Tag Archives: overpopulation

Moustachioed cheerleaders have feelings, too….

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Ffolkes,

 

Saved by the WalrusEpisode I

In Which The Author Abandons All Pretense of Consensual Exploration of Reality in Light of Current Events, Acknowledges the Failure of The Current Model of Society, and Prepares the World to Save Itself.
Sort of.


Did you hear that? I did…. It’s the delicate “ding” that sounds at the precise moment an epiphany makes itself known to us, generally accompanied by a slap of the hand to the forehead, and a loud exclamation, that sounds suspiciously like, “Doh!”….. . It’s also a monumental instance of the triumph of reason and hope over despair, in addition to whatever other benefits may manifest themselves.

This evening, in close consultation with Jim, and our old friend John, I believe I may have solved the entire set of problems with which mankind is plagued at this juncture in time…. I’m not certain yet, but, I’m pretty positive that the idea(s) that stormed through my mind tonight will, if nothing else, give me hope….. If, however, I can make them at all real, they COULD even give us a small chance of prevailing against our own stupidity…. Just possibly, they may help us to survive the impending environmental meltdown the we are slated to experience at this point….

I know that’s a bit obscure, but, I don’t want to issue a complete spoiler…. let it be enough to say that I’ve discovered a way that we MIGHT just be able to utilize the fringe talents of humanity to save the great unwashed masses of the rest of us…. Zen Taoism. Peruaosophy. You tube. The Internet. Witches. Empaths. Telepathy. Chemistry. Physics. Asininnies. Ffolkes. Folks. Crystals. Plants. Insects. Animals…..  All of these, and more, will be of use, if what I’ve envisioned can be realized in the real world, in a more imaginative and creative way than has been heretofore the case….

Life, Hope, Love, Compassion, Art, Music, Poetry, all the finer, more beautiful aspects of our nature, and our world today, will be preserved, if what has come to me can be accomplished. I am, as yet, unsure, but, what I see as a possible course for reality to take, with the proper application of the inherent abilities we have to inflict our own will to change reality, is one that just might save us from our own ignorance….

We have tried the way to approach life as evidenced in recorded history, which has, by all accounts, always relied upon brute force, ambition, and self-interest as the primary factors that influence the direction of our species’ development, in both a physical, and a spiritual sense…. We see now the result of that direction chosen, which leads inevitably, and, irrevocably, to a long time period of severe travail for the entire world of living creatures on this planet, likely ending in the death of all living species, with the only hope for life the chance to start over, in a biological sense….

This path also means a period of time for humanity, BEFORE we all pass into history, when we will suffer terror, despair, and depredations of hardship previously unknown, as the weather changes, along with our ability to adapt,  and, verily, the planet itself, begins to cleanse itself of the pollutants and chemical catalysts, pumped into the air by our insistence on a profitable bottom line…..

This is a process that, as scientific evidence has already proved, includes the certainty, over time, of unalterable chemical changes, that will eventually turn our atmosphere into a completely foreign composition, compared to what we now know, until we are no longer able to breathe it; it will have become poisonous to us…. There are a hundred reasons I could present you to try to demonstrate just how bad the situation is, but, they all lead to one conclusion, and that is that our time will be over on this plane of reality very much sooner than anyone had thought, or realized, unless something VERY drastic occurs to change what is now taking place, in both a physical, and a spiritual sense….

You see, the next evolutionary stage for humanity is one that not all of us will be taking…. I know that is a hard thing to think about, especially if it must be applied personally…. Not even those of us comfortable with what may happen after we die are completely easy with the whole idea of dying…. It remains a pretty scary unknown, all in all….

In addition, none of us like to think about the death of our loved ones, or our descendants… After all, our entire purpose as a species is to try to ensure the continuance of that species, so, thinking about the almost-certain end of that is, to say the least, a bit difficult to accept as real….

Which brings me back to the epiphany…. Reality is capable of changing under the influence of the human will… This is, perhaps, an assertion without full proof in hand, but, in light of my own experience, and of the many instances in recorded history in which the human will played a large part in how the final picture appeared, I think it can be used as a working theory, if nothing else, for the purposes of this discussion…. which, I see, has already grown far beyond my original intent when I began…. This, after all is just the beginning… If my epiphany is not a drug induced fantasy, it may just change the course of human events, and alter reality as we know it in ways that even I cannot imagine…..

If that isn’t an intro, hell, I don’t know what is….. and, a hell of an intro it is….

Shall we Pearl?….

“The problem … is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with. Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using other animals; they’ve piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons.  None of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer.” — Dave Barry, Postpetroleum Guzzler
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“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”

~~ Lewis Carroll ~~
from Through The Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872

When I close my eyes, sometimes, I can hear it…. Maybe you can, too. I hope so, The more of us who can, gives me hope for those who don’t….

I can hear the murmuring voices, too soft to make out any words or sense, but, always there, in the background of my mind’s attention to what I perceive…. It takes a bit of concentration to hear it, at first, but, with time, it becomes more of a real perception, and thus, subject to both reason, and will….

What do I hear? I hear mankind, suffering in silence. I hear everyone’s inner self, alone, crying out for company, and the comfort of simple touch, in a terrifying universe full of indifferent powers we don’t understand, desperate to know there is another mind out there that feels, that is afraid, that wants more….. I hear the cries of innocents, and the screams of the oppressed and abused. I hear the bombs and guns singing their song of death and destruction. I hear the hissing grunts as the bankers count their gelt…. I hear my own voice, telling me, time and time again, how hopeless it all is, that it’s too late…. And it hurts to know it’s true….

Yet, what I hear is possibly our salvation, as well….. Mankind exists on a bell curve; I’ve said this before, and it remains true. Much of human progress has always been accomplished according to the efforts of those on the curve who live at the ends, whether they are very, very smart and/or with extraordinary abilities, or very, very simple, with other types of abilities, not always appreciated, but there, nonetheless… I believe that the key to our survival as a species is now dependent upon how well we can learn to utilize those fringe abilities to our advantage….

Mankind has many mental strengths which we seldom use; this is patently obvious, given the state of affairs in the world. Reality has proven to be malleable to the human will, when it is applied in the correct manner; used poorly, the universe just plows on under its own power, and will flatten anyone getting in its way like the proverbial pancake. But, when we learn to use our will in the manner in which it works best, then we can accomplish amazing things, altering Reality according to our desires and/or needs….

The key to utilizing the untapped power we have to change reality is not to be found if we continue, as a species, and culture (as amorphous as it may be with so many different parts to that culture world-wide….), to put our physical and personal wants and needs ahead of our spiritual and communal needs. We need to acknowledge that allowing self-interest to guide the decision making process can only lead to the horrors we are now facing. It is now not merely desirable, but, imperative that Mankind develop a connection to the inner spirit which we possess, but, not with the delusional submission of that spirit to an imaginary supernatural friend, but, with clear, open eyes and compassionate intent for all guiding both our perceptive capabilities, and our actions….

In other words, we need to look inward, and connect with those others in our species who are similarly inclined, to search for, and, hopefully to find, a way to unleash the power of the mind on the problems we face, even though the immediacy of those problems will not make it easy….. As  I see it right now, we don’t have many options at all, and if placing some hope on the human talents that are now hidden, or poorly understood will cause change, any change, in what people are DOING, then, I’ll do all I can to promote that campaign… Hell, as I said, and, as I see it, we don’t have much choice, so, why the hell not?….. Let’s go find some magic, and some telepaths, and a dragon or two, to help us turn the tide against the forces of stupidity that have ruled our society since the beginning of our history….

So, that’s what I’m going to do as my new project, out in the Big Blue Room, and here on the internet…. I’m going to look for the fringe elements of our society and culture, those that have a connection to the true nature of reality, and have shown it in the past. I figure at least one or two of them ought to have an idea, if only of where to look next, and if it helps me find and pull together the resources that are necessary, then, it’s worth a shot, in my mind…. and, it will give me something to do other than worry about how much time is left to get it done…..

Wish me luck…. If I’m right, and succeed, at all, there is hope…. If I don’t, well, nothing will change, and we all know how that story is going to end, don’t we?…..

“Until the pain of remaining the same hurts more than the pain of change, most people prefer to remain the same.” — Richard D. Dobbins

“A process which led from amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously progress – though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.” — Bertrand Russell

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Essay on Criticism, Part i, Line 177

I won’t say I’m sorry, because, hey, I’m not…. but, the 3-star pearl finish is just because I really like all three, and, upon inspection as a whole, fit the above rather nicely…. “Onward”, he said, with obvious delight at the serendipity….

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Only one poem will do today, and if I have to say what it is, I’ve slipped somewhere in the assessment of my Gentle Readers…. so, here ’tis, with no ado at all…. Oh, well, okay, one ado…. It’s a link, and a short excerpt consisting of the first four stanzas, because the entire piece is too long to put in here, and still expect everybody to get to the rest of today’s effort…. Most have read it at one time or another, so, just remember, please, it’s a great read, and, just now, seems to be more than just a bit of scary in it’s apparent power of prediction, or premonition, in a metaphorical sense, if not literal…. If the stanza above doesn’t EXACTLY describe Reality in 2014, then I’ll be looking for the letter, from the government, offering to hire me to train the pigs…. Enjoy, ffolkes!….. As you know already, this is genius at work….

The Walrus and The Carpenter

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright–
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done–
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun!”
glass20-small walrus & carpenter
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead–
There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
“If this were only cleared away,”
They said, “it would be grand!”

~~ Lewis Carrol ~~

http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html


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I wouldn’t say my work above is a rant, particularly, but, it’s long enough for one, and has some juice to it, so, we’ll count it as one…. Besides, this way, I get to put out an old-school pearl, which, for me, is much simpler to produce, given my restrictions as to time spent in a chair….. Don’t fret, no whining, just lustrous, gorgeous, well, unknown, pearls, whose single unifying characteristic, today, is that they all are there, in the group…. That’s it…. they’re there….

“If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them.” — Spock, “This Side of Paradise,” stardate 3417.7.

“It has been said that there are two theories of history: conspiracy and blunder. If there is some truth to that, it is surely equally true that blunder seldom receives all the credit due it as an explanation of complex events.” — Michael Scully

“Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.  — Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) — Letter to Bolingbroke, March 21, 1729

“… and the first lesson is: Never lose the alternative way out of sight.” — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained.” — John Powell

“A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

“You cannot learn to fly by flying. First you must learn to walk, to run, to climb, to dance.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

At this point, this is a very fine seven-star pearl, of excellent luster…. but, the following just insists on being included, and I didn’t have the heart to say no….

“For my own part I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words with even more distinctness than which I conceived it. There is however a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy which are not thoughts and to which as yet I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt to language.  These fancies arise in the soul, alas how rarely, only at epics of most intense tranquility when the bodily and mental health are in perfection, and those mere points of time when the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams. And so I captured this fancy where all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream….” — Edgar Allan Poe
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Having not looked at the entire piece yet, I don’t know how long this came out…. probably quite…. ‘S okay, though, cuz it’s all real, and all fresh, even counting what I wrote last evening, after my conversation with James and John. The poem, of course, is not fresh, but, it may yet be again, who’s to say? Not me…. See ya….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

 

 

gigoid

dozer3

Never to forgive, no time to forget….

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Ffolkes,

Today’s Pearl is going to be a difficult one to write…. not because of the complexity or subtlety that is needed, nor for any great amounts of humor that I’ll be trying to infuse in it, though I’m sure humor won’t be out of place…. it just won’t have much effect. In order not to drive anyone away right off the bat, I’ll try to hold off any further spoiler remarks until its time for the actual event to unfold….. and, I’ll try not to drip tears on the keyboard as I type, a frequent problem with this sort of material….

In fact, the upcoming rant, and Pearl, could be considered as unique, beyond any reasons that already may apply for a blog such as this…. First, the title…. It actually has something to do with the content today; what it says refers directly to the rant that will go below, on global warming and climate change. This is unprecedented here on ECR; the one time it happened previously was an accident, when I forgot to do the title beforehand, and having written the Pearl already, the title ended up as a comment on it, after a fashion….. Other than that one instance, the title has never before directly referred to what is included in the Pearl itself….

Second, the content today will be not merely curmudgeonly, and my emotions regarding what is written about are much, much stronger than for most rants, because this is the BIG ONE, ffolkes. This one speaks to the End Times that we have brought upon ourselves with our massive stupidity, and lack of simple intelligent behavior. We’ve fouled our nest beyond redemption, and it is NOT an easy task to try to discuss it without involving my own feelings about the assholes who are to blame….

I am usually the kind of person who tries to fix the problem, rather than fixing blame… But, in this case, the problem is one I can’t fix…. nobody can, it’s too late. The physical processes involved in global warming have reached the stage where we not only don’t have the technology, or the smarts to know how to stop the process, but we don’t have enough TIME to figure it out…. The processes involved have already reached a point of no return, so the only option left for us is to adapt the best we can, which doesn’t appear to give us much time at all, as there is no adaptation we can make to learn how to breathe methane gas….

That’s enough of a preview in the intro section… I’d best leave some of my angst out for the actual rant. I’ve managed to blather about it long enough to cover the basic requirements, so, we’re good to go in that respect…. I only hope I can keep up the anger, and let go of the sadness and disappointment long enough to make this a good rant…. There’s certainly enough supporting material to prove my points….. Any who, I think I’ve been as clear, and as obscure as I could be in one short section, so….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Only the good die young. Note the average age in Congress.” — Smart Bee
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Do you remember what the First American Revolution was about? I mean, really about? In school, we are given a dual message as to the motivation for the rebellion, with the message the BRC WANTS you to believe on the top, and the real reason as the subtext, gone over quickly and then dismissed…. This is how you control and manipulate people, by controlling their perceptions, and what they are allowed to see and hear; it’s a technique that has been applied to the American people, as well as most of the people in the world, ever since the ink dried on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights…..

You see, the subtext of the message about the Revolution was this, (and I’m sure you’ve heard it….)…. “No taxation without representation.” You see, ffolkes, it’s all about the money, and it always has been….. We are told about how we fought this war with England for our freedom… freedom of religion, and freedom of government…. This was the idea used by the colonists who owned the land, and the plantations, to convince the laborer classes, the small merchants, and small land holders, the rest of the folks living here, to join in the revolution with them, promising virtually unlimited freedoms (compared to what they had known all their lives….), and never once letting on that protecting their money was the underlying reason….

