Tag Archives: Smart Bee

Twisted versions of classical toilet accessories….

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Ffolkes,

I’m thinking the old saw about “Early to bed”, etc., is either a crock, designed purely to force dogmatic prejudices upon unwilling members of religious flocks, back when the preachers were not quite so thoroughly entrenched as the teachers of morality for our species, OR, it’s a typo rooted in being misheard….

I think the actual statement originally went “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man wealthy and wealthy, but not very wise.” To my way of thinking, this makes a LOT more sense, from a quality of life standpoint….. The other way is just how the preachers and snakeheads WANT you to believe, as it gives THEM the power over you they crave….

You see, they’re the ones who reap the benefit when you get up early, work hard, & go to bed, all without ever trying to use the brain you were given at birth…. These manipulators, the dogma-bearers and the snakeheads who reap the benefit of all your hard work, will tell you anything at all, without any reference to truth or reality, as long as it will get y’all to do what they want, which is to accept their words as truth, & to do as they say, not as they do….

What amazes me the most about this system is that it WORKS AT ALL! How can anyone, anyone with a brain, one that has more than three functioning neurons, allow themselves to believe such bullshit, just because they were told it was true when they were so young they knew no better than to accept what they were told by an elder…

“Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Of the Training of Children

As long as people allow the corporate snakeheads, so ably assisted by the dogma-dogs, who have been manipulating mankind right along with the money-lenders since we first lived indoors, to fill our heads with bullshit like this, the world will never change, not in any way that will help you and me….. In our world, as it exists today, only the shadowy corporate slave masters ultimately benefit from what happens in the world at large….

I’m not sure what prompted this mini-rant here in the intro, but, it’s all true, so I’m going to not worry about it, and just get on with today’s program, such as it may be…. The above paragraphs MAY be the leftovers from the rant below, much of which was written yesterday afternoon, when I first saw the article in question…. It got me going pretty good, so, this is probably the consequence of the remaining bit of angst from that episode, that drove me to such depths of passion….

So be it…. it’s a good thing, I think, to use our minds first thing upon awakening….. The shock brings us out of sleep mode rapidly, and I’m pretty sure it adds to the clarity of expression that we are seeing. Hope springs eternal….

Regardless of all that, it’s done, and done well enough we can go on without any lingering guilt or resentment for having to contort ourselves unfashionably to create an opening section….. Not bad for an old fart with flat feet, frequent flatulence, & a startlingly bad attitude, all housed in a frail, broken old body, that strangely resembles a Frisbee-toting, card-carrying denizen of the wilds of Berzerkeley, as they looked back in the old days, when hippies roamed free upon the land…. The grey hair down to my waist, thin as it may be, is a dead giveaway, isn’t it?

Shall we Pearl?…..

And here, poor fool, with all my lore
I stand no wiser than before.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“In God We Trust.”  I don’t believe it would sound any better if it were true.” — Mark Twain

Boy, it sure wouldn’t, would it? But, you can add that particular phrase (“In God….”, etc.) to all the others coined by the snakeheads, and the BRC, to justify their social interactions, all of which serve THEIR ends, not yours…. Having the populace believe the above makes for a very easily manipulated group of people, all of whom are primed to believe whatever they’re told, by someone on TV wearing a suit with a flag pin, or up in the pulpit….

Now we’re supposed to believe them when they talk to us about spying, and lying, and generally being the assholes they cannot help but be…. ( Hmm, a bit awkwardly phrased, but you get my drift, right?…)

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Senate-committee-OKs-release-of-CIA-torture-report-5375716.php

Following this line, in summary of the most critical of the information contained therein, I have copied an excerpt from the above article, a brilliantly obscure statement of compliance (?), kinda sorta, from some guy who works at the CIA. That critical excerpt, taken directly from the above, is this:

“CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said his agency would “carry out the review expeditiously,” but suggested the process may be difficult.”We owe it to the men and women directed to carry out this program to try and ensure that any historical account of it is accurate,” Boyd said….”

