Provided I can manage to complete this Pearl of Virtual Wisdom today, including the act of posting, I will have reached a significant milestone, for a project that has long since achieved its original goals, ultimately growing past all suspected intent…. That is, it’s significant to me, in my life, having been the focus of my existence every morning now since August of 2011…. This will be my 1000th post on WordPress….. I know, I said that before, but, I checked this time, twice already…. I specifically noted yesterday’s post, #999, when the editing page uploaded it to my domain, before closing the sidebar summary… Last time I looked, 999 + 1 = 1000…..

Oh, yay….. I’m so proud and happy, I could just bust a button…. Sort of….. I mean, other than the way I’m busting them now, from having gained too much weight on those parts of my corpus where my buttons serve some purpose…. If I weren’t so excited and discombobulated by the emotions that aren’t reverberating through my soul, I’d probably think about letting out a really loud cheer, but, since I don’t want to scare Patricia, or the cat, I’ll pass on that, too….. Y’all will just have to take my word for it…. I’m jazzed….

I thought about fireworks, but, you can’t see them, so there’s little point in that…. I suppose, if I were a true geek, I’d spend the time to figure out how to show some fireworks on the site today, such as with an animated .GIF file, or a short video, You Tube style…. Or, maybe in the background, like a few sites I’ve seen…. Unfortunately for you, though not for me, I have yet to take the time to learn how to do any of those things, so I’m safe from that, and so are you. Besides, all the neighborhood dogs hate it when I set off fireworks….

I also thought about some other sort of celebratory activity to offer the Gentle Reader today, but, how much interaction can one stimulate on a once-a-day blog? A chess game in the comments? Boring. Some sort of contest? I suppose, but, Bitcoins are dead, and I’m not funded well enough to have very many winners show up. I COULD announce the QUIZ, and, since it would be coming AFTER posting the 1000th Pearl here on WP, nobody could say they hadn’t been provided with enough material with which to work, or time to study up on the archived material, with or without healthy, delicious snack foods…. But, if I do that, what will I threaten anyone with from now on?…. Graduation won’t be for another 9,000 posts, so it’s way too early to think about the final….

Wait a minute…. Stop typing, damn it….. Okay, shut down, I hear something……. Cheese it, it’s the cops!….

“Here pigs will fly, lightning will strike twice, hell will freeze over, and eventually, things will get really interesting…”– Smart Bee

Maybe not, but, that’s probably how it will feel to anyone silly enough to be here when we hit the ground…. You see, all the above, everything above this line, was written yesterday…. Well, actually, so was this line, but, hey, I’m TRYING to get back to real-time…. give me a moment, okay? I had to go get the correct tool for this…. Okay, success…. one last turn, and…. okay. There…. THAT won’t be happening again…..

Sorry about the hijack, there, ffolkes….. My evil twin, Judas, the Faithful, tried to fool y’all into thinking he was me…. To look at what he wrote, he seemed to have been doing pretty well at it, too…. But, it’s over now, and it really IS my 1000th post on WP, so, we have some good stuff lined up for you today…. What that might be, I haven’t a clue, but, we’re hoping anyway….

You probably won’t believe me, but, this line is the first one I’ve actually typed today, on Monday, the 24th of March….. Yep, we are now officially, and actually, back in real time, ffolkes…. and today will be the 1000th time I’ve had to complete one of these silly introductory sections….. I have to say, it’s been a long road to here, with a lot of poorly written stuff before getting to this, which may, or may not, be any better. In any case, we’re finally up (it’s actually 5 AM already….) and we’re good to go for our celebration today…… whatever form that might take….

You see, I deliberately didn’t think about anything like that, to keep from breaking tradition; we’ve gotten this far without showing any real intelligence, I don’t see why I should start today…. Not that acting intelligently would help, or anything, it just might make it SEEM more worthwhile to anyone viewing it from the outside world…. Since that’s out of the question, we’ll just trust to luck, like always….

Shall we Pearl?…. I think we should, this has gone on far too long already, don’t you think?….

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorred shears
And slits the thin-spun life.

— John Milton (1608-1674) — Lycidas, Line 70
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I’m going to switch things around a little today, & put the old-school pearl first; most days I put the rant here, to get it out of the way so ffolkes can get to the rest, which is often lighter, and mostly, less hard to chew, either figuratively, or metaphorically. Putting the rants here seems to be a habit, though not one ever examined, or thought out, so, I don’t think we’ll be trampling on a time-honored tradition or anything like that. No, we’re just randomly screwing with things, just to see what happens….. Hopefully, once I take this all apart, I’ll be able to get it back together again…. If not, well, here are some thoughts on Love, & so on & so forth….

