Ffolkes,
When it is said
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
~~ Emily Dickinson ~~
Was Emily channeling the future with this poem? With the correct tilt to the head, with a slight look around the corner of the eye, this would be IS a very good statement to support the concept of blogging…. Each of us bloggers MUST abide by this feeling, in order to continue to post….
Well, I do, anyway…. But, I’m an Emily fan, so maybe that has something to do with it….. We all tend to fall back on the words of our favorites when it comes to justifying our own existence, or, in this case, our own continued presence on the web….
Okay…. So, was that a bit more comfortable? I thought a bit of a different opening might be in order….. Not that I feel the old way wasn’t working, but, I’ve never been quite satisfied with that part of the Daily Pearl…. Breaking past the morning block that almost everyone’s mind suffers upon first awakening has become, if not easy, at least doable….. But, the fear of the blank white screen still hovers in the background, always ready to jump up, freeze my brain’s connection to my fingers, & generally put a complete halt to the morning’s process of writing….. Damned neuroses!….
In the last few months, I’ve managed to NOT feel the fear so consistently, by using a combination of trickery, cheer leading, and flat out lying to myself, which seems to be working fairly well…. we haven’t had a freeze-up in close to a year. But, it’s never been an easy process, and I’ve never felt fully engaged in how it gets done….
I’ve always felt that somewhere, deep inside the back reaches of my brain, there is a structure, a building of words, so to speak, that I will someday find, establishing a solidly constructed edifice here at the beginning of each Pearl, to mark the beginning of another fine piece of work….
That is probably just another of my fantasies, but, hey, it’s MY fantasy, so leave it alone, okay? We all need our illusions to keep us going…. I know this; otherwise, why would we put up with so much fictional bullshit from our leaders? I’ve always known, and been saddened, by the knowledge that our leaders are liars; congenital, trained, or just naturally glib, it doesn’t matter, they’re all a bunch of self-serving assholes who would lie to their own mother if they thought it would buy her vote….
Oops! Ranting mode…. stand clear, please…. Okay, I turned it off, you can relax….. Almost started in on the BRC there…. I guess they just make too attractive a target to leave them alone too long…. I’ll not start that here in the intro today, though, for which I’m sure you are thankful….
I suppose, given we’ve managed to wander through a number of paragraphs already, we could conceivably call this completed, and get on with the day’s business…. Since I’ve had eight sold hours of sleep, and my pain meds are currently ahead of the pain, score-wise, I think I’ll go ahead and do that…. I suppose there are worse ways to start the day….
In fact, I KNOW there are, as I’m familiar with just about ALL of the different ways one can start badly….
Shall we Pearl?….
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
— Robert Browning (1812-1890) — Saul, ix
_____________________________
As iterated above, ranting is on hold…. Since it is, and I want to keep going, we’ll put today’s old-school pearl here…. It will give me something easy to do, and pass the time until I am ready to go find something in the news upon which to focus my vitriol…. a waste bin, as it were, for the angst I wish to throw away…. For now, let’s find a group of pearls that says something about Life At Large….
“You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist, he is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.” — Sydney Harris
(Side note: When applied to politicians, the accuracy of this statement approaches 101% validity. — gigoid….)
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) –Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
“Wisdom outweighs any wealth.” — Sophocles (406 BC)
“I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.” — George Bernard Shaw, “The Apple Cart” (1929), Act II
“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” — Beverly Sills
“In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.” — Mrs. Jameson
“Why does there have to be an end to the rainbow? Can’t we just let beauty exist without trying to prove that it dies?” — Spite, The University of Akron
PERFECT! Q.E.D., mon amis….
_____________________________
Here is one of my favorite poems; it’s been here before, and, no doubt, will be here again…. This time, it has the name of the translator, who does an excellent job of creating a compelling English equivalent from the ancient Chinese verses….Enjoy!….
I take my wine jug out among the flowers
to drink alone, without friends.
I raise my cup to entice the moon.
That, and my shadow, makes us three.
But the moon doesn’t drink,
and my shadow silently follows.
I will travel with moon and shadow,
happy to the end of spring.
When I sing, the moon dances.
When I dance, my shadow dances, too.
We share life’s joys when sober.
Drunk, each goes a separate way.
Constant friends, although we wander,
we’ll meet again in the Milky Way.
~~ Li T’ai-po ~~
tr. Hamil
_____________________________
“When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” — Richard Cardinal Cushing
“If you call a dog’s tail a leg, what do you have? A dog. Calling a tail a leg, doesn’t make it a leg.” — Abraham Lincoln
Aren’t these complementary pearls great? They’re the perfect lead-in for a rant about politicians, most of whom are of the type of person (I use the word liberally….) who regularly attempts to convince the public they are NOT a duck, or a dog, when, in truth, they either quack, or bark, quite clearly…..
The subject of politicians lying to the public is one I spend a lot of time writing about here, so it would fit right in with all of my other rants very well…. Unfortunately, the news is currently being usurped with a story that makes it far to EASY to show how wide-spread the issue is in our government….