That’s right, that’s what he said, right out there in public, where it was recorded by numerous reporters…. This person, this… Boyd person, is the mouthpiece spokesman for the CIA, an agency whose very existence, (its raison d’etre, its excuse for being part of our world at all), is to provide intelligence (in the form of information, a task that does not necessarily require significant levels of IQ in its operatives…. Flexible morality, yes, but, not IQ points….) from outside the borders of the USA, by inhabiting, and exploiting, the world of shadow, the battlefield of covert operations in other countries, using techniques and methods of operation based on illusion, misdirection, misinformation, and lies…. This is common knowledge, and not subject to debate…. look it up in their charter documents….

This Boyd person, and I use the term loosely, by making this statement, obviously expects us to believe that his agency, whose very existence is rooted in lies and the spread of misinformation, is ready, and willing to give us, or anyone else, an ACCURATE picture of what they’ve been up to? I don’t know about y’all, but, I’m insulted….

In fact, I can’t recall at the moment anything more egregiously untrue, or as insulting, since Nixon’s “I am not a crook!” back in the 70’s…. Or, maybe, Shrub, Senior’s “Read my lips… no new taxes.”….. Since the sheer illegitimacy of both of those statements has long been a forgone conclusion, no longer a matter of debate, I’d say it’s a fair assessment to make of this particular little piece of verbal bullshit…

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Cuban-Twitter-heads-to-hearings-in-Congress-5375669.php

Then, searching further among the headlines of BS we are supposed to buy into, we come to the LATEST of the clandestine shenanigans our beloved Barry, and his “transparent administration” has been up to in the last few years….

Without bothering to actually TELL anyone, some government lackeys, encouraged by the “Arab Dawn” phenomenon in the Middle East, an event whose roots were nourished by the social networking capabilities of Twitter and Instant Messaging technology, decided to attempt to foment rebellion in Cuba among the youth of that country, by deliberately setting up a social network of their own, using it to not only encourage dissent, but, also, (they like to multi-task…) to gather information about the users in Cuba…

Well, I’m shocked…. just shocked, I tell you…. What a surprise, eh? To think that our Beloved Ruling Class here in America, land of the FREE (white Christian minority) would stoop to such egregiously deceitful and deliberate influencing of public sentiment to further their own interests, why it just makes me feel so….  slimed…. Which is how the Cubans must have felt when they found out it was all a sham…

Boy, there’s sure nothing like going around the world making new friends and influencing people, right?…. Christ on a crutch, what the fuck were they thinking? Have these assholes become so blinded by their own sense of entitlement they can’t see just how STUPID that is? Apparently not, which is what will come out, I think, in these hearings…. More stupidity, that is….

It’s all a big clusterfuck, just another example of entitlement gone wild and crazy, making the pundits and elected assholes at every level believe they can be as stupidly obvious about their self-serving avarice as they wish, and nobody will ever care, or catch them at it…. which is a concept, given today’s world, that is not only easily seen as more than just a little stupid, it approaches the level of severe mental retardation…. Having spent a lot of time, (3+ years), taking care of people whose average IQ hovered around 4, I can testify that this sort of belief is about the only sort of which they are capable…..

They’re all a bunch of smarmy, self-serving, avaricious assholes…. and THAT, my friends, is me being NICE!….. I merely used a bit of vitriol, with only one questionably unwarranted word of insult…. I COULD have been extremely nasty, turning viciously vulgar, without breaking a sweat, or becoming at all disconcerted…. Yep, I could have said, fuck them all, really hard, right in the ass, (unless, of course, they LIKE that….); then, kick their sorry asses right down to the lowest levels of the hell they so richly deserve…. but, I won’t say that….

gigoid, the dubious, has spoken.  So be it….

“…. I’m IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a KOSHER DELI –” — Zippy the Pinhead

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today is another day with mostly fresh material…. which means I’ll need to use another of my old poems, to protect the innocent… Here is one I wrote last December; obviously, I had the above rant in mind, or one like it….

Accentuated Lessons

Bold statements of calculated intent
Become common rule of the malcontent.
Avarice assumes such attractive wear
Beguiling deception, illusory and fair.

Grasping and pulling with ghostly hands
Legally proper in all the signatory lands.
Seeking and finding each vulnerable soul
Anguish as payment for exacting the toll.

Wraiths of commerce’s invisible dead guards
Still haunt the dreams left in sad empty yards.
While absentee nobles sit in stiffly elegant splendor
Served by sad-faced detainees in abject surrender.