You see, what was really wanted by our forefathers was freedom to keep their money for themselves, rather than having it taxed by a king they never saw, for public services they also never saw…. Not being particularly fond of sending their money off to the king, and never getting anything for it, the aristocrats among the colonists fooled the rest of them into joining the fight, while they sat comfortably at home, paying for it…. thus, the scam and charade began, and has been going strong ever since….

“A politician,… one that would circumvent God.” — William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet — Act v, Sc. 1

Now, it’s 2014, and our culture has been evolving under the auspices of this charade for over 200 years. We have reached the point where certain of our societal habits and fillips are becoming significantly dangerous, in a very real, physical sense….. One of our ingrained societal habits is that of entitlement, that particularly human characteristic that gives people the false impression they are adequate as moral beings, just because they’ve agreed to the delusional claims of the religious hierarchies, or sociopathic, power seeking politicians, or, worst of all, the amoral financiers who live for self-interest, giving them carte blanche to assume their own prominence at the top of the food chain….

I mean, one of the religious books these fools pay so much attention to says it right up front, “Man was given dominion over all the other animals, made master of all the world, in God’s name….”    I know, that’s not an accurate quote, but the meaning is clear, and is exactly what they teach their constituency to believe….. This entitlement is what has led us to destroy our own nest, fouling the air and water to the point where we have outstripped our ability to adapt, either technologically, or biologically….

The article just below this paragraph is by one of my favorite authors, to give you another perception of what I’m seeing, and talking about today; I found some of the other links in his article, which will take y’all to material that will help understand the depth and severity of the problem we face now…. Please, take a few moments now to read it…. I’ll wait right here…..

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2014/01/21/fine-weather-for-creepy-melancholia/

The two links below are to other articles that contain some of the research facts that have brought this knowledge to the forefront of the news… The first is a summary of the current California drought, the second an assessment by experts about drought conditions world-wide in the upcoming year…. All of it is pretty grim, and pretty convincing, since none of it can be denied…. This stuff isn’t theory, it isn’t speculation, ffolkes, these are the FACTS…..

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/01/california-drought-scary-facts-snowpack

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/sdo_summary.html

The link below this paragraph is perhaps the scariest of these documents, as it is a discussion by the leading US government scientists in the appropriate fields, who have gotten together to file this report…. The opening lines are astoundingly frightening…. They paint a grim picture of WHATEVER future is in store for the US, with its immediate focus being on how the American people are now going to have to accept the FACT that what is happening is because of our own foolishness…. Go ahead, read the first page or two, then come on back here to finish this diatribe, as you can get back to the rest of that report later, should you wish to inundate yourself in evidence….

http://ncadac.globalchange.gov/download/NCAJan11-2013-publicreviewdraft-fulldraft.pdf

An old adage in writing talks about always leaving one’s audience wanting more…. I’d love to do so, but, that’s all there is, ffolkes. It’s too late for anything else, so all I can do is deliver the message, as clearly and as convincingly as I can, and, well, I almost said pray, or hope, that a miracle of some kind will happen, but, neither one of those looks like it will do much good…. We’ve already broken all the supposed laws that God might have given us, had He existed outside our own minds, a statement I make in complete confidence that there isn’t a priest, preacher, or Pope alive who would admit otherwise, by their own standards, if they were tasked to be honest….

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

~~ Emily Dickinson

Hope? Hope never dies, does it? As convinced as I am of our impending doom as a species, there is still a small, admittedly VERY small, piece of me that retains some hope that my assessment is incorrect….. But, even the power of Emily’s brand of unfounded, unasked-for hope, it is now getting very hard to retain any belief in it….

I WANT to believe there IS a feasible scientific or otherwise practical solution to the physical issues concerning the climate, with all its unknown, perilous changes, to which we will have to learn to adapt in a very short period of time…. or die. I want to, but, I don’t….. I cannot say I will welcome Death if it comes before I think it is my time, even though I have little fear of it….  Welcome or not, it is an issue I believe I WILL have to confront….

Dramatic? Yes. True? Yes. Don’t take my word for it, go read the articles, listen to the experts; they’ll all tell you the same thing, ffolkes. We have ignored Axiom #2** of Peruaosophy, and we are all about to become victims of our own ignorance. The change that is coming isn’t a matter of trying to decide on a new paint color, or even whether or not a politician is lying to us…. It is real, innovative, unpredictable in scope, if not direction, and is in our faces NOW….

**Axiom #2: The Nature of the Universe is Change. Unpredictable, innovative transformation of Reality is the Norm. If you have a problem with this, you’re in for a rough ride in Life.”

Addendum: You might ask, how did we ignore Axiom #2, as a culture? Perhaps the primary characteristic of those in power is their fear of change, and their insane need to maintain the status quo at all costs…. To me, this is simple logic, unassailable in its clarity, and its truth as a conclusion of both deductive and inductive reasoning…. If you doubt either assertion, perhaps this will help…. Proof of their fear of change? Ask a politician their opinion on term limits…. or, ask a banker their opinion of the Second amendment… Inductively, it seems obvious to me that only a very great fear of the unknown could account for the need for entitlement, or the desire to even possess power over others…. It isn’t sane, and nobody can tell me it is….

I will leave this gloomy discussion right there, with only the following three-star pearl as a final comment….

“The case has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest.” — Sherlock Holmes [Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]

“While hunting in Africa, I shot an elephant in my pajamas.  How an elephant got into my pajamas I’ll never know.” — Groucho Marx

“Most of all, I’ve learned that a good time to laugh is anytime you can.” — Linda Ellerbee
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”    . . .those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded . . . Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena– care not to understand the architecture of the heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!” — Herbert Spencer


The link above will take you to a copy, with annotations, of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”….. for some reason, my sense of irony demanded I include it today, in spite of the several hundred verses one must wend through to reach the end, and all the meaning…. Rather than take up your time further with it here, I am providing the link so you may peruse it at your leisure, little as we may have of that left to us….   Sorry, no more doom & gloom now…. we’re going on to have some fun, if I have to hurt myself….
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I am bound and determined (what a clunky, awkward phrase! How did it ever survive in the English language for so long?….)… Any who, I am firmly invested in having a laugh or two now, even if I have to resort to picking on my own bozoid tendencies…. There are certainly enough of those to go around, which any of my exes would be happy to tell you….

Bozoid tendencies? What are those? Well, really, ffolkes, do you really feel the need for me to explain that? The very words are pretty self-explanatory…. but, I guess it’s been awhile since I expounded on my version** of this theory, so, to answer, quickly….

Bozoid tendencies are those human characteristics that are embedded in our species’ persona, hard-wired, as it were, into our psyches, that can only be described as being “clownish”, and cannot be suppressed, no matter how dignified or stuffy one tries to be…. It can be best expressed vocally by the phrase, “I came, I saw, I screwed up.”…..

At some point in life, each and every one of us will do something really stupid, right in front of the most embarrassing group of people possible, such as family, or an entire stadium of excitable fans, or a restaurant full of strangers…. Often it is something as simple as forgetting a wife’s birthday, or forgetting to close a zipper, ensuring a wardrobe failure at the wrong time, or it could be as compelling a moment as running the wrong direction in a Super Bowl…. but, we all do it at one time in our lives, without exception…. Hence, the theory of Bozoid Tendencies….

** Inspired by the metaphoric brilliance of the Firesign Theater’s audio improvisational album, “I Think We’re All Bozo’s On This Bus!”, the Theory of Bozoid Tendencies was first discussed and codified in Berkeley in 1969….

This is the period when gigoid (that’s me….) spent a lot of time in such discussions with other burgeoning social philosophers, all UCB students of various vintages, in various dark, smoky venues, in various stages of mindfulness due to either extreme use of sober imagination and logic, to the often brilliant scintillation of drug induced excitement of the imagination, whether the drug was wine, beer, MJ, or something more exotic, if infrequent.

Having obviously survived the experiences intact, the Theory has been shown to be valid in many, many instances over the years, in myself, and in the world at large…. with most of such proof provided in the daily news…. when not in the mirror….

With all of that in mind, we’ll now search for some pearls that can make me laugh…. you’re on your own, this one will be according to MY sense of what is funny, and what isn’t…. So there…. I TOLD you we all have a sense of entitlement, didn’t I?….. Besides, if nothing else, YOU can laugh at MY sense of entitlement, or my humorous standards, if you so desire, and I can laugh at myself (I’m easily amused….)…. just for making the effort, which goes to the evidence folder for the theory’s validity….

“A guinea pig is not from Guinea but a rodent from South America. A firefly is not a fly, but a beetle. A giant panda bear is really a member of the raccoon family. A black panther is really a leopard that has a solid black coat rather then a spotted one. Peanuts are not really nuts. The majority of nuts grow on trees while peanuts grow underground. They are classified as a legume-part of the pea family. A cucumber is not a vegetable but a fruit. — Smart Bee

(Just a few of the reasons I love the English language…. and the English mind, which is completely twisted…..)

“I think you ought to know I’m feeling terribly depressed.” — Douglas Adams — The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Marvin

(And I think I have very good reason to be depressed, don’t you?….. So much so, I have to laugh, so I don’t cry….)

“The education of a man is never completed until he dies.” — Robert E. Lee

(Don’t know exactly why, but this, to me, is funny…. perhaps more funny, strange, because of the irony, than funny ha ha, but, funny….)

“Life isn’t fair.” — L.J. Smith

(This reminds me of my favorite line to use to try to gently remind someone they are whining for no reason; simply ask, “Who was the one who lied to you?” “Who was who?” “The one who told you life would be fair.”…. First heard from my father, at a young age….)

(Okay, so, I’m not funny today…. I’ll quit with the comments, and find a solid final threesome of pearls for ya….)

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.  Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read.
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains.    Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), “Ozymandias” (1819)

“Everything that goes up must come down. But there comes a time when not everything that’s down can come up.” — George Burns (1896-1996)

You know it’s going to be a bad day, when you find a note on your door that says, “Knocked, you weren’t in. — Opportunity” — Smart Bee

You may well ask yourself why I felt compelled to include the excerpt by Shelley in there, but, I, being the curmudgeon that I am, will only say that I know that my Gentle Readers will be able to look at that, in juxtaposition with everything else I wrote today, and see why I fell over laughing when I saw it come up on the screen, and why it’s a particularly funny joke right now…. The others, well, as I said, you’re on your own…. I laughed….

😆
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“Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves.” — Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Either this means I should never have started, but kept silent, or, it means I spent a lot of time in silence, fashioning a great Pearl. I’ll have to leave that particular judgment up to others, but, I gotta admit, I like this one quite a bit…. Long as it may be, I had fun, and I said what I had to say…. Now, I can go finish the day in good spirits, having completed what I now consider as my duty, or, at least, the initial one of the day…. See ya tomorrow, for now…..

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

dozer3

One final set of twins to discombobulate….

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Ffolkes,

I’ve still to come to terms with Reality today;  this is a particularly trying issue just now, as it hits right at a very critical function…. Our argument began the moment my eyes opened, at about 0430 or so…. It seems Murphy, or some other iconic force of nature with similar asshole tendencies, wanted me to arise earlier, but, in my blissful ignorance, so blessedly bestowed upon me last night by the gods of sleep, with the aid of some beaudacious drugs, I completely blew him off, from about 3:15 until I finally arose….

He was pissed, (a minor piece of enjoyment for me….) but I was only mildly amused by that, since he didn’t fire off any of his usual fireworks upon my upheaval…. (I think that’s a good word to describe my process of getting out of bed these days…. between the stiff hips, back, generally painful movement, and the usual degree of morning lethargy, the act of arising can turn into quite a little ordeal these days…)

Any who, having gone to ground early last night, with some major pain from a minor back tweak, I wouldn’t have minded too much, but, damn, it sure felt good….. Not only to get to sleep easily, but to be able to turn over and go BACK to sleep as I wished…. The latter is a particularly nice bonus, as that is the worst part of being old and in pain, the not being able to sleep comfortably, or consistently, part….. Not sleeping well, or easily, or often, only adds to all the other difficulties involved in aging, sort of like how synergy flows, and builds up with resonant feedback…. Oh, damn!  What’s the word I’m looking for? Aha! Heterodyne!…. That’s it…. not sleeping causes a heterodyne effect in other problematic issues, making them bigger, and harder to deal with….

Okay, then!…. Now that the morning medical issues chat is out of the way, and I’m thoroughly embarrassed by my own inadvertent release of TMI, I suppose I should look for some other, less revealing way to get on with today’s business… It is, after all, my purpose in being here at all…. I hadn’t actually thought about how to open up today at all, and this diving right in, though it seems to have produced a sufficient amount of material, also seems a bit too much like the usual method of getting the intro done, i.e., mindless rambling around the back hallways in my head, until we find our way out into the light of the day….. Not that those intro sections aren’t legal, but, they’re still not what I’d prefer to see here every day…. Until I can figure out some sort of feasible method, though, it’ll have to do….

Oh, goodie…. Look! It’s happened again! Four to five completely worthless paragraphs, chock full of stuff that doesn’t mean anything to anybody…. Well, it could POSSIBLY mean something to me, but, I don’t wouldn’t have it with a warranty…. Any who, it’s street legal, obviously, so we’re going to bail on this whole intro thing, and get on with today’s dive and/or rant…. It can’t be any more difficult than this has proven to be, to be sure….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.” — Terry Pratchett.
_____________________________

Today, the order of events has undergone some alterations, and the old-school pearl will be in this section…. No particular reason, other than I pasted the necessary rantable material in the other section without looking first, and I’m too lazy to move it now….. Here, then, for your delectation and elucidation, a harlequin, randomly chosen pearl of lustrous quality, complete with burgeoning hints of wisdom…. Enjoy!….

Better stop short than fill to the brim.
Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt.
Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.
Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow.
Retire when the work is done.
This is the way of heaven.

