Or maybe not…. it’s a bit early for a Budweiser, I suppose. I’m not sure exactly what the above paragraph is all about, other than as a possible lead-in to a rant, and it’s WAY too soon in this process to start that….. I haven’t even had enough coffee to be able to blink without concentrating, and I can’t be trusted to tie my shoes yet, much less start ranting about the environment, or whatever…. Hell, as is obvious, I couldn’t get through an entire paragraph without resorting to silliness….. It may be a gift, in some instances, but, just now, it’s more of a PITA…… If you don’t know that particular acronym, well, that is probably just as well…. If you do, then you’ll get my drift….

As might be apparent by now, I’m a little scattered, a little off, today. In such cases, it’s easy to tell how I’m doing, as this intro becomes rather a battleground for sanity, and gets stranger by the second the longer it goes on, and on, and on, and on…… Now, strange isn’t necessarily a BAD thing, not if it’s adequately appreciated, and taken full advantage of….. It’s when folks try to stop it, or make it normal that it gets all crazy and violent. Some folks never pick up on that, and so spend their entire lives fighting against it, rather than being able to embrace it, and allow it to become an asset, rather than a liability…. It’s easy, fun, and much more comfortable than trying to be a conformist…

Since I don’t wish for that to even have a chance to happen, I might do well to get on with business today, rather than trying to squeeze out every last drop of asininity I can from the beginning of this missive. There’s still a ways to go before I can call it a day, so, I’d best be getting to it….. Shall we Pearl?…..
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“Oh my GOD — the SUN just fell into YANKEE STADIUM!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

I’ve just spent more than enough time looking for a pearl, and this is the best I’ve seen….. Pathetic, don’t you think? Although I really like Zippy’s little pronouncement for it’s absolutely brilliant level of strange, it doesn’t help in coming up with something, anything, about which I can write. Having already started late today, and now an hour or more into the process, I am, relatively, no further along than when I began, especially if you don’t count the intro section, which is, if not exactly Pulitzer material, at least has the distinction of a small dollop of humor, bordering on verifiable silliness…..

When Reality becomes moot…

Ffolkes,
Spinning, twisting, caught up in the vortex Reality creates, we look about with trepidation, seeking, seeking, and never finding the path to the future that will ease our way. Entropy makes us weep, with deep regret, the choices we never made, the truths we never spoke, the challenges we didn’t meet. In spite of all this, we go on…with courage and good humor. And why? Because we can…..and must.

Did you ever watch Sesame Street? If so, you may remember a repetitive piece called “One of these things is not like the others.” This morning we bring you another version of that, called “Betty Likes It”. If you don’t get it, don’t worry, it’s just about as obscure as I can be, meant to confuse, as the puzzle is an easy one. Comments or criticisms are welcome, though the latter will most likely be cheerfully ignored. You computer ffolkes should like it…..

RTFM – Read The F#*@^| Manual

I admit it, I tried MS-DOS, but I didn’t inhale.

“If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.’ — Weinberg’s Second Law

For Dessert? I’ll take a piece of cherry 3.14159!

The definition of a successful life must include a commitment to serving others.

So, which is different? If you can’t tell, well, just look for the one that feels the best when you use it…. y’all take care out there…..

This Pearl was first published circa 2006…..
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Where The Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

~~ Shel Silverstein
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Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land?
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Essay on Man, Epistle iv, Line 261

Ah, Pope! I regard Alexander Pope as the premier of all the romantic poets…. Deeply insightful, and ornately beautiful, his verse continually amazes me. This poem, Essay on Man, has more couplets and quatrains of great power in it, all of which make excellent excerpts, than in any other work I have ever seen, bar none, save, perhaps, Ode on a Grecian Urn, by Keats. Line after line of great composition, and insight after insight into the nature of Man, Mssr. Pope created one of Mankind’s most precious treasures in this epic work…..

I identify very closely with this couplet, as it is rather a good description of what goes on here. Even though I continue to rant and rail against the people and institutions, and ideas, that I believe are holding us from becoming all we could be as humans, I am often struck with how little response I get from anyone who doesn’t feel the same way….. which is another way of saying that I believe that, most of the time when I rant, I’m preaching to the choir, in a manner of speaking…. It’s more than just a little bit of a frustration, as I believe what I have to say is important to all of us, to, as Alexander so aptly puts it, to “teach, or save a sinking land.” If people continue to ignore what I’m saying, the consequences to be faced are horrendous, not from me, but from Reality…..

“All fear, none aid you, and few understand.”  This, too, seems to be a completely accurate picture of ECR and the rants that are fostered here. Actually, if the BRC was a little more nervous, and paid a bit more attention to me, I think I wouldn’t be so frustrated, as what I’m saying SHOULD make them nervous, since most of it pulls their covers ruthlessly. At least, I hope it does…..sometimes, I have a hard time with ‘ruthless’…. too much of a softie….. SIGH…. I can’t help it if I don’t enjoy hurting people…..

However, any hurt that I cause the BRC is NOTHING, NOTHING when compared to the pain and misery that will be our lot when the massive stupidity our species has displayed for the past 5000 years finally catches up to us…. Yesterday, I posted a quote from Lazarus Long, from The Notebooks Of, that is germane to this discussion…. It said this:

“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.” — Lazarus Long

We are writing our own judgment, with our continued denial of the facts about global warming, and the serious effects of overpopulation and pollution on the ecosystem, and are being quite insistent on making it happen as fast as we can. This leaves us little time at all to save those of us who don’t go along with this stupidity, who would sooner survive into the next millennium, rather than die, to the last man, in this one.

I only wish that more people would start to throw off the state of mind that leads to denial, and start kicking some 1% ass, as the issues around all of this aren’t the major problem for us. The main problem is the assholes who are in charge of the world, who don’t have a clue as to just how stupid they are being, and are driving us, blindly, down the road to extinction…. Their intransigence in denying all of the evidence that is there is, in my mind, about as deliberately stupid as one can be, and it’s just a damn shame that, because they are stupid, I have to live with the consequences…. or, more accurately, die from them….

Ah well, c’est la vie! Writing my rants, and shouting the message from the vantage of this blog, are about all I can do…. As I’ve said before, all you can do, is all you can do…..

“Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.” — H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
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