Escape from reality is illusory at best
Often we falter and fail its daily test.
Only when focused on inner strength
Does peace stay with us for any length.

Peace lies within, always…..

~~ gigoid ~~


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve ranted, twice, if you want to be picky, and found a poem to fit in with the rest…. Y’all know what that means, don’t you? Yep, it’s time for an old school pearl…. Some might say it’s about damn time, too…. Let’s see if SB can do it all by itself today…. All I’ll do is push the buttons…. Enjoy!

“It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter are still more  benign, more decent than silence.  Those who remain silent are almost always  lacking in delicacy and courtesy of the heart.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“People are divided into two groups – the righteous and the unrighteous – and the righteous do the dividing.” — Lord Cohen

“Aren’t you beginning to feel time gaining on you? It’s like a predator. It’s stalking you. You can try to outrun it with doctors, medicines… new technologies. But in the end, time is going to hunt you down – and make the kill.” — Soran, Star Trek, Generations

“A wise man first determines what is within his control; all else is then irrelevant.” — Epictetus

“It was not for nothing that the raven was just now croaking on my left hand.” — Plautus (254-184 BC) — Aulularia, Act iv, Sc. 3, 1, (624.)

“The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero

“He knows not when to be silent who knows not when to speak. — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 930

I, having learned to do both, shall now be silent….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m impressed…. Yes, even I have to admit this one is pretty decent, as well as one of the smoothest ever, in terms of how well it went onto the screen…. I’m not going to tempt our old pal Murphy by trying to continue to write any further, but will use a variation of method #4 to bring this to a screeching halt…. See y’all mañana, ffolkes…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

dozer3

Breaded tofu balls? Dry toast on a stick? Deep-fried butter? What DO ex-presidents like, anyway?….

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Ffolkes,

I just spent a good twenty minutes trying to find a pearl to put here today; I feel a bit old fashioned, sort of, which prompted me to think it might  help get things moving…. Everything I found was, however, much more appropriate for use elsewhere, so, ultimately, I gave up, & here we are…. If I still had fear of the blank page, I’d be trembling and sweating by now, but, having trained myself to show no emotion in crisis situations, we’ll wait a few moments before we start to panic….

Not that I haven’t been known to panic, in the past, no sir…. In fact, it’s one of my best things…. I do get tired of cleaning up the messes that generally are left after such outbursts; maybe I shouldn’t carry grenades before lunch anymore? I don’t know, I kind of like the noise when they go off, and the screams of rage from next door are always a treat to hear…. I hate that guy, so pissing him off is a bonus….. This morning, fortuitously, we can count on NOT having to do any clean-up, as I’m out of grenades…. more’s the pity….

Baseball season has started again….. how ’bout them Giants, eh? What? A bit louder, I’m having a bit of earwax buildup going on in both ears….. Oh, I get it…. Well, ma’am, yes I do know I just lost half my audience by making the sports reference…. but, that half will go home & complain to their other half, which means in about twelve or so minutes, we’ll have a new influx of guys, all of whom don’t mind talking baseball… I mean, it’s like Dave Barry once pointed out, when he said, with startling alacrity, not to mention accuracy, “Most women, when asked to make a decision about whether they should save a baby, or catch an infield fly, will say they would save the baby, without ever considering how many men are on base, or how many outs there are….”

Hey, what’s all the abuse for? It’s not THAT old of a joke, is it? Boy, anyone would think I was getting paid for this….

I suppose I let myself in for that sort of abuse when I use such an obviously chauvinistic joke….. I generally try to avoid any sort of gender-based  humor, because we men and women have a hard enough time getting along, or understanding each other…. We don’t need the extra stress placed on us by the addition of being made fun of, even with the gentlest touch, or in the most tactful language…. Any and all confusion that can be avoided is a good thing, in my mind; there is already too much we DON’T understand about each other to keep creating misunderstandings, or poking at sore spots….