— Tao Te Ching

“Consider well what your strength is equal to, and what exceeds your ability.” — Horace

“After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. “Your advice,” said Cicero, “were good if we were to fight jackdaws.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Cicero

“You take the lies out of him, and he’ll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he’ll disappear.” — Mark Twain

“With the neutron bomb, which destroys life but not property, capitalism has found the weapon of its dreams.” — Edward Abbey

“A lot of people voting for Pat Buchanan say they are doing so to send a message. Apparently that message is, Hey, look at me, I’m an idiot.” — Dennis Miller

“While the gentleman cherishes benign rule, the small man cherishes his native land.  While the gentleman cherishes a respect for the law, the small man cherishes generous treatment.” — Confucius, Analects, IV.11

Wow…. I guess today’s theme got into Smart Bee’s head, and turned that pearl in a direction that causes it to fit right in with today’s rant, below in section three…. If it isn’t clear, when reading the above pearls, think Beloved Ruling Class, and the antidote for society’s ills, to wit: Reason….
_____________________________

I love it when serendipity becomes subject to the influence of a good plan… I received this poem via email, from a poetry web site… Though I’ve read quite a few of this man’s poems, this is one I’d missed, or not gotten to yet….  My jaw dropped, and I was struck momentarily dumb as a statue, at the sheer, unadulterated power of metaphor (Metaphorse?) displayed, in this poem, and by the author…. one of a long line of crazy Irishmen…

A Coat

I MADE my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.

~~ William Butler Yeats ~~

_____________________________

So, below here, you’ll find a bit of art, which I fell would help to show the point I’m going to attempt to make today…. The first photo goes hand in hand with the first link, which is an article that gives us the patina of lies from Senator Feinstein’s office, a statement that fully supports the mealy-mouthed lies and distortions put out by the President yesterday, in his oh-so-highly-anticipated, and oh-so-disappointingly-asinine speech regarding the leak of information by Eric Snowden that exposed the spying being done by the NSA….

The speech itself was a masterful litany of garbage, from all I can tell, a political masterpiece for its obscurity and ability to ignore completely any real sense of being in the wrong…. He never once admitted any wrongdoing, either by the agency, or his administration, and made no concessions toward any clemency for the whistleblower who began the debate, by making this information so distressingly (distressing for the administration, for having been caught, both in the spying, and in the lies they told about it….) public.

The constraints the president (no capital on purpose; remember, he’s got to EARN it….) recommends do not even go as far as his own self-appointed committee recommended, and, in reality, do absolutely NOTHING to put any REAL restraints on the spying that the NSA is doing, nor on what they PLAN on doing, which is to gain access to every computer on the planet…. Mrs. Feinstein (who happens to be the wealthiest Senator on record, with a net worth of about a half a BILLION dollars….), who is the co-chairman (with the other stone-faced pundit in the photo below…) of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, in her own speech, managed to blow off every bit of public opinion her constituency has shown her, and backed the president right down the line…..

Here, read the articles for yourself…..
di and her ilk(Suggested caption: ” Dianne, I’m a power-crazed psychopath – I don’t WANT inner peace!!!!” )

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2014/01/17/dianne-feinstein-praises-prez-on-nsa/

The photo below is one of the congressional members who sat to listen to the president’s speech yesterday…. Have you ever seen a group of more self-satisfied, sleekly rapacious, avaricious political pundits anywhere? Not to mention how well it points out how the majority of the Beloved Ruling Class is made up of older RICH, MISOGYNISTIC WHITE MALES, who are, by far, the largest demographic represented in Washington, D.C., even though this country no longer reflects that demographic in any way….

What amazes me about the article below, in some ways, is the media’s straight-faced reporting of this speech, as if it really had any meaning…. The title of the article itself implies that some sort of restraints are to be applied, but, if one really looks at what he has proposed, there really aren’t any changes being made…. Oh, they’re making it LOOK as if there are, but, the system in place is not going to be shut down, or altered in any way from its current format…. they’re only making what appears to be a cosmetic change in the way the paperwork gets done, with no mention at all of any of the real concerns the public has, in spite of anything Feinstein, or anyone else said….

They all look pretty happy about all this, don’t they? That’s because they all know that they’re exempt, (as far as they know….) from being treated like one of the public…. These men, and a few misguided, broken women who join them in the BRC, believe they’re different than the public, and are not being spied upon as we are….. HAH! Let them think so…. Do they really believe that these agencies will stop at spying on just the public?….. If so, they’re even stupider than they look….
a room full of...(Suggested caption: ” Dianne, I’m a power-crazed psychopath – I don’t WANT inner peace!!!!” )

(P.S. Both captions are the same, deliberately…. think about it….)

(Both photos are from the SFGATE website….)

http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Obama-tightens-reins-on-surveillance-programs-5151532.php

Once again, as I have at almost every turn for the last six years, I am disappointed in the president’s response to this issue. Every time I build up some hope that just once, someone in the political arena will show some real intelligence, instead of continuing to maintain the standard government policies of entitlement in their attitudes toward the public, ignorance and denial of the actual wishes of the public, and prevarication as their method for communicating with that public…. In essence, I wish the public would WAKE THE FUCK UP, and get on with the business of throwing these idiots back into the gene pool….

Sorry, didn’t mean to shout at y’all…. I get pretty frustrated at times, looking out at the world, and watching it slowly, inexorably exploding…. A study recently showed that those films of buildings that are demolished by explosions are one of mankind’s most fascinating visions, harder to pull away from watching than pornography…. I guess there’s a reason for that, as watching that complete destruction probably gives our unconscious minds the feeling of observing one’s own future….

The asininnies you see in the picture above have already placed the dynamite in all of the points required to bring down the building in which we all live, ffolkes….. you can bet your bottom dollar that is true. Oh, they have no clue as to what they’ve done, or continue to do…. Evil doesn’t think of itself as evil…. They just refuse to listen to, or look at, any sort of evidence that what they think may not be true…. One can only learn when one admits to not knowing, and they’ll never admit they’re wrong at all…

But, their ignorance and denial doesn’t alter the FACT of global warming…. Of the people you see in that picture, most of whom are involved in running this country, approximately half don’t believe it is real; that belief, or lack of belief, still doesn’t alter the FACT that the temperature of the planet continues to rise, and that the planet’s entire supply of permafrost, a naturally occurring substance that lies in the Arctic, and Antarctic, in conjunction with the ice, and under the oceans, on the sea beds, which contains the most lethal gas we know, is rapidly melting, releasing that methane gas into the air at a rate that will kill them, and us, in a shorter time than any of us want to believe….

I’m tired…. This subject is one I’ve been ranting about for what seems like ages, but, in actuality, is only a couple of years, at least, in print…. I’ve been talking about this for many years, to mostly deaf ears…. Nobody WANTS to hear such bad tidings, so, their solution is denial, and/or avoidance…. Well, so be it…. I hate to say it, ffolkes, but, if that particularly human habit, of hiding from reality when it gets unpalatable, continues, well, then, we are all going to die much sooner than anyone thinks…. plain and simple…..

Whereas: Since our primary source of cultural advice and supposedly wise actions is seen by most people to reside in the churches and religions of     the world…., and,

Whereas: no church or religion will admit to global warming, or evolution, or any other scientific FACT that questions dogma…., and

Whereas: almost everyone believes the churches….

Whereas: the churches tell people to respect the government’s authority…., and

Whereas: as explained above, governments are worse than the churches when it comes to ignorance, denial, and prevarication…., then

Conclusion: You may as well just bend over, and kiss your sorry ass goodbye…..

“I’m RELIGIOUS!!  I love a man with a HAIRPIECE!! Equip me with MISSILES!!” — Zippy the Pinhead
_____________________________

Well, ffolkes, this one’s got a bit of it all! Links, art, research, rant, old-school, classic poetry, innuendo, nonsense, and, for a kicker, some down and dirty depression….. What more could one ask for, I ask you? Oh, really…. hmm…. Well, I’ll think about that, and let you know…. See ya….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid

dozer3

Subject to random bourgeois scrutiny….

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Ffolkes,

Aha! I have found it! Eureka! as they used to say in Greece, a long time ago… No, seriously, I found out why this whole intro thing has been such a struggle…. Here, check this out….

“The point I have been patiently trying to make,” Godwin said impatiently, “is that you expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.” — Godwin to Danny Deck, Some Can Whistle

See? It’s all because I’m too complex and twisted with age-related mental afflictions, stemming from a healthy, but possibly delusional sense of adequacy…. However, by choosing to adopt the above concept, my entire problem is thus eliminated, with one swift, clear indication of what is needed to put everything aright. My only regret is that it took me so long to find this….

Ah well, serendipity chooses its own time to manifest, and I guess it’s like family…. we don’t get to pick. I’m just happy I finally have a clue as to how to get myself past this section without all the hullabaloo. I swear I’ve spent more time agonizing over these little pieces than I spend doing much of anything else, let alone something as critical to the success of this venture, such as it is….

Of course, in looking over the requirements as set forth above, this may be more of a challenge to me than I knew…. I mean, I can get fairly pedantic, and pomposity comes pretty naturally, too. Keeping to a simple subject, adverb, verb format might be more than I can do on short notice….. I may have to practice awhile before it starts to go smoothly… but, that’s acceptable, if it will get rid of the daily struggle to figure out what direction to take. I’ve had enough of trying to do it on my lonesome, so, I can only tell y’all I’ll give it my best effort….

Hmm, okay, let’s see what happens here…. Subject, verb, adverb/adjective/pronoun…. simple, simple, simple…

“Politicians are assholes.”  Whoa, that’s pretty good! Let’s try it again….

“Preachers are busybodies and thieves.”  Wow! What a feeling of power! I’m going for it, ffolkes…

“Pimps are sub-human piles of feces….” Damn, and it just flows out so smoothly!

Okay, so where has this been all my life? How could one know how liberating it is to stick to a simplistic style of speech, to just say what needs to be said, and be done with it?…. It gives what is written a definite panache, and power, to express the thrust of one’s ideas with such clarity and simplicity…. I like it, and we may indeed start to use it, in certain situations where such clarity is called for…. such as in the three above sentences, which would, patently, make excellent beginnings for a rant, of whatever sort one chooses…

Not only that, but, just talking about all of this has gotten us through today’s beginning, with no pauses to speak of, and no fiddling about trying to decide anything…. Pretty cool, I think… We’ll definitely be adopting this idea, at least partially…. I’m all for innovation, if it improves efficiency…. Plus, here ’tis only 30 minutes into this, and I’m already at a point where I can say, without any guilt or angst of any kind….

Shall we Pearl?….

“Pfui.  More people saying what they believe would be a  great improvement.  Because I do I am unfit for common  intercourse” — Nero Wolfe, “Blood Will Tell”
_____________________________

Below, you’ll find two articles that should be read before joining the discussion below…. The first is a report summarizing President Obama’s speech yesterday, outlining the administration’s plan to address the spying concerns that the public has, as a result of the leak of information by Eric Snowden. The second article is a group of analytical statements about the speech by several New York Times reporters who listened to it live…. Please read these, for informational purposes only…. Oh, you can do whatever else you like with them, but, it will help our efforts here for you to read them first…

http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Obama-proposes-new-limits-on-NSA-phone-collections-5151532.php

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/live-coverage-of-obamas-n-s-a-speech/?_php=true&_type=blogs&exprod=myyahoo&_r=0

There, now don’t you feel safer? Aren’t your fears soothed? The saintly president, in the power of his compassionate wisdom, has decreed that he will try to place some controls on the spying by his watchdog cyber agents, although he makes it clear that they’ve done nothing wrong, or illegal at all…. He will now make it necessary for them to get warrants, supposedly before, though it isn’t made exactly clear, mining telephone or other personal data on our citizens.

They must now get these warrants from a “special” court, whose sole purpose is to give them those warrants, and, which is manned by a group of judges, picked by ONE man, (That one man is the Chief Justice of the Supremes, but, who cares who it is? It’s ONE fucking person!…. One person, deciding for ALL OF US….); these judges, as it turns out, not surprisingly, are all, but for one, dedicated conservative hawks from one political party….

I’m sorry, ffolkes…. I know there are a lot of people out there who admire this president (I used to capitalize that word, but, I am a firm believer that the office, and the honorifics that go with it, must be earned; thus, the formerly capital P…. I haven’t seen any truly Presidential actions yet from him, thought I did have high hopes, going so far as to vote for him, again, in 2012…. That time, as the lesser of two evils, instead of in hope of change, which motivated me in 2008 …..

I saw in his first four years that change wasn’t going to happen, as anything he tried in the way of reform (which were, admittedly, pretty much limited, in truth, to his efforts to reform healthcare…. Otherwise, nothing much has been forthcoming in the way of change…. ), was effectively blocked by the other party, who have the numbers in Congress to do so…. So, I wasn’t TOO hopeful about the second term, anyway, more resigned…..especially after he signed the NDAA in that clandestine fashion….

That act, all by itself, should have acted as a warning to the American people that Obama isn’t anything other than another slick politician, who is in office to achieve HIS agenda, not the people’s….. Believe me, nothing of any significance is going to change on his watch, other than to watch the Bill of Rights slip further and further into memory, as rights we used to have….. There are other signs as well…. His administration has prosecuted more journalists and writers for security leaks than any previous administration, by a factor of 10 times as many…. This from the man who promised to have a “transparent government”….

Now we come to this speech…. From what I can tell, this is it…. This is the best they’re going to offer us (the public)…. They’ll put some minor, ineffectual rules in place to assuage the outcry, rules that will do nothing to change any of what the agencies are doing, as they have already gone light-years beyond any mandate given, and have no intention of stopping until they feel confident of their ability to hack into any computer, any telephone, or any communications device at their whim, to listen in for their “signs of terrorist activity”, and to mine all the information and data they can find, just because they know that knowledge is power….. (Whew, sorry, sometimes, my sentences tend to go beyond one breath….)

In this speech, Obama stated, unequivocally, that the agency “hasn’t been listening in, or reading your emails….”, making it seem as if the very idea were ludicrous, and beneath them…. I want to assure you, ffolkes, that is a bare-faced lie…. The documents already stolen and released prove that simply is NOT true…. He is lying now, he has lied all along, and he’ll continue to lie, just like any politician caught with their hand in a cookie jar, because that’s what they’ve always done, and it’s always worked for them…. They believe it’s going to work again; that’s why they came out with this namby-pamby, not-much-there-at-all, totally superfluous program to put restraints on the NSA’s activities at all…. They had to put out SOME response, so they put out this insult to our intelligence, hoping it would fly…..

I’m afraid I can’t regard this as any sort of rational or reasonable response to what the public is concerned about; it is a complete denial that anything at all was done wrong, and a half-hearted attempt at an insincere promise to do better, when they don’t believe they need to….. The message here is, “Whoa, dudes, what’s the upset? We didn’t do anything wrong, but, hey, since it bothers you, we’ll make some superficial, totally worthless alterations on the surface process, and continue to hide most of what we’re doing where you can’t see it…. Cool, right?”  To my mind, what the president voiced in his speech yesterday was even more insulting than that…. I guess I just don’t have the right kind of meanness in me to talk that way with any accuracy of tone…

But, what I said was accurate in detail…. He stated they’ve done no wrong, and that’s a lie, a pretty obvious one….. He also said they would try to put in some controls and restraints…. guess what the odds are that that is a lie as well? I don’t know much about your math skills, but, mine are pretty good, and I’d figure those odds as being extremely high….

