules, or internal structure…. not mine. In short, it’s something somebody else told me to do, not something I decided for myself….
Two, it’s okay because I’m positive that y’all are as tired of my rants as I am…. Let’s have fun instead, and still soothe the outrage when we can, with some arrows tipped with irony, or even vituperation….
Since I don’t/won’t do what people think I SHOULD, I’ll go ahead and do what I wish, which, 99% of the time, makes much more sense, to me, and to the world at large…. In the case with which we are confronted today, this means new formats for pearls, and maybe other changes, as well…. who knows? I’m in an odd frame of mind today, feeling somewhat crusty and perverse, so just about ANYTHING COULD happen…. we’ll see how it goes….
In the meantime, below, I have put a small group of links, to various articles at news outlets around the web…. I’ve gathered them from a wider array of sources today, with three world-class news organizations represented…. Presenting their versions of the day’s news, crazy as it may be, we find articles from SFGATE (part of the SF Chronicle organization), from the New York Times, and from the British tabloid, the Daily Telegraph…. Each article shows us another side of society’s insanity, in short vignettes of human misery, corporate theft, bigotry foiled, government corruption in conjunction with corruption in the courts, and the mad, mad, world of insane dictators…. I’ll make a comment or two, but, these stories show just how crazy things are, without much help needed….
“A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.” — H.L. Mencken
(My first question is, why do they get tax breaks in the first place? Hardship? People don’t get them, especially not if they’re under hardship… Why should they?…. This bank paid less of a percentage of taxes than I did last year, and I’m a disabled retiree, on a fixed income…. What the fuck is up with THAT?…..)
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Arizona-religious-bill-that-angered-gays-vetoed-5268325.php
(A narrow escape from reverting to the mid-eighteenth century, back into modern reality, for Arizona….. I guess now they can remain in the 21st century with the rest of us….)
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/02/27/world/europe/ap-eu-germany-ex-president-trial.html?hp&_r=0
(A politician, even though not one of ours, being tried for corruption? Wow. What a surprise….)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/world/asia/north-korea-displays-another-captured-missionary.html?hp
(There isn’t much left to say about Kim Jong Un (if I’ve gotten his name right, it’s a miracle, because I can never remember which of them is which…. I care so little, I’m not even going to check…. ) that hasn’t already been said…. My only question here is, why do the North Koreans allow him to continue to exist?…. Are they ALL that stupid and cowardly? Even the generals, who keep the county under control for him? For goodness sake, it’s as if all the stupidest, most egregiously cowardly people in the world all gathered together, found the absolute dumbest of them, and set him up as their leader….. I swear, if Reality doesn’t step in to rid the world of this idiot soon, I’m going to lose all respect for its judgment….)
(Is it even necessary for me to comment? Obviously, the son got his (nonexistent) sense of compassion, and his minuscule IQ, from his mother….)
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Poetry is what it is, and, says what it says; that’s all one needs to know….. because it will teach you the rest…..
There are lone cemeteries,
tombs full of soundless bones,
the heart threading a tunnel,
a dark, dark tunnel :
like a wreck we die to the very core,
as if drowning at the heart
or collapsing inwards from skin to soul.
There are corpses,
clammy slabs for feet,
there is death in the bones,
like a pure sound,
a bark without its dog,
out of certain bells, certain tombs
swelling in this humidity like lament or rain.
I see, when alone at times,
coffins under sail
setting out with the pale dead, women in their dead braids,
bakers as white as angels,
thoughtful girls married to notaries,
coffins ascending the vertical river of the dead,
the wine-dark river to its source,
with their sails swollen with the sound of death,
filled with the silent noise of death.
Death is drawn to sound
like a slipper without a foot, a suit without its wearer,
comes to knock with a ring, stoneless and fingerless,
comes to shout without a mouth, a tongue, without a throat.
Nevertheless its footsteps sound
and its clothes echo, hushed like a tree.
I do not know, I am ignorant, I hardly see
but it seems to me that its song has the colour of wet violets,
violets well used to the earth,
since the face of death is green,
and the gaze of death green
with the etched moisture of a violet’s leaf
and its grave colour of exasperated winter.
But death goes about the earth also, riding a broom
lapping the ground in search of the dead –
death is in the broom,
it is the tongue of death looking for the dead,
the needle of death looking for the thread.
Death lies in our beds :
in the lazy mattresses, the black blankets,
lives a full stretch and then suddenly blows,
blows sound unknown filling out the sheets
and there are beds sailing into a harbour
where death is waiting, dressed as an admiral.
~~ Pablo Neruda ~~
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Thus far today, I’ve composed very little real material…. most of what has been written has been commenting on the work of others, or filling in space that looks empty to me. I am not going to rant, and I don’t have a poem currently threatening to bleed out,…. So…. the only choice left for me, as is patently obvious, is an old-school pearl, with a point yet to be determined, probably at the whim of Smart Bee, as my own reserves of creativity seem to be a bit low, if not yet bone dry…. Since we are sans other choices, shall we go for a dive?….. No, please, after you…. No, really, go ahead…. No, I don’t mind at all, go ahead…. Get down there and dive, dammit!….
“Actions lie louder than words.” — Carolyn Wells
“These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland.” — John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 – )
“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.” — G. K. Chesterton, The Speaker, 12/15/00
“We’re marketeers, so truth is kind of a nebulous concept to us.” — Ray Scott, DEC field marketing rep
(Sorry, have to comment here…. This attitude about the truth is one that I believe has permeated just about every level of the society in which we exist today…. which makes it really hard to trust ANYONE…. But, most especially, it makes me VERY CAREFUL about trusting anyone who is trying to either sell me something, or get me to believe something, because this concept of “I, and what I want, come first, before truth, before compassion, before virtue of any kind, before anything else….” is one that just about everyone in the world has adopted, even if only to a small degree…. It is an example of how a certain behavior is made to be acceptable because the leaders of society engage in it….. not because it is virtuous, or right, but, only because it is expedient, and convenient to them….. My uncle used to call it “Me Firsterism”, which described it pretty well, I thought ….)
“A soldier told Pelopidas, “We are fallen among the enemies.” Said he, “How are we fallen among them more than they among us?” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Pelopidas
“Don’t believe them, don’t believe them, question everything you’re told.” — Smart Bee
“Do I have a lifestyle yet?” — Zippy the Pinhead
Sorry about the little mini-rant in the middle there…. sometimes it just comes out before I can stop my fingers on the keyboard, y’know?…..
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If the last line from Zippy made the point too broad for y’all, me apologia…. and, too bad, because, hey! Look! It’s done…. and we KNOW what that means around here, don’t we?…. Well, I do….. See y’all tomorrow, ffolkes….
Y’all take care out there,
and May the Metaphorse be with you;
Blessed Be, dearest Carole, Mark, and Theresa…
and everyone else, too…
When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.
Which is Why….
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.
gigoid the dubious
gigoid 