Oh, look…. We’ve stumbled and bumbled our way through another intro section, this one seemingly oblivious to all direction…. but, it works for me. In fact, it is such a good one, given its contrast with the usual crap you find here, I may see if I can do it this way again…. Of course, that would mean figuring out just what the hell I DID first…. I’m not sure I can figure the odds on that one, but, I’m so giddy with glee from being done with this section, I’m going to just ignore the rest, and get on with the day’s shenanigans….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Adam was but human — this explains it all.  He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910), “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I read the following articles in yesterday’s news, about the government’s abortive attempt to destabilize Cuba using a social networking platform they built, I fully intended to rant about it, as it clearly indicates the administration’s continued demonstration of their contempt and disregard for the American citizen’s right to privacy, as well as the complete debunking of our civil rights as outlined in the Bill of Rights…. It pisses me off royally, especially now that the White House is trying to defend its clandestine activities with more lies, even when confronted about them…. How can anyone think they can explain a lie with another lie?….

I am SO angry about this one, I can’t rant right now…. I’m going to have to let this percolate for a while, to organize my thoughts on the matter; right now it would come out as a threat of violence, which I won’t be ready to carry out for another little while…. Instead, I’ll again use an old-school pearl to vent what I’m feeling, and take some shots at the pundits who are making me crazy with their asinine contortions in the public arena over this spying issue….

It all makes me want to buy a gun; moreover, it makes me want to use it….. Instead, following the links, are a group of pearls, with the specific purpose of making me feel better, by striking out at the fucking assholes who keep showing how much they hate Americans…. even though we keep electing them…. I suppose it’s natural for bullies to disrespect their victims, isn’t it?….

“The reasons which any man offers to you for his own conduct betray his opinion of your character.” — Sir Arthur Helps

http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/US-secretly-built-Cuban-Twitter-to-stir-unrest-5372422.php

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/White-House-defends-Cuban-Twitter-to-stir-unrest-5374712.php?cmpid=hp-hc-nationworld

“An hour’s perusal of our national charter makes it hard to understand what the argle-bargle is about. The First Amendment forbids infringements of the freedom of speech “except for commercials on children’s television” or “unless somebody says ‘****’ in a rap song or ‘chick’ on a college campus.” The Second Amendment states that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” period. There is no mention of magazine size, rate of fire, or to what extent those arms may resemble assault rifles.” — P. J. O’Rourke

“The fact that Hitler was a political genius unmasks the nature of politics in general as no other can.” — Wilhelm Reich

“All lawyers should be shot.” — William Shakespeare

(Policy note: Did you ever wonder why so many politicians were lawyers first? I did, but, then, I went, “Oh, right…. Follow the money.”)

BOUNDARY, n.  In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“If it weren’t for lawyers, I think we could have invented a universal symbolic representation of reality.” — Smart Bee

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
Make deeds ill done!

— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), King John — Act iv, Sc. 2

“It’s the RINSE CYCLE!!  They’ve ALL IGNORED the RINSE CYCLE!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Okay, I feel better….. Now, if only we can get them to rinse!….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m thinking I’ve inflicted enough of my own poetry on y’all for a while…. Here is a wonderful little translation of a poem from a colleague, if not a contemporary, of Li Po….

Full Moon

Above the tower — a lone, twice-sized moon.
On the cold river passing night-filled homes,
It scatters restless gold across the waves.
On mats, it shines richer than silken gauze.

Empty peaks, silence: among sparse stars,
Not yet flawed, it drifts. Pine and cinnamon
Spreading in my old garden . . . All light,
All ten thousand miles at once in its light!

~~ Tu Fu ~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The shadowy corporate snakeheads, (“snakeheads” is my newest shortcut name for the 1%,the rich and powerful who control the money and resources of this planet…. I use it because it is the English translation of the Chinese word for “slaver”, human traffickers who who dupe, or kidnap men, women, and children selling them into prostitution and/or slavery…. Thus, it becomes the perfect word to come after “corporate” when referring to one of those assholes….), who control the world, in their campaign to secure their position as the rulers of humanity, influenced the Shrubs enough during their terms in office that the Supreme Court justices they picked to replace dead judges were all their conservative buddies, all of whom are comfortably in the pockets of those self-same corporations. This, of course, has allowed the assholes who bought them to make even further inroads on our rights as individual citizens, by establishing the rights of corporations as superior to the rights of an individual….