“He is not a lover who does not love forever.” — Euripides

(I like that one….It happens to mirror my own feelings on the matter….)

“Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense” — E. E. Cummings (1894-1963)

“A person should take a bath once in the summer, not so often in the winter.” — from Kids Say the Darndest Things

“Communications are the lifeblood of a relationship, carrying the nutrients.” — Smart Bee

“God help the man who won’t marry until he finds a perfect woman, and God help him still more if he finds her.” — Benjamin Tillett

“We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

“Be not careless in deeds, nor confused in words, nor rambling in thought.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, viii, 51

Hmm…. It seems the pearl’s contents settled during shipping, causing some alterations in direction…. this appears now to be more of a set of rules, or advice, for married men, or men in a long-term committed relationship, anyway….. Same thing from this end…. Believe me, I know….

In light of that, it’s probably just as well I found this last pearl, as it is the perfect ending for any man who is considering the ancient traditional method of destroying a perfectly good relationship, to wit: marrying their lover…. Having been there, done that, a number of times, I can say with complete confidence that it isn’t a particularly good decision in today’s world…. Better to maintain a healthy cynicism, and keep the following in mind….

“From stupidity there is always something to be learned, but it’s always the same thing: don’t be stupid.” — Robert M. Adams

Since today’s Pearl is a milestone, it will probably be best to include a poem of my own…. I COULD try to bleed out a fresh one, but, I’m not sure it would meet my standards today, so, we’ll just go with one of my older poems, and let it go at that…. At least you can’t blame anyone else for any of this, right?….. Since the first section dealt with an aspect of Love, here is my take on the emotion that, perhaps, defines us as a human being….

I had hoped to be able to produce a fresh rant today, but, the political arena is currently quiet, as the professional pundits prepare their next set of egregious lies, in their ongoing campaign to maintain the level of societal fear they require to control the populace. Since they won’t give me anything solid to chew on today, we’ll go with an old-school pearl, with parameters that SHOULD produce a set of pearls that will poke fun and/or ridicule at our Beloved Ruling (Cl)Asses, essentially the same effect my ranting would create in the audience…. Well, we’re hoping…. It’ll be fun, if nothing else….

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency… Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it  by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded.  Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.” — General Douglas MacArthur, 1957

(Note: this seems to be a corollary, or, perhaps, a codicil, to the opinion of Hermann Goering, the WWII German Reich Marshall, who just “happened to be” the counterpart of General MacArthur, on the opposite side of the war….. However, the quote by General Mac shows how the theory was applied in our country, AFTER WWII, by our own elected officials, right here in the good old USA….. see below….)

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY.”   –Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

hardcore signature virus: “As a juror in a Trial by Jury, you have the right, power and duty to acquit the defendant if you judge the law itself to be unjust.” — John McPherson, mcpherso@macvax.ucsd.edu

(Mr. McPherson is quoting, I believe, Alexander Hamilton, if not Thomas Jefferson….. Y’all know him, right?…. He was our first Treasury Secretary, the one our Founding Fathers trusted with the money?….) (This quote may not fit EXACTLY, but, I find it is always a good idea to remind people of this concept, as it is patently one of our most important rights as a citizen….. especially if we must consider our law MAKERS to be corrupt…. If you’ve been paying attention lately, you’ll know whereof I speak….)

“America!!  I saw it all!!  Vomiting!  Waving!  JERRY FALWELLING into your void tube of UHF oblivion!!  SAFEWAY of the mind –” — Zippy the Pinhead

“Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action.” — Robert Hugh Moore (1912-1984), given as advice to his sons

In fact, the whole pearl is one I would classify as a very powerful faux-rant, addressing how little we can afford to trust the elected officials in our government…. In fact, it cries out for one final pearl, to advise us exactly how closely we should be paying attention to what they are up to, especially since they claim to be doing it in our name, and for our benefit….

“This is a wise maxim, “to take warning from others of what may be to your own advantage.” — Terence (185-159 BC) — Heautontimoroumenos, Act i, Sc. 2, 36, (210.)
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I was up a bit late this morning, but, since I slept for eight straight hours without any significant breaks to deal with pain, or cat, I don’t much care….. Plus, this is one Pearl I want to be RIGHT, so I’m taking some time to try to make it so…. Having done so as well as I can at this point in the day, I’m going to trust my instincts, and let if fly…. See you tomorrow, provided ennui doesn’t set in so badly I fade away….. I’ve managed to avoid it so far, so, I’ll be positive, & just say…. 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.