Oh, just accept the obvious truth, ffolkes! He lied, he continues to lie, and won’t stop, because he’s good at it, and keeps getting away with it….

All of these assholes whom we have elected to high office are liars; it’s how they got their jobs, and it’s how they keep them. If y’all can’t see that, then I am sorry for you, because you are no more intelligent than an ostrich, sticking its head in the sand to avoid danger….

I’m not asking anyone to do anything other than read the fucking news, and try to see what is written there in the light of reason, not in the light of assumption…. The evidence of the lying is right out there in black and white for anyone with wit to see, so open your eyes, ffolkes, or, just bend over in acquiescence….

Not me, though…. I say fuck ’em, fuck ’em all, hard, deep, and for a long time, in holes where they’re not designed to be fucked….. just like they’ve been doing to me, and the rest of y’all, for my entire life, and yours…..

Today’s rant comes to you courtesy of Barack Obama, and the cast of 544 other asininnies who inhabit the hallowed halls of government, who have finally managed to push me over the edge….. I’ll be back, eventually, with more in this vein…. As a final note, this rant calls for some art…. This one, which I’ve used often, is here as a proclamation, of my intention to never look on and do nothing…. If all I can do is shout and point at the bad guys, then, that’s what I’ll do…. Can you see me pointing toward the halls of democracy?….
Albert E & true sin_____________________________

It’s one of those days when a poem of my own is called for, to protect the innocent….

Geezer to Congress, with Love

Politicos don’t care much ’bout seniors and their ilk,
except for their money, I thinks;
Though they talk as if they’d cozen them in silk,
what they actually do, it stinks.

“The banks are failing, we can’t allow that!”,
steal from the aged, that’s their plan.
“Their life’s ending, that’s plainly where they’re at,”
lie shamelessly, because they can.

Maybe just once, if we all act together,
it couldn’t miss.
Right on their shoes, no matter the weather,
take careful aim, and piss.

Why the hell not?
It’s worth a shot!

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

Having fulfilled the daily percentage of rantable material produced at ECR, having, moreover, done so with some alacrity, I’m happy to find myself in a position to put together an old-school pearl, sans the pressure that generally goes along with that decision…. For a change, I’ve got time, and an idea or two to guide the process, so, let’s see what we can come up with today, shall we?….

ESOTERIC, adj.  Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, — _exoteric_, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and _esoteric_, those that nobody could understand.  It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.” — Oscar Wilde

“Any body of men who believe in hell will persecute whenever they have the power.” — Joseph M. McCabe (1867-1957)

“It’s said that ‘power corrupts’, but actually it’s  more true  that power attracts the corruptible.  The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.  When  they do  act,  they  think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is  insatiable, implacable.  — David Brin, The Postman

“And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm’ without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions.” — David Jones @ Megatest Corporation

“Once you have said that in correlative conjunctions in the subjunctive mood there should be parity between the protasis and the apodosis, you have said about all there is to say on the matter.  But you have also, I think, left most of us as confused as before.” — from Bill Bryson’s, Troublesome Words

“Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.” — Smart Bee, channeling gigoid

So, it took some turns that didn’t appear to make sense at first, but, as usual, Smart Bee managed to tie it all together with a nice, pretty bow there at the end…. I’ve used the last line many times, and will do so again, I’m sure, since the concept forms one of the pillars of Truth upon which my philosophy of life is based…. So much so, I’m going to Google it, and if nobody else wants it, I’m taking it as mine…. Just so’s you know….
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I think, maybe, this whole idea of sleeping well is a good thing…. It sure feels better than trying to do all this without the boon of even the slightest drop of the soothing, restorative waters of Lethe….. In fact, this has gone so well, I may just go reward myself with a nap!…. Regardless of what happens in the future, it will do; I think this one may just cause a reaction, if not any actual damage, out in the BBR…. who knows?…. Moreover, who can say with any degree of accuracy?….. We’ll see, won’t we…. See ya….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid

dozer3

Cosmic rays are scrambling our emotional states….

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Ffolkes,

Having spent the last 8 or so hours in complete and utter misery, or, as much as anyone sleeping indoors in a warm place can experience in one night, I am up, and ready to Pearl, in my own fashion…. Coffee’s siren call fills my senses as, bravely, I sally forth from the chamber of horrors that comprises my sleeping room, to do battle with the forces of evil one more time….

Not that there are any such nasty forces at play right here and now, but, it sounds more dramatic that way, making it easier to talk myself into this again. Motivation can play a big part in getting a Pearl done, especially in the beginning, when potential is strongest, but, the day has not yet been given a direction, or even a mood….

Motivation today will be an issue of note, I’m thinking, as it generally is on those days when I’ve spent the night NOT sleeping…. well, or otherwise. I mean, I know I’m going to do it, but the energy levels required to get this done are greater than what is available to me without some reason, a stimulus of some sort, a kick in the pants to get the process rolling…. Once I’ve gotten started, inertia is sufficient to keep me going, even when tired…. Plus, once I begin a rant, or begin to edit an old one, the angst flows…. Then, energy is no longer an issue….

However, right now, energy is a bit hard to find…. plus, I can tell you, I’m not in the mood to write much at all, so I’ll be leaning heavily on archived material today…. It won’t matter much, as the subjects on which the old material is based is as valid today as it was then…. The Asininnies are still on the loose, and global warming is still gaining speed, so there’s plenty for me to rail about; in fact, given my usual subject matter, I don’t think I’ll ever really run out of material to write about…. Those assholes are just too good (or bad, depending on where you’re looking at it from, of course…) at what they’re doing to ever fail to find something else they can turn into a pile of shit….

In sooth, I am finding motivation to be a hard thing to corral these days, mainly due to the advanced state of global warming that the latest environmental scientists reported in 2013…. The worst case scenario, which speaks of the meltdown of our planetary supply of permafrost at an increasing rate as the ambient planetary temperature continues to rise, (permafrost contains methane, which is more potent a pollutant than even carbon…. Tons of methane are being released into the air each day now)…. gives us a possible end-time that is only MONTHS away; none of the other, more optimistic theories about what might happen give us much beyond a few years, possibly as many as fifty or a hundred….

But, no matter how long we may or may not have before the air becomes unbreathable, the changes we have caused in our environment are coming to a head, and once a certain point is reached, the rate at which it will occur will jump drastically, becoming a parabolic curve, approaching infinite speed…. at which time, it would be a prudent matter to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye…. More significantly than even this, though, is the fact that it is probably too late for us to even try to find a way to stop it all…. The carbon we’ve put into the air is beyond the point of return; the changes that occur will only get faster, as more methane from melting permafrost joins the carbon in the air….

SIGH…. I suppose you can see why motivation is becoming problematic for me; what I know of science tells me that the scientists are correct, and we no longer have any choice in what will happen. We have removed ourselves from having any say in our own future, turning over our fate to Mother Nature, and She is both ruthless and pitiless in her defense of her own integrity…. We have fucked up, and we will receive no reprieves, no pardons, and no mercy….

There, now that I have thoroughly depressed my entire base of readers, and myself, we’ll go on to the Pearl for today, and hope I can find something to make you smile, or get outraged along with me, or, if nothing else, give y’all a few minutes of entertainment…. while in the process, getting all that shit OUT of my head….. Bonus!

Shall we Pearl?…..

ELYSIUM, n.  An imaginary delightful country which the ancients foolishly believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the good.  This ridiculous and mischievous fable was swept off the face of the earth by the early Christians — may their souls be happy in Heaven! — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”
_____________________________

As promised, here is a short, mild rant from the archives…. Apparently, 50 weeks ago, the world’s issues resembled those we are witnessing today, and my take on what was going on was, IMHO, not unintelligent, and fairly instructive…. Hence, the inclusion today of TWO pearls from last year, in all their dubious glory…. Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From 1/29/13:

In difficult ground, press on;
In encircled ground, devise stratagems;
In death ground, fight.

– Sun Tzu, The Art of War (circa 400 B.C.)

The Art of War is still considered by military experts to be one of the definitive books on warfare and strategy, after more than 2000 years. I’m not certain, but would certainly be surprised, if this little tome is not still used as a reference at West Point, Annapolis, The Citadel, and the Air Force Academy, in classes on tactics and strategy used in battle, and in peace time. In the book, which is actually quite short, Sun Tzu gives the basic tenets for success in war; he was so perfectly correct and complete, that all he wrote remains valid today, even though the landscape of war has grown much larger, and more complex. The issues that can decide victory or defeat remain the same….

One of the most surprising features of the book is the idea that Sun Tzu presents regarding the perfect warrior. In his mind, warriors came in a number of types, each of which required a different method of leadership. The surprise lies in his choice of the type of warrior that he considers to be the most valuable; oddly enough, at least, on the surface, he chose…. the Spy….

Not the weapons master, not the brilliant tactician, not the engineer…. the spy, who combined attributes of all the other types. According to Sun Tzu, a properly trained and experienced agent provocateur was, by far, the most valuable type of warrior, for, with the proper application of truth and lies, and the correct timing, battles might be won without loss of life or property, or with a minimum of effort, due to the efforts before the battle by the spy. This choice indicates that Sun Tzu recognized the true battle that is waging at all times when people interact with each other…. the battle between truth and lies….

We see this battle raging in our own society every day, as the politicians vie with each other to see which one can get the furthest from the truth and still convince people they aren’t full of shit. When we have priests telling us that we aren’t the masters of our own bodies or minds, expecting us to not even ask why, we are witnessing the constant struggle for control of our minds… and our pocketbooks….. Control of the former, of course, will always lead to control of the latter, and you can bet your booties that it is the pocketbooks that the preachers and politicians are concerned with, not just our minds, or our souls…. You betcha, compadre…

She was a wight, if ever such wight were,–
Des. To do what?
Iago. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.
Des. O most lame and impotent conclusion!

– William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Othello — Act ii, Sc. 1

Normally, or as close as we get to normally, I wouldn’t use a Shakespeare quote, and this one shows why very well…. I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell any of it means, but the last line struck home for this discussion…. Before what I am saying reaches the point where the last line might apply, I will refer you to the book itself….  The Art of War, by Sun Tzu;  copies of it are available at any bookstore, or at your local library; nowadays, you can probably find it online in a number of places.

It is a fairly quick read, (though there are points that do require some thought and pondering), with fewer than a hundred pages in most of the versions I’ve seen. As I said above, it’s pretty simply written, but covers all that is needed to get his point across, which has to do with winning, not just at war, but in life. As with many things in Chinese culture, there is more to the subject than may be apparent on first view, and it is worth the time to look more deeply into what Sun Tzu left for us….

But war ‘s a game which were their subjects wise
Kings would not play at.

– William Cowper (1731-1800) — The Task, Book v, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 187
_____________________________

As much as I’d love to bleed out a fresh poem today, I can’t find it anywhere in me…. Hence, I retreat to one of my favorites for respite….

A Dream Of Death

I DREAMED that one had died in a strange place
Near no accustomed hand,
And they had nailed the boards above her face,
The peasants of that land,
Wondering to lay her in that solitude,
And raised above her mound
A cross they had made out of two bits of wood,
And planted cypress round;
And left her to the indifferent stars above
Until I carved these words:

She was more beautiful than thy first love,
But now lies under boards.

~~ William Butler Yeats ~~
_____________________________

This religirant is a bit more pointed than the one above that spoke about the battle in society for the minds of the people; the battle here is the same, but the methods used by the Priestly Hierarchies, and people of the ilk of Billy Graham are different than those used by the BRC, though no less demeaning, and no more honest…. This rant is one of my more potent, and very clear as to the targeted group’s identity….. which, as always in anything to do with humans, includes just about everyone….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From 1/29/13:

Delusional material, very dangerous…. Read carefully…

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve;
I was made weak, that I may learn humbly to obey.

I asked God for health, that I may do greater things;
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

I asked for riches, that I may be happy;
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life,
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing I asked for but everything I hoped for.
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

– unattributed, even by Smart Bee (I can assign no blame to them, for not wanting to take credit for this….)

From the time we are small, our minds are programmed with the ideas and beliefs our parents and families held as truth, regardless of whether or not there is any actual truth to be found in them. We have little, or no, defense against these ideas, as we are naturally inclined to believe what our care givers tell us. While I can understand the way it works, it seems to me to be a shame, that we don’t come with a built in truth detector, to protect us before we are able to reason for ourselves. Until our minds have been trained, we tend to accept whatever someone in a position of authority tells us, which may keep us safe, in a physical sense, when we are small and vulnerable, but is a dangerous habit to keep when grown.

The above is an example of how churches and the priestly hierarchies attempt to befuddle people into obedience and acceptance of their credos, aimed at those adults who have carried over their trust in authority into their adult views. On the surface, the statements seem to imply a certain morality, one of patience, compassion, and beneficence; but, underneath, they are merely designed to reinforce the ideas they wish to espouse, of obedience, humility, and subservience to authority.

If one is to believe the priestly hierarchies, we humans don’t really stand a chance against the universe…. In their minds, God has it all worked out, and it isn’t our place to question any of His prerogatives; we are here only to do His (translates as: their….) will, and to sing His praises (keeps us busy NOT thinking….). We are weak, bumbling, foolish creatures whose only claim to fame is that God loves us…. according to dogma. It occurs to me to ask, “So, which one of y’all is the one to whom God spoke, when he laid down all this specious crap? When y’all talked with God, how long had it been since you last took your medication?”

I know, I know, not very friendly approach, but, sheesh, give me a break…. I mean, these people are responsible for a great deal of the suffering and trouble mankind has endured over the last 5000 years or so, and don’t even have the courtesy to take credit, or apologize. In their minds, all that stuff they do to maintain their status quo is justified by their holiness, or whatever it is they claim makes them special. And, all the time, in reality, everything they do is designed, ultimately, to bring coins to their purses, and food to their tables, at the expense of the ignorant mass of believers….