A couple years ago, this led to the Citizens United decision, which gave the money-grubbers the opportunity to spend even more money on influencing politicians and elections, by forming giant Political Action Committees, where they could funnel millions of dollars into holding organizations, where it could be used for influencing elections, and to bribe congressional lawmakers…. That decision is a big part of how the Republican Party has managed to pass so many conservative laws in states around the nation, such as anti-abortion laws, and voting regulations which allow them to manipulate themselves into office, by providing obstacles which prevent the supporters of those who oppose them from voting….

Yesterday that decision was reinforced by yet another decision eroding our protection against corruption, a decision which removed most of the limits on how much money an individual can contribute, thus giving rich, avaricious, corrupt billionaires more say in Congress than the average citizen can match, allowing even more money to find a direct route into the Congressional pockets…. Below are two articles, from two sources, to offer a slightly different viewpoint (insofar as the media CAN be even-handed in their reporting….), just so we’re not limiting ourselves to one view…. C’mon back when you’re done, for what discussion may follow….

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Supreme-Court-strikes-down-overall-political-5371989.php

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/02/supreme-court-campaign-finance/4481675/

I’m pissed…. I’m so pissed, all I feel like doing is sitting here typing obscene names to call those assholes, in Texas (where Jr. lives….), Maryland (I think that’s where Shrub, Sr. lives…), and Washington D.C, at the courthouse, (where the Supremes hang out….)…. My next feeling, which somehow reminds me very much of sheer, unadulterated rage, is one that may just prompt me to go out, find a gun store, giving in to the urge buy the guns I’ve been considering…. Don’t worry, I won’t forget the ammunition…. I may have been a practicing pacifist for a long time, but, mostly, at least in terms of personal survival, that was just a pose to get the draft board off my back…. I have no issue with the use of force in support of what I believe is right…

For today, though, I’ll give myself some slack, which will give you some relief, from having to listen to my ranting over stuff we can’t change…. At least, nothing will change without resorting to drastic measures, in which most ffolkes are unwilling to engage, lest they risk increasing their karmic burden…. I figure it this way…. If we DON’T give up our insistence on non-violence, we are all going to die….. that is for sure and for certain, if things don’t change very soon….

That means there won’t be any next reincarnation, not on this planet, because it won’t have us; we are being evicted from this plane of existence… So, I don’t have to worry about coming back as in a form with less karmic status, as we won’t be coming back HERE at all…. Our energy configuration will just have to find some other reality to inhabit, because Mother Earth isn’t likely to rent to us again…. We’re too hard on the property….

Ah, the hell with it…. I’m pissed…. or did I say that already? Okay, I’m done…. Since I’m not organized or coherent enough to produce a true rant (I don’t consider this loud complaint a rant…. not enough reasoning, or quite enough structure….), I’ll fall back on another old-school pearl to close this out for the day….. I’ll bet you’re cheering inside, right?…. Okay, then, here, have it your way….

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

“Faboo!, Would you like to see me make  bubbles with my spit?” — Wakko Warner

OCCIDENT, n.  The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient.  It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful sub-tribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call “war” and “commerce.”  These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“There’s nothing wrong with you a shotgun blast to the face couldn’t fix.” — Smart Bee, from gigoid’s political fantasy files

— Bother! said Pooh, as he rolled another joint for the President.

“And took for truth the test of ridicule.” — George Crabbe (1754-1832) — Tales of the Hall, Book viii, The Sisters

“Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

Perfect…. I have only one thing left to say, to wit:

“There are two intelligent responses to contemporary Western civilization: laughter and despair. You’ll note I’m not laughing.” — gigoid the dubious

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Well, that was certainly different…. Well, from THIS side, it was….. If I’ve done anything right today, well, y’all will let me know, won’t you? You can keep any injuries, or actionable complaints to yourselves, if you don’t mind…. or, just send them directly to my lawyers, who are hanging out at the White House….    

🙂

See y’all 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 the dubious

dozer3

Malcolm patented the “three days dead” look….

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Ffolkes,

I cannot claim to be perfectly awake just yet, but, it’s time to get started, so you’ll just have to take what you get in that respect, because I’ve sat here diddling my brain and twiddling my fingers for a good thirty minutes now, with no real effect in terms of either feeling alert or displaying any coherency beyond what is needed to pour coffee…. Maybe if I take a few more sips of the only reason worth living for in the morning, I’ll find a little bit of energy….. I hope so…. That paragraph sucks….