Leland Yee, a California State Senator from San Francisco, and Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a Tong leader from SF’s Chinatown district, (Kinda makes ya wonder, don’t it? “Shrimp Boy?”….. Personally, I get all SORTS of weird mental images popping up when I say those two words to myself….), have been arrested, and are being charged with a number of counts related to their (alleged….. 🙂 …) long-term involvement in drugs, gun-running, political corruption via voting, murder-for-hire, and just about every crime against society that exists, save for, perhaps, stealing from babies….. and that one isn’t out of the question for these two…. I just didn’t see that among the charges for which they were indicted….
It seems that for over twenty years, Yee was selling votes and political influence to Chow, and others, for lucrative economic advantage, for him, and for those who benefited from the programs he voted in to being. He also laundered millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains, by using his political campaign accounts to accept donations, for the Chinese Tong, run by Chow….
This money was collected from prostitution, drug, and racketeering enterprises, all run by the Tong. An undercover FBI agent infiltrated the Tong organization, establishing trust by posing as an ex-Mafioso of high repute, whereby he was able to gather tons of condemning evidence of their corruption, for over four years before the arrests were made…
But, it’s all too easy a target…. In fact, the focus being placed on these two will, long-term, have the opposite effect that it should….. These two clearly criminal individuals are providing too obvious a target for the public’s ire, thus taking it AWAY from all the other, less obviously corrupt politicians out there, almost ALL of whom are hard at work raiding the public treasury, but are much better at hiding their machinations than these two clowns appear to be…
Putting all the public’s attention on a couple of bozoids, who managed to get caught, literally red-handed, with their fingers in the public till, will ultimately have the effect of making other politicians appear to be more honest than they actually are…. That’s human nature, and the pundits, who all know this, will be using it to their advantage for a long time to come….
So, rather than waste a lot of my time and angst-driven energy on ranting about the corruption they are exposing, I’ll just remind you that what you are seeing is NOT atypical for politicians, and shouldn’t be thought of as an anomaly, but, rather, as an omen of things to come, when we expose ALL their asses, and throw them ALL out of office, and out of our lives…. (Picture an iceberg, 90% unseen, floating on the ocean…. Yee & Chow are a small part of the ice visible above the water line….)
Then, when I know you’ve realized that, in spite of all the nonsense in the news, detailing the shenanigans of what they’d like us to believe are swans swimming in the public pond, you now see they are really only ducks, stealing food from the swans, and the dogs, to wit: from you and me… Once you’ve realized how the politicians of this government are NOT in the business of helping us, but are only in Washington to steal as much as they can during their term of office, is the absolute truth, with a capital T, we can go on…..
Now, since y’all have put up with my blathering for so long on such an obvious issue, I’ll reward your forbearance by throwing together a set of pearls to further illustrate and/or enhance my points, to close this off with a flourish…. which, though not particularly common here, is, no doubt, warmly welcome when it occurs…. Enjoy!…..
“The seeds of our own punishment are sown at the same time we commit sin.” — Hesiod
(Sin, otherwise defined as voting…. the two words are interchangeable when politics are involved….)
“Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.” — Theodor W. Adorno
Gerald Ford: In the Bob Hope Golf Classic, the participation of President Gerald Ford was more than enough to remind you that the nuclear button was at one stage at the disposal of a man who might have either pressed it by mistake or else pressed it deliberately in order to obtain room service.” — Clive James
“If they become politicians they were switched at birth.” — Mom’s Hint #096
“A kitchen in every pot. I mean, a pot in every — I mean, a chicken in every…” — George Bush, 1988
“All a man needs to be elected President is the kind of profile that looks good on a postage stamp.” — B.B. Franklin
“We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans…” — President William Jefferson Clinton, USA TODAY 11 Mar 1993
“As Athenodorus was taking his leave of Caesar, “Remember,” said he, “Caesar, whenever you are angry, to say or do nothing before you have repeated the four-and-twenty letters to yourself.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Caesar Augustus
“Now I’m having INSIPID THOUGHTS about the beautiful, round wives of HOLLYWOOD MOVIE MOGULS encased in PLEXIGLASS CARS and being approached by SMALL BOYS selling FRUIT..” — Zippy the Pinhead
Damn, that was close…. I thought for sure I’d NEVER get out of there!…. Smart Bee took me at my word, and proceeded to inundate me with pearl after pearl that just fit into the group seamlessly…. I managed to keep it down to eight, then got lucky, and found the perfect Zippy quote for closing it off with just the right touch of nearly-coherent insanity…. “He was bigger than me, Ma, but, I took ‘im down!”….. Now we can all go get some rest….
You, you, and you, panic. The rest of you, come with me….
_____________________________
I suppose we will be forced at this point to declare a moral victory…. We only had to leave behind three bodies in a state of panic, but, the rest of us made it through to here, so, I have to count that on the positive side of the scale…. Otherwise, they’d close me down….
Besides, one of the three bozoids we left behind was a trained bozoid, so they’ll all eventually stop screaming & jumping around like idiots, whereupon the bozo will get hungry, and the others will follow as he goes off to find the exit door behind the nearest banyan tree….
On that phantasmagorical note, I’m outta here…. and, none too soon, I’m can tell…. See y’all tomorrow, ffolkes…..
and May the Metaphorse be with you;
Blessed Be, dearest Carole, Mark, and Theresa…
and everyone else, too…
When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.
Which is Why….
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.
gigoid the dubious
gigoid 