I feel a nasty rant coming on…. Sometimes, when I write one of these rips at religion, I just get SO ANGRY…. I’m mad at the preachers and priests, and those who support them, for their willingness to prey on the public, using the pretension of religious fervor and worship to justify their narcissism, and for the thousands of years of suffering that mankind has endured at their hand. I am also angry at those people who buy into their bullshit, for not having the courage to use their minds, to blithely accept anything told to them by an authority figure, never even considering that there might be more to life than they are seeing…. It is all such a waste, and my anger knows no bounds….

“Civilization is fun!  Anyway, it keeps me busy!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Well, it would keep me busy if I could find any…. I had to include this little side-trip from Zippy in order to bring my anger level down. I was feeling the urge to let out ALL of the vulgar curses I could think of, to express how I feel about all the assholes who perpetrate this entire fallacy on the rest of humanity, knowing how gullible they are, and how little effort it takes to fool them into believing the most incredible bullshit.

I mean, how hard can it be to fool someone who would believe that the recent spate of cold weather means that global warming is a myth? How hard is it to fool someone who will gladly trade their freedom in this life for the promised reward in the next life? It’s so damn easy that the fools actually come asking for it, to be made into puppets, just so they can believe they are beloved of God, and guaranteed a spot in Heaven…. I often wonder just how fit to survive our species really is, when we can’t even come to terms with our own sense of self, or learn to accept the responsibility for our own actions….

Most folks are so scared to think for themselves that they gladly surrender that chore to the priests and politicians, apparently not even caring how often they lie to them. Even when the lies are exposed, and even proved, people will hang on to their prejudices, and to the belief in supernatural beings that control our every move; they are quite unwilling to let go of what they’ve bought into all their lives, even when it’s clear that none of it is true. Most of the time, they are unwilling to even look at any arguments against what they hold to be true, preferring the solid comfort of their ignorance. Makes me want to puke, it does…. on THEIR shoes….

Ah well, I’ve spilled enough bile and venom for one morning. It would probably be best to move on, and let this one die a natural death. If nothing else, I got some angst and pressure relieved, for the time being. It is almost a comfort to know that the politicians and preachers will be providing more ammunition in the coming days, as they continue their campaign of oppression against the people of the Earth; that means I’ll always have plenty about which to rant…. Happy Days!….

“Those who won’t think will have it done for them.” –  Smart Bee
_____________________________

In spite of the use of mostly archived material, plus a poem by someone else, I’m beat…. Probably not sleeping is a factor in that, but, putting this together took more than I realized it would…. It must be okay, then, because otherwise I wouldn’t have worked so hard on it…. Hey, if that kind of logic and faith works for religions, I can use it, too, right? Sorry, I know, leave the ranting to the rants…. Any who, this now achieves the primary defining characteristic we seek for any Pearl, which is, arguably, it’s done….. See ya….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid

dozer3

Seduced by the smell of onions….

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Ffolkes,

So much for routine…. Whatever routine I had developed over time is now kaput. (A word old as your granny, yet with a powerful connotation as a word to describe anything that is finished, or no longer in context) And, there I go, getting distracted, going off on a tangent before I’m out of the first paragraph…. Hell, look at this! I didn’t even get to the third sentence before pulling myself into a separate trail of thought…. SIGH….. Being a polymath isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be….

Most of us tend to rely on routines to get us started each day…. Each of us figures out the most efficient methods for us to arise, groom, dress, and head out to meet the day; I don’t know about y’all, but my methods tend to rely heavily on those actions that can be performed without any conscious thought or effort, as it takes me until after several hits of coffee before I’m able to see past the end of my nose, or, for that matter, before I even WANT to see any further…. For me, the coffee, with condiments, of course, is the central issue, the one factor that can screw up the rest of whatever happens, if it doesn’t happen as it is supposed to….

Without coffee, I have no real idea what the world is like, nor do I wish to know. I don’t CARE how anyone else feels about it, either. Until I have downed at least a half a cup, talking with people, or interacting with them in any way, is an activity fraught with danger, for both of us, but, mainly for the other person…. Not that I’m totally dangerous (though I can be….), but, it’s not a fair fight when one persons level of grump is so much higher than another’s….. A certain level of grump is required to overcome it in another, and there’s just no way to soften that reality, so, I just have to be careful not to see, or interact with, anyone before I’ve had my brew….

At this point, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that I’ve again lost track…. I mean, I know what I’m talking about…. I just haven’t a clue about how I got here, or why I should continue in this direction, when it so obviously leads nowhere in particular….. Though that is a destination we are quite familiar with here at ECR, it isn’t where I’d planned to end up today…. Ah well, that’s what I get for meandering through my own head for inspiration…. I have to take whatever comes up, and deal with it…. and, in this case, so do you….

To mitigate any difficulties you may be experiencing with that particular issue, I’ll bring this to a crashing halt here…. Getting on with our business of the day seems like the best thing to do now, since I’ve again written myself to a point where I can do nothing else…. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Shall we Pearl?

“I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than that they should say, “Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Of Superstition
_____________________________

Well, they’ve done it again…. I thought when I began today I would not have a rantable subject, since the BRC’s Asininnies seem to have taken some time off here in the beginning of the year….. But, then I found this article, tucked way down the front page of the news site at SFGATE…. I imagine the story’s placement has a little to do with who the story is about…. The shadowy corporate masters of society don’t like to see this kind of stuff up on the main part of the page; they don’t like to spotlight anything they do, and this one is one they’ll not wish people to hear about too quickly, before they’ve secured the position the ruling below gives them…..

Yes, ffolkes, another federal judge, handily in the pocket of big money, has ruled in favor of Verizon, a shadowy corporate master if ever there was one, on their suit to be able to charge what they want, and restrict what they want, from the Internet services they provide, thus giving them the ability to, essentially, control the flow of data and information that goes over the ‘Net, and charge people however much they want for it…..

This judge, in a ruling that echoes the corruption of the original ruling that gave corporations “personhood”, once again ruled that the corporation was entitled to rights and privileges over their network, even though previously, the FCC had ruled the request to be discriminatory, thus spotlighting it as a proprietary attempt by Verizon to monopolize the Internet for its own use….

“Judges said although the FCC has oversight of how Internet providers manage traffic, its regulations were overreaching considering the agency classified broadband providers as “information services” companies rather than telecom companies, which “exempts them from treatment as common carriers.”

“exempts them from treatment as common carriers.”….. In and of itself, this doesn’t LOOK like the insane viewpoint it really is… I mean, is it sane to define a corporation as a person, and give them not just the same rights, but a version of those rights that actually favors them, as they can now perform actions, as a corporation, that would earn a real person a jail cell?…. NOBODY IS SUPPOSED TO BE “EXEMPT” FROM THE LAW!

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Will-net-neutrality-ruling-make-Web-like-cable-TV-5143669.php

“Verizon, which brought the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, argued that because it built its network, it has the right to manage its costs and services as it pleases.”

Here we have the basic statement of purpose, the one that shows just exactly how avaricious these assholes are…. “as it pleases”….. In other words, the company, because it has legal standing as a “person”, is thus given the right to do “as it pleases” with the Internet, or, that part of it that it can control (which, since they own much of the actual machinery over which the Internet users travel, means they would control ALL of it….)….

If that is NOT a statement of outright greed and selfishness, then my parents had no clue as what those words meant, because I was taught the exact opposite of what they are expressing…. As members of a society, we all have certain limits on what we can do “as we please”, limits that are connected to our own connection to other people, and the fact that those people have rights as well…

It seems to me that whenever a corporate person, and a real person end up in court, the ruling always seems to favor the corporation…. Now, why is that, do you think? Would it, perhaps, just maybe, be a result of who has the most money? Why, yes, I believe it would…. and has been that way since the mid-1800’s, when the Federal Appeals Courts first gave corporations their legal advantage over the rest of us…. That decision created today’s imbalanced situation, where it doesn’t matter at all that the agencies who fought against this presented very cogent, powerful arguments; the judge ruled the only way he could, and still preserve his position as one of the flunkies….

Those agencies who fought this suit included the FCC itself, which made this statement telling why it had resisted the suit brought by Verizon…. The agency, even though a federal bureaucracy itself, is well aware of what is at stake, and took the side of consumers for a change…..

“(FCC Chairman) Tom Wheeler said his agency is mulling a Supreme Court appeal, and insisted the FCC will not “abandon its responsibility to oversee that broadband networks operate in the public interest. (The FCC) will not disregard the possibility that exercises of economic power or of ideological preference by dominant network firms will diminish the value of the Internet to some or all segments of our society,” he wrote in a blog post.”

Other organizations with a stake also joined in to resist the suit in court…. The American Library Association said this, in describing the danger of giving up this power to the corporate world….

“Now that the Internet has become the primary mechanism for delivering information, services and applications to the general public, it is especially important that commercial Internet service providers are not able to control or manipulate the content of these communications,” said Barbara Stripling, president of the American Library Association. ”

Other organizations chimed in as well, in an effort to defend the FCC policies at stake….

“Rashad Robinson, executive director of the African American advocacy group ColorOfChange.org, fears that large private companies may start to squeeze out public discourse online.  “Our communities rely on the Internet to speak without a corporate filter, to access information and connect to the world, and to be able to organize and hold public officials and corporations accountable.”

The corporation, of course, had their slimy, young, personable snakes out in full force, issuing press statements, to counter any public discourse with assurances that the company wouldn’t make any real changes to internet services…. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, the spin doctor who made this statement even believes this, in spite of the FACT that the company has never once shown any sort of morality when it comes to its business practices…. He says, assuring us of the company’s good intentions….

“Verizon has been and remains committed to the open Internet which provides consumers with competitive choices and unblocked access to lawful websites and content when, where and how they want,” a spokesman said in a statement. “This will not change in light of the court’s decision.”

Sure, mister…. all that will be true, at the same moment when the pigs take off to fly from the White House lawn, and the weather notices from Hell are mentioning snow….. How do these assholes convince themselves to say things like that in public, when not only does everyone listening know they’re lying, but, they can barely keep a straight face, due to their own knowledge of just how dishonest they’re being?….

I find it interesting to note, this statement contains 3 assertions, all 3 of which can be shown to be bald-faced lies…. This company does NOT show any commitment to an open Internet, does NOT provide competitive choices, or unblocked access (unless forced to….), and, in truth, you can be very sure they have every intention of changing the prices and controls over their network to suit themselves, and their insane avarice for profit by any means….

Okay, ffolkes, now you know…. The assholes who decide for us how much we are to have, have now decided, and it is, once again, far less than we wanted, or needed…. In fact, this whole issue, to me, is just another good example to show folks about how screwed up the world is, and not have to look far for evidence…. Of course, that assumes those folks have left their ears, and their minds, open enough to hear it, and possess the wit to understand…. Sadly, I’m afraid there aren’t enough ffolkes out there who can do that, or, at least, not enough to make a difference any more….

This decision by the Appeals Court, and the ensuing circus to come when society reacts to it, in my mind, is just another sign, among many, that our world is winding itself down to the end…. The corporations keep on securing all the resources and power over others that they can, never knowing that, by doing so, by continuing the insanity in which they’ve engaged for centuries, they are sealing their own fate….. while the rest of us have only to watch in fascination as the scenario unfolds in all its mad glory…..

In truth, I’m kind of starting to look forward to all of the end-time shenanigans that will no doubt ensue when these idiots finally realize what is happening, and what they’ve done…. The expressions on their faces will be priceless, and their contortions of despair, as they go about dying in agony, will only bring a smile to my own face….. A little something to look forward to, in a situation where such gems are scarce…. SIGH….

People are strange, aren’t they?

“Gee, I feel kind of LIGHT in the head now, knowing I can’t make my satellite dish PAYMENTS!” — Zippy the Pinhead
_____________________________

When I began this morning, I had not intended to rant about anything…. Then, while looking through the headlines, I found the article under discussion above, and my outrage flared alarmingly…. So, I ended up with a fairly long rant, on a subject I will no doubt visit again…. Unexpected as it was, I am now a bit fatigued…. Writing from the position of outrage is not as easy as it looks; the emotional investment seems to suck energy as one types, due to the intense mental effort, and the concomitant emotional content that is connected…. All this is just to say, I got tired, and don’t want to work hard any more today…. Days such as this, Emily is the only poet that will do for me….

The feet of people walking home
With gayer sandals go –
The Crocus – til she rises
The Vassal of the snow –
The lips at Hallelujah
Long years of practice bore
Till bye and bye these Bargemen
Walked singing on the shore.

Pearls are the Diver’s farthings
Extorted from the Sea –
Pinions – the Seraph’s wagon
Pedestrian once – as we –

Night is the morning’s Canvas
Larceny – legacy –
Death, but our rapt attention
To Immortality.

My figures fail to tell me
How far the Village lies –
Whose peasants are the Angels –
Whose Cantons dot the skies –
My Classics veil their faces –
My faith that Dark adores –
Which from its solemn abbeys
Such resurrection pours.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

_____________________________

I’m definitely ready for this…. Below you will find a random harlequin pearl, sans directed parameters…. After a rant, and the rest of this morning’s solitary pursuits, this will be a cake walk…. Theoretically….

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

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” — Soren Kierkegaard

“Individuality seems to be Nature’s whole aim — and she cares nothing for individuals.” — Goethe

“That’s right, yes, you’re going, you’re gone for ages, already gone, you’re still here, just arrived, haven’t even met you yet.  It all depends on who you are and how you look at it.  Strange business, time.” — Doctor, Dragonfire

“We are in no danger, since we have realized we are condemned.” — Andrei Siniavski, Sudden Thoughts

” Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.” — H. L. Mencken

“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness, and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” — Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
_____________________________

All things considered, this one went fairly well…. It’s done, and that’s the primary characteristic we look for around here…. In fact, it’s so done, it’s getting dry…. Before I abuse the language any further, I’m outta here…. See you tomorrow….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid

dozer3

Looks to be ’bout half-a-bubble off plumb….

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3

Ffolkes,

Bogus, man! Somebody turned off my clock, or something…. I’d suspect Murphy’s hand at work, but, all I did is get up about an hour and a bit late…. It’s almost 6:30 AM, later, by a bunch, than I’ve been up in a coon’s age, (Okay, I’ll bite: How long does a raccoon live?….), an event not so negative, as much as inconveniently confusing. As much as possible, I’m not going to push for any real thinking, or decision-making, until after the first cup of the morning’s transfusion of blood has dripped into my veins; I have the distinct impression the results would be disastrous, at minimum….