I’m finding a bit of a Catch-22 connected to the use of the medical marijuana at night to aid in sleeping….. Applying some of the topical pain relieving cream is useful before lying down, as it helps relax enough to drift to sleep…. but, waking up to apply more is counter-productive, to say the least, as the act of spreading it where it needs to go causes enough pain to wake me…. I eat a high CBD chocolate about an hour & a half before retiring, which acts on pain, with added drowsiness effect, for about 4-6 hours; I have to wake up twice, minimally, to down a Norco during the night, but the chocolate often makes it less critical until it wears off…

That is the catch, the wearing off part…. If I take enough MJ to last the night, then the Norco isn’t as critical to be on time…. but, if I don’t take the Norco, I get the dyskinesia side effect after about 6 hours, right when the MJ is wearing off…. This means, at that point, even if I take what I need, I will be awake until it takes effect, whether that is 45 minutes for a Norco, , & up to 1½ hours for edible MJ…. So, I have to balance the 6 hour MJ effects with the minimum 4 hours of Norco effectiveness, and hope they work together…. It makes it tricky to get right, but, in the whole, I get a LOT more sleep than before I started using the MJ to augment the effects of the classic style pill…

There, now the medical report is over, and I’ve bored everyone to tears with my silly little personal issues, I suppose I should get on with what I actually started to do…. to wit: write the Pearl for today…. I guess I got off on a tangent there, and fell right into Chatty Cathy mode before I noticed….. Oh well, it got us enough dross and drivel to call an intro, so, that’s something, I guess….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Of course I have a smart ass attitude…. it’s a natural defense against drama, stupidity, and bullshit.” — Tweety Bird
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I originally intended to rant about this article, but, after perusing it myself, I find it’s only more proof of the prediction I made last week, as to how the pundits in Washington, (you know, those assholes who hang out at the White House, and in the halls of Congress), would be acting in the coming weeks,  after the poTUS (Please note: the word president is NOT capitalized deliberately; sufficient respect for the office to justify capitalization must be earned….) stated his intention to “ask Congress” to reform the NSA regulations on spying…. So far, the president has mouthed his lies just as predicted, and the expected response has gone exactly according to what I said would occur…. It’s a gift…..

No, really, they’re going through ALL the contortions I figured they would, just as if they were paying attention to what I said…. which makes it, sort of, lacking in virtue to rail at them right now…. They’re being so PATHETICALLY stupid, it’s hardly worth the time it takes to run them down, and, in fact, doing so might just be considered abusing the handicapped….

So we’ll do this… Read the article, so you know just what they’re up to, silly as it may be…. Right now, they’re just doing as I said, and creating more questions and confusion around the issue of the torture report Senator DiFi and the Senate want to see, while Obama came out with some new, toothless suggestions for changes to the regulations that don’t really change much of anything…. all of which is muddying water that was already unclear….

After that, come back to this section, where you’ll find the latter half of this pears, which will consist of an old-school pearl, with the parameters set, once again, to shoot at our beloved ruling class, in all its ugly glory….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Demands-grow-to-release-Senate-torture-report-5369929.php

“Official truths are often powerful illusions.” — John Pilger, _Distant_Voices_, 1992

“This isn’t Anarchy, this is Chaos.” — Smart Bee

“How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.” — Petrarch

MACHINATION, n.  The method employed by one’s opponents in baffling one’s open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.

So plain the advantages of machination
It constitutes a moral obligation,
And honest wolves who think upon’t with loathing
Feel bound to don the sheep’s deceptive clothing.
So prospers still the diplomatic art,
And Satan bows, with hand upon his heart.
R.S.K.

— Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“I looked up the word “politics” in the dictionary and it’s actually a  combination of two words; “poli,” which means many, and “tics,” which means bloodsuckers.” — Jay Leno

“Every man’s life, liberty, and property are in danger when the Legislature is in session.” — Gideon J. Tucker

“By all means, take the moral high ground — all that heavenly back lighting  makes you a much easier target.” — Solomon Short

Not bad at all for a game of “pick up sticks”, post-neo-intellectual version, eh? I think, in truth, if any pundits forgot to duck, several of them COULD be bleeding now….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today we’ll go with a poem of my own, in order to save embarrassment for anyone else, ‘kay?….. Here’s one I wrote in 2012, such as it is…..

Semblance of Time

The dreams and visions of modern times are pallid and pale
filled with fear and loathing instead of joy and wonder.
Reality is aging poorly, submitting less data to loudly regale
Sad faded images lacking substance, or proof of thunder.

Sisters and brothers of nightly performance speak in spite
building up scars to protect, or keep a semblance of sanity.
Knowing illusion is near and dear, steeped in muscular delight
while compassion and intelligence get smothered by humanity.

Loneliness soon became the friend of many sizes of fools
stealing through mazes of social tests as if truly wise, or old
while companies of sterile opportunity are hiding their tools
from anyone who might be feeling even a little bit bold.

Painful momentary flashes seem to outline society’s fate
until soft, heavy monuments to elder gods fall from grace.
We’re all getting tired of being told we’re far too late
and never ever nearing tolerance, nor regaining any face.

A hard message awaits us all when we dare to even stay
of life’s uncaring disposition and curmudgeonly faux heart
Only with the strength of a hero may such tales make way
Only a poet may turn such pain into a valid work of art.

~~ gigoid ~~


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s looking now as if the ol’ brain just isn’t going to fire up today….. I’ve managed to fake it so far, which is fine, but, it’s going to take a strong effort to resist the urge to include a rant this morning…. If I don’t, (resist the urge, that is….), the results could be catastrophic, to say the least…. So, because we can, we’ll fall back on another old-school pearl to fill in this final section, thus preserving both the lives, and the integrity of our passengers…..

That’s fortunate, because we just couldn’t afford another set of lawsuits…. My lawyer is getting far too rich mitigating the aftereffects of my bozoid tendencies…. For now, let’s enjoy a random, parameter-less, harlequin pearl, our finest, most popular product….

“I don’t think it would have all got me down quite so much if just once in a while- just once in a while- there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time.” — J.D. Salinger, Franny & Zooey

The rhino is a homely beast,
For human eyes he’s not a feast.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
I’ll stare at something less prepoceros.

— Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

“Noise proves nothing.  Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.” — Arthur C. Clarke

“Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms … but a *dying* culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Loss of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.” — Friday’s boss, aka “Kettle Belly” or “Mr. Two-Canes” Baldwin…. from the book “Friday” by Robert A. Heinlein

“Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.” — Seneca, 65 AD

“Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, ii, 14

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, having subjected myself to the indignity of reading this whole thing, editing for errors and punching up style, as far as possible, I can truthfully say…. I’m done. No judgments I make could be accurate, given both my closeness to the material, and my lack of brain-function this morning, which has NOT improved in the two plus hours since I began staring at the screen…. If you’ll recall, it took me thirty minutes to be able to write a coherent sentence then…. I’m having the same struggle now, here at the end….

SIGH… Okay, I’ve whined enough for one day…. Now I have to go do battle with bureaucrats and business assholes, always two of my least favorite pastimes…. I have to deal with the Kaiser Pharmacy, Pat’s pharmacy, and a large wireless company…. Oh, joy…..

See ya, ffolkes, provided I can do all of this today without having to kill anyone….. It can be a near thing, sometimes, if I happen to run across a particularly stupid bureaucrat, or one of those empty-headed millennial denizens, making less than minimum wage, part-time in a wireless store…. What is it with those companies? Do they use a reverse IQ test to pick their employees, or what?…. Okay, I’ll stop ranting in the closing section now, and be off…. Ta then….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

dozer3

We’ll call it “fashionably undead”….

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Ffolkes,

Considering the state of affairs in modern society, a relatively high degree of curmudgeonry among the citizenry is to be expected; a rough, gruff exterior is the protective barrier of choice in modern times, with good reason. We are all bombarded daily with demands upon our time, expectations upon our behavior, rules, regulations, and all sorts of other frequently frustrating demands that assault our senses, often transpiring right in front of us, necessitating our participation, if not our complete engagement, or investment….. Given all that, it isn’t particularly surprising to me that good manners have fallen by the wayside….

To a gentleman, as I was raised to be, certain behaviors are not optional; for most of today’s young men and women, those behaviors are not only unknown to them, but have been replaced with a set of expectations of entitlement, and behavioral irritants, that, for the most part, are more effective in keeping others at a distance than they are in enhancing interaction, or improving communication.