How, then, do I manage to create an intro to this Pearl? If I can’t use my brain, what the heck is it good for? No, you don’t really have to answer that rhetorical question, any more than I have to consider it; I know what it’s good for. I just never get a chance to use it for that…. For what, you ask? Well, honestly, it’s best if I don’t tell you, as it could create difficulties further down the road, for both of us…. Given what I might end up doing the last few months of my life (whether those months are this year, or part of another one, a few years away….), it’s best if you don’t have any idea of my intentions, or my plans…. You wouldn’t be safe, and that would go against the grain of my sensibilities….

Since clandestine actions have been relegated far into the future, relatively speaking, we can get on with today’s effort, provided I can figure out some way to get this intro a bit further along…. I know, it’s probably enough as it is…. Hell, maybe you’re right, and it IS enough…. I know it’s not up to the usual standards we hold, in terms of the amount of crap you generally find here, but, I think the degree of sheer inanity gives it some extra panache, if you know what I mean…. I mean, I could have gone back to those stupid one line jokes I’ve been using here…. Hmm, maybe that’s the problem…. Smart Bee seems to LIKE the damn jokes, so maybe it WANTS the little conversational one-line rim shots I’ve been putting up there… go figure….

Well, okay then…. I don’t have any of the four line rim shots, but, here’s a really old joke, from a British comedian, recently passed away, whose body of work was referred to me by a Gentle Reader as a source for old one-liners…. It’s such an old joke, I had to give it a good dusting off before using it….

“Two cannibals were eating a clown – one said to the other, ‘Does he taste funny to you?’ ” — Tommy Cooper

As a male human being, I am now allowed to guffaw, or, at the very least, give a sardonic smirk for the irony…. You can do as you wish, in terms of your reaction; this site is completely influence free in that regard, as far as we can make it…. It is however, still somewhat strange, all in all, for which we have no apologies whatsoever…. In fact, if I can feel that what I’ve done here has added to the amount and quality of strange in the world, then I’ve done what I set out to do….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.  They must be felt within the heart.” — Helen Keller
_____________________________

So, having arisen so late in the day, I have to admit, I’m completely discombobulated (I LOVE that word!…) (Well, I don’t love the feeling of being in the state of discombobulation (   🙂   ), but, the word itself is GRAND, isn’t it?….)….. Where was I? Oh, okay… So, I’m up late, my brain is mush, and a Pearl is required… What’s a boy to do but dive into the archives for something at least partially intelligent, or something that at least sounds that way….

Here, then, is a fairly mellow politirant, with a suggestion, not original to me, (the credit for the idea expressed below belongs to Arthur C. Clarke, from an idea he had in his novel, “Imperial Earth”, set in the year 2776, on the one thousand year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence), for how to deal with the issue of corrupt politicians, or, indeed, how to deal with the whole idea of a professional class of politicians…. I think its a great idea, and completely workable…. Of course, none of the politicians we have now would like it, but, hey, that’s the whole problem, right? Right….

Any who, enjoy the rant, and think about the suggestion… I forgot to write down what day this was posted, but, it had to have been post-November 6, 2012, as it speaks about the election on that date….

Wednesday, 2012:

“Integrity is when what you say, what you do, what you think, and who you ARE all come from the same place.” — Madelyn Griffith-Haynie

Okay, I know we are all probably sick to death of politics, and the election, and everyone would like to have a break from talking and thinking about it…. I know I am. So, I’ll try to make this fairly short, and make it the last political diatribe for at least a day or two. It may be possible, if nothing in the news jumps up to stimulate my outrage (which may be on a short vacation itself…. I hope….. I could do with the emotional space….).

Any who…. here is what I was thinking when I came across this little gem…. What if we devised a test, that in some way would enable us, as voters, to determine the relative status of each of the candidates according to this rule? A way, as it were, to measure their degree of integrity, which is something I think we can all agree would be a good thing to see in a politician, unlikely as it may be to find it there; I don’t believe it occurs naturally…. If we could, say, set up a scale of integrity, and make it law that a person had to score in the top 5% of the scale in order to merely be eligible for office, I think we might see a whole new set of politicians, who had never before been seen in public.

In fact, in thinking about the current crop of those currently ensconced in the houses of government, it is entirely possible that ALL of those elected officials, who are now in office, might not be eligible under that restriction…. I am not excluding the President, out of fairness, though I personally believe he might score in the top 10%…. I still have questions about some of the stuff he has signed that didn’t seem to be very well publicized, as they didn’t exactly fit with his projected image…. The newest version of the Patriot Act, the NDAA, that he signed last New Year’s Day comes immediately to mind….

I don’t care if he did try to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of the law, he still signed the damn thing, thereby seriously endangering a number of the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution. Plus, the method he used to keep it from the public awareness was rather suspect, in my mind, and reminiscent of the old days under Nixon, Johnson, Reagan, and the two Shrubs, may they all rot in whatever level of  Hell they are destined to occupy…. (I know, I know…. not being a Christian, that curse has little weight, but, hey, it’s a pretty clear indicator of my opinion of all of them….)

As I suspected it might, this grew to be somewhat more than I intended it to be, so I’ll cut it short here. But, my suggestion above, about the test for integrity that should be a given for political aspirants, is completely serious, and I wanted to get that out. Maybe by the next election, we can get the rest of the country to buy into it…. which should be interesting, and fun. I’ll be looking forward to the expressions on the faces of all the supporters of those now in office, when their people gloriously fail to pass the test…. and to the results it will have on society, should it ever be adopted…. I don’t see any way at all that it could do anything that wouldn’t improve the situation….

And so I penned
It down, until at last it came to be,
For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.

– John Bunyan (1628-1688) — Pilgrim’s Progress, Apology for his Book
_____________________________

I wrote this poem as an expression of thanks, for the friend(s) I have in my life, friends who wouldn’t let me go under, in those times when I was sinking….

Unsolicited Gratitude
 
Fear becomes familiar when reality bodes us ill
pain assumes first position, no matter our will.
Powerless, we founder, no strength to prevail
anguished and afraid, against unwanted Fate we rail.

Still, a grain of hope deep inside, hidden well against need
gives us reason to survive, our starving souls to feed.
Failure of courage burdens time, of being bested,
until our souls, in submission, become foully infested.

Bitter tears wash through us each day, with little care,
no thought, no feeling, no wish, or need to be fair.
Rendered clueless, confusion falls upon us, as prey,
we surrender a piece of our soul, little as we may.

Yet, always, a bright beam of hope is seen from afar,
no matter how dreary, or dark, it may seem where we are.
None knows, nor would consent to tell, it seems
from whence it hails, or why it so brightly gleams.

Saving our sanity, absolving our unwanted fears,
dispelling the myths and lies that come with the years.
Each man has known the precious gift that hope may give
And gives glad thanks, as long as he may live.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

The following old-school variety will be a unique pearl, put together using a method of timing and selection heretofore untried…. I’m not even sure of my ability to describe exactly what parameters I’ll be setting, as the search for these connected aphorisms has taken place on three separate occasions, none of which were related in any elemental way…. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I have no idea how this will turn out, but, usually, when we try new techniques like this, it seems to work out pretty well, so, I’m confident this will do the same…. Enjoy!..

“The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.” — Roman Congregation decision against Galileo

“To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover.”– Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

“Kids, the seven basic food groups are GUM, PUFF PASTRY, PIZZA, PESTICIDES, ANTIBIOTICS, NUTRA-SWEET and MILK DUDS!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Okay! That, I think, will give you a clearer idea of where we are headed with this, so, make sure you’re safety harnesses are fully fastened, and you are hanging on for dear life to the soft, fluffy stuffed animals provided by your friendly flight attendants…. Hang on, ffolkes, these last four could get rambunctious….

“All riches come from iniquity, and unless one has lost, another cannot gain.  Hence that common opinion seems to be very true, “the rich man is unjust, or the heir to an unjust one.” Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, than by his predecessor.” — St. Jerome (340?-420)

“Heroes as great have died, and yet shall fall.” — Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — The Iliad of Homer, Book xv, Line 157

“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games which it is most attached is called, “Keep tomorrow dark,” and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) “Cheat the Prophet.” The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.” — Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

“History is a lie commonly agreed upon.” — Nietzsche

I rest my case…..
_____________________________

“These things are fun, and fun is good.” — Dr. Seuss

Ted was right, you know, about all of it…. (Ted = Theodore Geisel, Dr. Seuss….). Especially this part…. I don’t know about y’all, but I had fun today…. which is odd, as it started out really badly, and seemingly went downhill from there…. I guess my topographical perception is as skewed as the remainder of my mind’s now dubious qualities…. In looking back over what I’ve done here this morning, I can only agree with that assessment, and will now fade quickly into the background, disappearing right before your eyes…. See ya….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid

dozer3

Tattered remnants are all that remain….

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3

Ffolkes,

“Hey, buddy!”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t feel so good…Would you call me a doctor?”
“Sure, no problem…. you’re a doctor.”

Now, I’m sure you’ve heard or seen that particular joke at some point in your life; it’s too old, and too common to have missed. I kind of like these, even though I’m beginning to have a bit of trouble coming up with new ones…. I’ve run through almost all the really OLD jokes that would work, so I’m guessing it will take a bit of creativity to keep them going…. I’ll see what I can do about that; creativity is a finite substance here, so I have to ration it out with that in mind, or I run out completely….. Nobody wants that, as these Pearls could become distressingly pedantic, aka, BORING…

I’m having a hard enough time not going there already; I don’t need to spend more of what little I can spare for creativity on stuff that’s boring and unreadable…. But, what’s a poor daily blogger supposed to do when the well runs dry? I’ve used archived material, and I’ve gone back to fictional openings; both are okay, but are not the type of material that can be used every day, without further input of creative innovation….

I’ve blathered, and wandered, and meandered, around nowhere in particular in my own head, verbalizing the vague journeys endlessly, until finally finding my way to the next section… Those seem to work relatively well, but even my almost unlimited store of nonsense and piffle is getting stretched to the point where it’s complaining it can’t find anything new to pervert…

SIGH…. I don’t wish to complain, or seem like a whiner, but, it goes so well with the cheese plates! Oh, golly, no cheese plates? Boy, it’s getting hard to find good help these days; there were supposed to be cheese platters, with some savory crackers to go with, right there on the side table in the parlor, and, sure enough, there’s nothing there but some coffee, and a couple of stale croissants…. chocolate chip croissants, my absolute least favorite when stale…. (buttery golden flaky becomes crumbly greasy old baked flour, with stale chocolate chips….). It’s getting so I’m going to have to go back to a one-man operation, if I can’t find anyone with any common sense, some basic work ethics, and a memory longer than their nose….

Since there is no cheese, we can’t break out the whine, either….. Damn! Circumstances being as they are, it becomes a matter of critical importance to get this moving, requiring us (or, more accurately, ME….) to resort to another emergency method for getting past the intro section…. Hmm, which one shall we choose today?…. #4 is efficient, but we just used it last week, I think…. #7 always does the job, but the mess to clean up afterward is more than I want to deal with today…. We’ll have to go with #11, I guess, and just suffer the indignity that goes along with it….

Okay, ffolkes, since we’re using #11, I’ll have to ask you to fasten the extra set of restraints to your ankles and chest, and place the oxygen masks over your faces BEFORE we start to move, okay? Once the acceleration hits, G-forces won’t allow you to get it on, and the possibility of building up some significant brain-damage is high, if you don’t have that mask in place…. Everybody good to go? Okay, Captain Marty, fire that sucker up, & let’s go!….

Shall we Pearl?….

“We are the protagonists and authors of our own drama. It is up to us; there is no one left to blame. Neither the system, not our leaders, nor our parents. We can’t go out and hang the first amoeba.” — Rebecca McClen Novick

What is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place

— T.S.Eliot. ‘Ash Wednesday’ (1930)
_____________________________

My original thought for this section involved a rant, but, I changed my mind (you wouldn’t believe how many words I just saved you by summarizing that thought, from what it was to, “I changed my mind”…. we might have been stuck here for days….). I was going to rant about the religious hierarchies here, just because it’s their turn, and I’ve been giving them a break of late, with only one rant on Billy G. so far this year (I think… I do lose track easily….), and that one was a blast from the past, itself…. In trying to pull together my thoughts, and in searching for an opening quote to use as a springboard for the discussion, I just got tired….

Maybe I’m old, maybe I’m burnt out, maybe I’m just lazy…. Whatever it may be, I don’t care, and I’m going old-school, no matter what you say…. Not that anyone cares much, or anything like that, but, hey, a man’s got to stand his ground, right?…. Any who, I decided, since I’m so damn lazy, I may as well just put together an old-school, and be done with it….

Since it’s my blog, and I’m the “decider”, as Shrub Jr. used to say, repeatedly…. (as if the more times he said it, the better chance of ANYONE believing it….), that’s the way it’s going to be, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it….. Then again, why would they want to?…. Any who, here are some pearls, that might just save this from oblivion, or, at the least, from the Recycle Bin….

“A Senator, speaking of our current Vice President, whose name shall not be  mentioned (we don’t like hate mail written in crayon!): “I think if you put  his brain on the edge of a very fine razor, it would be like a BB, rolling down the middle of I-70.” — Smart Bee

“Faith is never identical with piety.” — Karl Barth

“As for the wealthy business owner and whether he ‘needs’ the extra dollars, I’ll simply relate the old adage of the man who said ‘I’ve never had my paycheck signed by a poor man’.” — Ron Paul (U. S. Representative from Texas, 2003)

“Give me a lever and place to stand and I will move the world.” — Archimedes (c. 287-212 B.C.), Pappus, Synagogue, VIII, 10, xi

“If the answer to crime was bigger prisons,and harsher sentences, then today the United States of America would be a Utopia.” — Canadian Justice Minister Allan Rock

“Administration maintains the status quo.” — Thomas L. Martin

Fill all the glasses there, for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?

— Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) — From Anacreon, ii, Drinking

On a scale of 10, this one scores about a 7 for obscurity…. that’s good, though, because the point, though subtle, is very sharp, and one should approach it with caution, as befits one so obscurely powerful in scope…. Or, conversely, it could all just be a figment of my own fevered imagination…. I’m afraid that’s been known to happen, too….
_____________________________

Today’s Pearl is one that I’m not sure of, on ANY level of judgment, so one of my poems will have to do, because I don’t want any of whatever backlash might be generated to splash on anyone else’s reputation….. or their clothing…. So, here is one from MY past efforts, such as it is…. Actually, this is one of my latest poems, created in October of last year, and is probably one of my best…. Again, such as that is….

After the odyssey….

Portraits of iconic symbols, crashing, singing, forgotten;
evolving into mature innovation, as yet pale, and rotten.
Still water justly breeds, impenetrable primal verses resound;
unholy moments tarry, emotion swirls in passion unbound

Spiritual ovulation precedes each pregnant pause;
gravid, time moves on, following destiny’s cause.
Cast adrift on waves of confusion, to a final, damp landing;
salvation beckons sweetly, fed well on understanding.

Dreams directly fall, in night’s grey bower, unbidden;
lingering flavors in simple taste, lovingly, cleverly hidden.
Childish laughter sounds, joyful, bright, and clear;
no need ever to hide, no more monsters to fear.

Temper most foul arrives under unregistered mail;
forgotten taunts live on, lashed by an ancient flail.
Plain dealing delivers such lasting specks of honest hate;
savage in retrospect, never hasty, always running late.

Forever, cries an ambient lover of the pending night;
his pale, weak issue forms its own failing light.
Still, fortune favors such as those who apprehend;
Sweet love of Gaia, let it never end.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

Okay, so, the gun control issue in this country is one that is never going to go away, not as long as there are laws that give the common man the right to have them…. The Powers That Be get too nervous thinking about having so many weapons NOT under their direct control, and continue the campaign they’ve waged for the past 200 plus years to repeal the Second Amendment, or at least gut it enough, it has no power to protect….

This campaign will continue until either the guns are under the control of the Asininnies, or the world comes to an end, whichever comes first…. I’ve given my take on it previously, but, it bears repeating now and again, because if no one else does, the Asininnies need reminders that we still have the means to keep our own rights intact, and we are still alert to the efforts they make to take them away…. All of the following remains valid, and true to the best of my knowledge…..

From May 16, 2012:

“Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the _real_ object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?” — Patrick Henry

Here is the question that those who would get rid of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution would like to convince us to ignore. There are a large number of people, otherwise nice, intelligent folks, who have decided that the American people shouldn’t have guns available to them. Because they’ve been indoctrinated to believe that they are incapable of protecting themselves from random violence, these weak-minded, cowardly individuals fall right in with whatever some pundit on TV says to play into those fears….

Their apparent justification is that too many criminals have access to more firepower than do the police forces in each community, while their preferred solution is to make it illegal for anyone except the police and armed forces to carry weapons of that nature. Hell, it’s already illegal to carry a knife longer than 3 inches, because the PTB are afraid someone might stab someone. GASP! You mean there are bad people out there? People who would be less than nice to everyone else? What a surprise!

In case it wasn’t clear, those last three sentences, or queries, should be infused with heavy sarcasm if read aloud. Sarcasm is one of my natural responses to being taken for a fool, especially when it comes to human nature. I have discovered a couple of things about human nature in my time on this planet, things that may come as a surprise to some, though I don’t see why…. All I’ve done is look around me, and see what there is to see….. Anyway, I have some news for those who want to deny the truth….

Humans are violent. Period. It is in their (OUR) nature. Anyone who cannot acknowledge that fact probably still believes in the tooth fairy, and is a sure candidate for early Alzheimer’s disease, because they have a very strong sense of denial. Guns are NOT going to go away; they just aren’t. Believing that banning the public from possessing them will stop violence from happening is the same sort of logic as refusing to breathe because there is smoke in the air….

The tendency for humans to react with violence to what they perceive, or experience, is a FACT; trying to deny it, or even trying to pretty it up, by calling it a “tendency” just makes those people who indulge in expressions of violence that much more dangerous, because it means there are so very many idiots, out there running around in the world by themselves, who are NOT EXPECTING the violence that can happen at any time,…. And yet, the scariest part of the whole gun issue for me is the insistence, on the part of the police, and those Asininnies who want the guns taken away from us, that THEY can be trusted to use their guns rationally, and ONLY with honorable intent….. They assure us these sterling characters, who wear the uniforms of the trusted myrmidon, will always act within the limits of law, whereas the general public cannot be trusted to do so….

Now, I will ask you to think about that for a moment…. Don’t hurt yourself, but try to hold those ideas in your mind without judgment for a moment or two…. Now, can you think of any historical period, or any culture anywhere in the world, that demonstrates any sort of support of that assertion? Has there ever been an entirely trustworthy group of policemen, or politicians, or generals, anywhere? If so, please name that group for me, and I will add that information into the discussion.

I feel compelled to warn you, however, I’m pretty widely-read, having studied world history and culture most of my life, if only informally part of the time…. Yet, for all my study over the years, I cannot think of a single time in history, up to and including today’s world, wherein the police, or the government that controls them, (This include the armies, who are merely police who serve nations rather than cities….), could be considered more trustworthy than the populace. In fact, most of history proves the exact opposite, with most records providing evidence that the mere act of becoming a politician, judge, or police officer tends to corrupt those who are accepted as such…. Having such positions in society is a form of power over others; as such, they are guaranteed to attract those who are drawn to power for its advantages.

No, I’m sorry, I can’t place any credence at all in the assumption that the police, or the government, should be considered trustworthy, much less to believe any of them, just because they are what they are, are MORE trustworthy than the average man…. I can’t do it, not when there is NO evidence anywhere, or any when, that would indicate any such thing. The facts of the matter, and the evidence of recorded history, provide innumerable examples to show how UN-trustworthy most police and political armies are, and trying to say otherwise tends to give me cause to place that person squarely in the camp of the unmitigated LIARS who are always looking for ways to take advantage of other folks.

Our country’s founding fathers spent their time, their energy, their blood, sweat, and tears to ensure that we would not have to put up with that sort of situation, and anyone who tries to get rid of the Second Amendment, for whatever reason they claim as justification, brands themselves a traitor, in my eyes…. I believe the law calls for traitors to be shot, if I am not mistaken….

“Wars kill people. Governments cause wars. Let’s ban government!” — Smart Bee

There, I’ve ranted…. gigoid has spoken. So be it….
_____________________________

I suppose this means there is hope for me yet…. I’ve finished, and in excellent time. How’d it come out? Dunno…. I’m not sure how, or why, but, not bad, not bad…. Good enough to get done, and be gone…. See ya….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid

dozer3

Primarily, we rely on palliative measures, not prophylactic….

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Reply

Ffolkes,

“Hey, you!”
“Yeah?”
“Pull over!”
“No, it’s a cardigan, but thanks for noticing!”

Though that line is probably about as old as the hills in County Wicklow, I think it’s cool…. I first heard it, or a remarkably similar version of it, of course, many, many moons ago, but, saw it again recently on the internet, as the accompanying text to a picture…. of what seemed to be very drunk baby…. Most likely wasn’t, (drunk, that is….), merely good timing with the camera, to catch the baby with the silly expression, smiling, with eyes half-mast, wearing a cardigan, while standing on a picnic bench, with a pint of Harp in front of him…. I crack up hard every time it rotates through on my screen saver….

Any who, now that the most simple of old jokes are becoming viral internet memes, once someone’s perverted sense of humor combines with some geek juice, (hard to resist Photoshop and babies….), it’s hard to know when or where some old piece comes from, or what it once meant…. Not that I care, or anything like that, but, sometimes I think about that kind of stuff…. Pretty boring, eh? SIGH…..

I do sometimes wonder about word origins, though, which really isn’t a boring subject…. for some. I forget my own love of words sometimes can make things interesting for me that others don’t see at all, but, hey, we all tend to become self-centered when it comes to our own preferences…. I mean, that’s why we call them “personal” preferences, right? Now I’m defending self-centered behavior, and we’re only two and bit of a paragraph into this mess…. What the hell happened in that short amount of time? How did I lose control so quickly?…. Who’s in charge here, anyway? Because it’s apparently not me….

It’s tough to be me, on days such as this…. I know there is a certain level of quality I expect from myself when I write, so, I really have very little choice about how to approach all of this…. It takes ALL of my focus and concentration to make it come out right, so, my inability to sit for long, due to the unfortunate intrusion of physical discomfort of one sort or another (back and/or joint pain, stiffness, gas or abdominal bloat, arthritic swelling, etc…. without even going into PTSD symptoms that may manifest at any time….) makes an ordeal out of getting these done each day….

It’s weird, too, because there is very little I can do EXCEPT sit…. walking causes pain and/or numbness after a short distance anyway, and trying to do ANYTHING such as cooking while standing turns my back into a mahogany, two-by-four piece ofhard wood, complete with concomitant levels of pain…. Attempting to do any sort of kitchen work, as I used to do when I was a chef, can put me in bed for a couple hours if I push it too hard past the very short limit that now exists for me…. I can bear no weight at the end of my arms without straining the lower back, and causing it to react poorly…. In short, I’m a mess…. I’m merely 63, but my back and skeleton is 85 or 90…. according to one doctor, anyway….

But, I’m not alone in any of this, and I’m not really complaining, other than as a side note to what I’m trying to say here…. Of course, we also need to remember about moments like this, when I come to the realization that this intro has reached a point of viability, and I don’t have to keep on rambling incoherently about nothing much, just to fill up space…. In looking over what is above, I can only shake my head in chagrin, offer my apologies, and extend my assurances that the rest of today’s Pearl will be different…. I won’t say it will be better, because that sort of value judgment must come from the Gentle Reader…. I just hope I can write something that won’t make me nauseous, or want to hide….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.” — Jane Wagner, _The Search For Intelligent Life In The Universe_ — [Performed by Lily Tomlin]
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Below you will find, I hope, a pearl of virtual wisdom, random harlequin style…. I’m not setting any parameters for this one, since that seems to work pretty well for us…. My head is a bit off the exact center, and I’m having a bit of trouble connecting some of my neuronic pathways, because, hey, where are they?…. Nevertheless, we will continue, as I can use my new Acme Pathfinder to seek out new trails through the labyrinth of my mind; this should allow us to find our way, to somewhere in the vicinity of where we need to go, thus confounding the forces of evil that would keep us from our appointed tasks…. Or something like that….

“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.” — Confucius

“Ignorance is not bliss — it’s oblivion.” — Phillip Wylie

“I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

“When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” — East African Proverb

“There is no difference between theory and practice in theory, but there is often a great deal of difference between theory and practice in practice.” — Chuck Reid

“Whenever doubt can be called into question, do so.” — Smart Bee

“We find it hard to believe that other people’s thoughts are as silly as our own.” — James Harvey Robinson

Not bad for pot luck, eh?…. Onward, with new enthusiasm… Oh, wait, that’s not enthusi…. what the hell IS that?…… EEEEUWWW!! Yuck…. Oh, well, see you at the next section…. I’ll catch up to y’all after I clean this off…. I have no idea where THAT came from…
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Now that we’ve dealt with the obligatory episode of induced hallucination, let’s see if we can find a poem that won’t cause any real harm…. Better yet, lets go for something really good… Okay, here you go…. this fits that description exactly….. It’s a bit longer than is comfortable, perhaps, but, whoever said this would be easy?…. Not me….

On the Pulse of Morning

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveler, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers- desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot…
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours- your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

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

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

~~ Maya Angelou ~~

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Perception is, perhaps, the most elementally intricate quality we possess as living creatures. Through the five-plus senses we bring to the process, we receive information from the universe that gives us what we require, in order to be able to interact with Reality, (another term for the Universe… for the purposes of this discussion, anyway….)  in some sort of way that is meaningful to us.

This information comes to us in a variety of forms, and our minds must utilize the complex, yet subtle qualities of imagination, reason, logic, and all those mental functions that our minds have discovered to organize the information, functions whose etiology are basically unknown to us, as part of our basic nature. We don’t think about, or feel in any way, the process of seeing, or smelling, or touching, except in the context of the sense itself…. We just DO it….

Yet each sense is such that it works WITH all the others, in ways we don’t really understand, to give us the pictures in our heads that show us how our minds perceive the world outside us…. We, being the imaginative creatures we are, have evolved all sorts of ways to organize and utilize our perceptions, all of which are again connected (remember that complexity part…) to another facet of Reality, which is our motivation for what we do, an outgrowth of our judgments of what we perceive…. We perceive, we judge, we act on that judgment, all according to our basic outlook on life, and how we choose to accept, and use, what we perceive….

This subject, I know, is a  bit esoteric for such a venue, but, I’m leading up to a point, which is this…. We all perceive the world differently, but, that doesn’t mean the world takes that into any account…. It’s one of our hardest lessons to accept when we are forced to admit that the Universe, in all its majestic glory, couldn’t give a tiny little crap for us, or for what we think of the way things are…. If we choose to interact with it in such a way that we are breaking the basic rules that everything works by, then we will have to pay the price, in the only way that the Universe uses to exact payment, to wit: extinction….

Now, given that, it seems to me that my ranting about all of this*** is a bit like that ant crawling up the elephant’s leg, with belligerent intentions…. In short, it’s not really a productive way to achieve whatever it is I’m trying to do, as I can see only one possible outcome, which, the odds, and logic, would tend to dictate doesn’t include any need for any worry on the part of the elephant….

All that is a long winded, pedantic way of saying that my rants, while satisfying on a personal level for the release they provide, are mostly a waste of breath, in a practical sense…. Nothing will change because I rant, in spite of the need for change being the whole purpose behind the rant…

The major part of that reason, I think, lies in the fact that I’m preaching to the choir…. None of the ffolkes, or folks, who read my blog, (with the possible exception of any bored NSA drones who may be assigned to do so merely because of my anti-government stance, shown by the  use of key phrases indicating my opposition….), are in any position to make any of the changes themselves, even though many of them would be willing to do so, I think…. But, the people who inhabit the halls of our government in Washington, and in other capitols around the world, DON’T read my blog, nor do they agree with most of the things about which I rant….

Why is that, do you think? Why don’t the people who govern us agree with any of what I say in my rants? It’s all stuff that can be proven, and is certainly important enough to all of us to warrant discussion… But, they don’t agree… They have their own agendas, which don’t look like anything that anyone in the great unwashed masses could come up with, even though they supposedly represent US…. These are our representatives, ffolkes…. I found this short comment in an old Pearl, which I think sums up most of my point pretty well…..

(From May 12, 2012):

“Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers, what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air?” — John Milton (1608-1674) — The History of England, Book iv

Did you ever wonder why a group of crows is called a congress? I didn’t. It makes perfect sense to me…. Dark, sinister looking creatures who act in odd ways, even for birds. Their behaviors tend to lean toward stealing shiny objects from wherever, or stealing the food of people or other animals and birds. When they speak, it is in a voice that grates on the ear like fingernails on a slate. In groups, they mill around, cackling and grumbling and jostling each other, until they all fly off to different areas to carry out whatever nefarious schemes they have hatched among themselves.

No, I have no problem envisioning a congress of crows; in fact, I believe they are in session, now, in Washington, D.C. …. Why, look! Here’s a list of them now!…..

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2014/01/10/congress-is-mostly-full-of-millionaires-but-who-are-the-richest/#19551101=0

Them’s some affluent crows, ain’t they?…. That’s what happens when any politician is given the keys to the treasury….. One last query…. Who gets to say how much money members of Congress get paid? Answer: They are authorized to set that themselves…. Okay, one more… Who authorized them? Why, they authorized that themselves, of course….

I’m tired now…. I’ve managed to spout off now about the Asininnies, or, at least, about the 545 of them who inhabit the top levels of OUR democratic bureaucracy, for a good, oh, thousand words or so, and once again, it will end up being read by those who mostly agree… (I’m making the assumption, reluctantly, but, with confidence, that if they DIDN’T agree, they’d leave a comment to say so…. I know MY Gentle Readers would do so….), so, I’m perfectly aware that no changes will happen because of what I’ve written….

I don’t feel any better, either, damn it!…..   😦

***  It must be noted that “all of this” should be understood to include: global warming, and the impending ecological disaster, overpopulation, criminality of the Asininnies, most especially the egregiously selfish actions of the Beloved Ruling Class, the Shadowy Corporate Masters, Snakeheads in general, (human predators…. pimps, slavers, pedophiles, and the ilk…), Priestly Hierarchies, and the Ignorant Paramilitary Myrmidons….. Oh, yes…. Also, on the rare occasion, we like to expose Shakespeare, and Pooh’s evil twin….
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The afterglow that generally accompanies the completion of a Pearl just isn’t happening today…. Maybe if I just get on with the posting part, and stop fussing with this any more, I’ll start to feel a bit more in tune with Reality…. Can’t hurt, I guess…. See you 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

dozer3

Alloy sample #7 turned into fairy dust….

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Ffolkes,

“Hey, buddy!”
“Yeah?”
“How’s it going?”
“Who the f__ are you? And why do you keep asking me these stupid questions?”

Okay, so that particular method of opening up might not work any more… I might have guessed, as things have been going too smoothly in the intro section; such a lack of turbulence always makes me nervous when it manifests around here, because I’m forever wondering where and when the other shoe will drop…. I’ve sustained too many concussions from Murphy to feel comfortable with such a trouble-free process, or to expect him to leave us alone for very long…. Oh, shucks, and I was JUST beginning to like him….. Right, sure, that’s the ticket….. NOT!

Very well, since we can’t depend on what we know, we’ll have to rely on what we don’t know, because, hey, there’s a lot more of that than there is of that, anyway…. I’m pretty sure that’s how it is with most ffolkes, and I KNOW for certain that there are a great many folks out there whose relative amounts of each definitely register on the negative side; what THEY don’t know would astound other people…. Hell, sometimes I wonder how those folks get through the day, because Reality has a bad habit of wanting us to walk and whistle, at the same time…. frequently.

It always amazes me, actually, to look around the planet, where I see all the really, really dumb people wandering around, obviously without a clue about practically anything, just sort of there, taking up space… I often end up thinking about how different things might have been in today’s world if, way back in the day, society had made the choice to pick the smarter, (but handicapped by honesty and virtue), cave guy to lead the tribe, instead of the most slick and persuasive liar….

Ah well, too late now…. The dumber, more vicious ones, with the facile tongues, no hearts, and the big clubs, along with the willingness to use them on others, are already in control, and there’s no time to go back for any do-overs; the clock is already run down to the end time, and we’re going to have to deal with things the way they are….

I’m really not ranting here again… No, really, I’m not…. I was just thinking about all the people in the world who haven’t a clue as to what is going on in their own minds, much less what is happening out in the real world, and how they are going to look at all the chaos and upheaval that is coming in the future…. Well, I suppose I’ll find out, won’t I?  I certainly will, and so will y’all….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Ignorance doesn’t kill you, but it makes you sweat a lot.” — Haitian proverb

Just like the native islanders, to worry about the sweat…. besides, in this case, the cumulative effects of all that time spent sweating has caught up to us, and it WILL kill us, sweating or not….
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Apparently, back in May of 2012, my mind was pretty well-tuned, if still struggling with the whole sleep issue, and I had nothing better to do than to spend a lot of time playing with it…. Kind of like now, come to think of it…. Any who here is another little discussion from that month, posted in a Pearl that produced four separate well-done pieces for me to re-use…. This one is not a rant, just a little self-revelation, with a taste of wistful hope…

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From May 12, 2012:

“It may be irrational of me, but human beings are quite my favorite species.” — Doctor Who, Ark in Space

It probably seems to most folks reading this blog that I don’t like people very much. I tend to spend a lot of time finding and pointing out the things I see in them that I don’t like, and discussing them at nearly interminable length, a habit that would seem to indicate a lack of affection for the species as a whole. In reality, the opposite is true…. I love people…. I love watching them, listening to them, thinking about them, writing about them…. They afford me no end of intellectual stimulation, entertaining comedic genius, and fertile fields of thought and endeavor to explore, virtually and actually.

Human society and culture is an incredibly beautiful, complex tapestry of emotion and creativity; nobility, cruelty, heroes, villains, puppies, cats, love, hate, and all the rest of the things that make people what they are unfolds before us every day, growing and adding length and breadth to that tapestry of existence.

I can’t think of anything more interesting than the drama/comedy that is human history in the making…. I might wish it to be a more compassionate world, with less tyranny and oppression, without slavery and starvation. I might wish that my life would not be so complicated by ignorance and intolerance, and I might wish that the small percentage of humanity that holds the remainder in the grip of their own avarice would die horrible deaths worthy of their own evil natures.

But, I wouldn’t trade a single part of reality for anything. Nor would I say that any of these changes that are needed are particularly apt to happen, not without many more people in the world taking an interest in them…. Most folks just go through life trying to get by, trying not be bothered with anything more complicated than tying shoes; one can’t really blame them, bless their cowardly little hearts…. My own method of dealing with how much I’d like to see reality change is to write about what I see, and what I think can be different, with the right set of attitudes.

This desire to see, and stimulate the changes I believe are necessary arises out of my love for my fellow man, not from indignation or outrage, though they’re present. But, what I write, and what I’m trying to accomplish, is to help folks deal with life in a way that allows them more freedom, of whatever kind they wish to have, whether monetary, intellectual, religious, or physical; my motivation is to share the strength and freedom of thought that I have worked so hard to achieve…. Mankind has much more potential than we are showing in our actions, and I would love to see more of it fulfilled, rather than stifled, as in current society…. We can be so much more….

“Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.” — Albert Einstein
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Concluding notes: Having seen the latest evidence about how serious the global warming crisis has become, with the newest estimates as to our remaining time now set at much less than previously thought, (possibly as little as a few MONTHS), I am somewhat unsure of how to approach the future…. From what I can see, from my vantage point (of having an adequate scientific background to make an accurate judgment about how much time we have left, whether it is several months, or as much as fifty years), it seems clear that we are down to a very finite time, one much shorter than we had thought… This is now a fact, easily demonstrated to even the most cynical non-believer….

What this means for me is to experience ever increasing sadness, for all the future we will not see…. I’m saddened by the loss of the beauty that will never be seen, or created by the mind of Man. I’m saddened that my grandson will never have the chance to look forward, to a life of joy and passion….. He’ll never get to travel to see the world, or meet new people, or fulfill any of his own promise…. and, GOD, it’s so damn hard to type when one has tears pouring down one’s cheeks…. It’s so infuriating! Our own stupidity and baseness is killing us all, and nobody seems to care!

Bah, humbug! I’m getting closer all the time to breaking…. If I do, there will be a reckoning, you may be sure… For now, I need to go look for, and read, some poetry, to calm down… Sorry, but when I start thinking about the future, and how my grandson really doesn’t have one, it kind of sets me off, you know?….

As I said in the above, I love people, and all the drama and beauty that we can create…. It’s really too bad we aren’t going to be around very much longer to appreciate any of it….

“In the bigger scheme of things, the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something. And that’s a whole different thing.” — Lucille Clifton
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I found this poem while looking through PoemHunter.com’s archives…. whereupon I cut, and pasted it in here before realizing just how perfectly it fits in with today’s apparent theme…. If I need to explain why it’s perfect, I’ve made an error in estimating my audience’s basic intelligence; it should be glaringly obvious to anyone how this applies to the current issues in our world, especially those I’ve been discussing today… If not, well, it’s still an enjoyable piece of verse, so, enjoy, okay?…..

Children’s Party

May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party’s over.
Since three o’clock I’ve done my best
To entertain each tiny guest.

My conscience now I’ve left behind me,
And if they want me, let them find me.
I blew their bubbles, I sailed their boats,
I kept them from each other’s throats.

I told them tales of magic lands,
I took them out to wash their hands.
I sorted their rubbers and tied their laces,
I wiped their noses and dried their faces.

Of similarities there’s lots
Twixt tiny tots and Hottentots.
I’ve earned repose to heal the ravages
Of these angelic-looking savages.

Oh, progeny playing by itself
Is a lonely little elf,
But progeny in roistering batches
Would drive St. Francis from here to Natchez.

Shunned are the games a parent proposes,
They prefer to squirt each other with hoses,
Their playmates are their natural foemen
And they like to poke each other’s abdomen.

Their joy needs another woe’s to cushion it,
Say a puddle, and someone littler to push in it.
They observe with glee the ballistic results
Of ice cream with spoons for catapults,

And inform the assembly with tears and glares
That everyone’s presents are better than theirs.
Oh, little women and little men,
Someday I hope to love you again,

But not till after the party’s over,
So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover

~~ Ogden Nash ~~

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“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.” — Charles Lamb

There, now, none of the irony dripping from this got on your clothing, did it? Mr. Lamb makes here an assertion that he has, no doubt, been forced to defend, physically, in more than one bar…. especially in those bars near the courthouse…. Actually, any OTHER bars would most likely appreciate this, and reward him with a groan, or even a chuckle or two, (in some parts of town, they’d even buy him a drink….) even though most folks tend to become angry and depressed when thinking about lawyers….It goes with the territory, you see. 

Lawyers, as all of us are aware, come in only two varieties, one of which is socially acceptable, and one that is socially outcast…. a distinction based upon how they approach their practice of law….

One type of lawyer is the kind who goes into the law because they believe in it; they like justice, they like to see that justice work….. These barristers try to help others find justice, even when the system of law is obstructive to that purpose, by the intent and influence of the OTHER kind of lawyers who inhabit the field. These good people use their knowledge of the ins and outs of the legal system to help others find their way through it, motivated by impulses of a morally superior nature….

The second type of lawyer is that group of people who make it through law school, with the sole purpose making the law work FOR them, to furnish them with power, money, and control over others, whether as a lawyer, a judge, a politician, or a banker, which are the four ways that most lawyers choose to use their education….. They are motivated by avarice, entitlement, and self-love, and have no investment at all in helping others, unless that somehow advances their own agenda….

Now I’m depressed, and pissed off…. I have had my own experiences with both kinds of lawyers; I even count one of them among my long-time friends, mostly because he is a person who spends a lot of time agonizing over the motivations involved in pursuing the law, and his own struggles with dealing with the other type in the system…. He would have been the first kind of lawyer, had he stuck with it; as it is, he is not currently practicing, and is much better off for it, IMHO….

But, there are so fucking many of the other kind, who are in it for what they can get out of it, they tend to seem like the ONLY kind…. It also seems as if every one of the lawyers in that group is involved in the government of this country, at one level or another, which, arguably, is a fucking nightmare for the rest of us…. These Asininnies have penetrated to all levels of society, taking over in positions that require their expertise, thus cementing their own part in keeping the status quo intact…. From the White House, to the halls of Congress and Senate, to the Supreme Court, our country is in the hands of assholes with law degrees, all vying for the primary position of power, and not a single one of them concerned AT ALL with anyone else in the country….

It’s been this way for a good long while now, and shows no signs of ever becoming different…. because people have stopped noticing, or don’t care, because they’re too busy trying to stay alive in the impossible world that has been created for us…. I could rant here about how this is going to kill us all, but, you’ve heard me on that subject before, and it won’t change anything to go over it now…. I don’t see that there are a lot of options left in the world for any of us, not without some seriously revolutionary spirit developing, enough to actually fight back AGAINST all those who would maintain things as they are….

That’s the issue, ffolkes, right there…. The people now in power want the status quo to be maintained, as long as they possibly can, so they resist all efforts to educate the world about the need for change. They won’t quit doing that, unless someone else MAKES them stop… and, honestly, do you see anyone at all who will do that? Neither do I….. I am willing to help, if I could see anyone at all who had any chance at making any changes, but, I just don’t see it anywhere….

“THEY” have too much control, and “THEY” are willing to let things go on the way they are as long as their profit margin doesn’t fall below their expectations…. Add to that the fact that “THEY” don’t give a shit about what anyone else wants, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of where we stand, here, January 11, 2014, in America, as well as on Planet Earth at large…. You can thank the Asininnies, and you can thank yourselves, as I do, for we all played our part in the story line….

And of course, No soap, radio….

(The Joke: Two elephants are sitting in a bathtub, scrubbing away. One elephant pauses and cries out to the other, “Pass the soap!” And the other elephant shouts back, “No soap! RADIO!” All the kids burst out laughing at the hilarious rejoinder and they slap one another on the back with glee. The sucker in the group cracks up, too and exclaims how funny it is — only to be mocked by the rest because there is no joke.)

Get it, ffolkes? This is no joke…..
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Now that I’ve spent the entire morning depressing myself, and anyone who stumbles onto this little bit of curmudgeonry, I suppose I should try to do something a bit more on the positive side of the scale, to balance out the day…. otherwise, it could throw everything out of balance, and hasten the point where I crack like a cold vase in hot water…. The world isn’t ready for that, and neither am I….

That, having been said, shall be recorded, and remembered when the time comes to tally up one’s score, at the end of the game…. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for the Asininnies, there’s still enough time left for me to fulfill some of what I consider to be my “honorable intentions” before the curtain rings down for the final time…. I’m done here for today, though, so….  See ya…

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid

dozer3