This change in what young people are taught, or NOT taught, more accurately, has resulted in a society where rudeness is the norm, compassion is seen as weakness, and manipulation of others is a survival skill….. I see most of this as the logical consequence of our BRC’s nasty habit of attempting to modify public morality through legislation, to wit: making laws to tell people how to behave toward each other….

This, of course, is really, really stupid…. and I don’t mean that in a nice sense, either….. It’s just plain idiotic to assume that the inertia needed to make ANY sort of weather change in Society at Large can be provided by a new law….. Hell, I can’t think of where the idea came from in the first place, as ANY parent of small children can testify as to just how completely useless and ineffective it is to try to teach morality through the use of punishment for bad behavior, OR for rewarding good….. People, even small, essentially unformed human beings do NOT respond well to that sort of teaching, and, in fact, will often rebel AGAINST any such type of behavioral modification, making it not just useless, but, counterproductive….

Which word, counterproductive, leads us back to reality, as our beloved ruling class continues to thrash about, mostly wreaking havoc, instead of creating order in the world, by the consistent, deliberate application of stupidity and greed….. It seems to me that it has become not only acceptable, but routine, to try to legislate morals among the populace of this nation, with the unfortunate end result of convincing those in power that they have not only the right to do so, but that there is need for it…. both of which are failures of logic, and can only lead to more problems…..

SIGH…..This isn’t REALLY a rant, you know, it’s just a discussion, one that seemed to fit in with today’s mood, enough so to bring it to bear on the introduction problem we always face in the morning…. It seems to have worked fairly well, though it’s hard to tell this early…. Sometimes, the intro has a delayed effect on the Gentle Readers….

I’ll often hear ffolkes moaning and groaning, while I’m preparing a poem, or searching through SB, as certain phrases or words from this introductory part of the morning’s mental buffet hit home, naturally producing the typical response to such chicanery. In fact, I’ve noticed a resemblance, at times, to a gathering of punsters, which produces a variety of sounds indicating the presence of “humans in dire mental distress”…..

All of which doesn’t alter the fact that I’ve once again faked my way through the intro, bringing us to the required point in the process where we can smoothly wend our way to the next section, knowing we’ve fulfilled all the legal and technical requirements…. That isn’t to say our ONLY purpose here is to meet standards…. In fact, we spit on standards…. who needs them? We certainly don’t…. Not only do we not need them, we HATE them…. We don’t want no stinking standards around here, so just take them away…..

Oops, I think my coherency just failed, so to speak…. I’m probably starting to break out in a bozoid fever…. that’s how it always begins…. It’s okay, I’ve got a plan for that…. It never works, but, I have one….

Never mind…. This is spinning rapidly out of my control…. I’m going to employ Emergency method #4, to take us out of here before anything catches fire, or explodes…..

Shall we Pearl?….

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” — Albert Einstein
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m not certain that I have what it takes today to write anything particularly logical, or reasoned to any fine degree…. For the first time in several days, I didn’t sleep all that well…. Oh, it was GOOD sleep, just not enough of it: I didn’t WANT to get up when the furry alarm went off…. But, if I don’t, she picks on Pat, so, I pushed out of bed, and have been trying to wake up fully ever since, a matter of almost an hour now…. Some days it just doesn’t pay to begin the day at all….

Around here, though, we have a way to get around that little conundrum, called an old-school pearl…. I’ll just let Smart Bee pick out the parameters, and the pearls, and we’ll let it go at that, okay?…. Okay….. works for me…..

“It matters not what you are thought to be, but what you are.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 78

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” — Albert Einstein

“There’s no problem so awful that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.” — Calvin and Hobbes

“Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.” — Pythagoras (BC 582-507)

“We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against Nature.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Of Eating of Flesh, Tract 1

“A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.” — Barbarella

“Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.” — Ogden Nash

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhere inside my mind, below the level of conscious perception where my ego resides, there is an area where poems percolate, words swimming together in an ocean of comprised of memory, perception, emotion, and reason….. I never know when there will be enough to begin leaking out into my consciousness, to create the verses which will give voice to my inner demons, because when I try to write one before it’s ready, I find nothing worthwhile, until the unconscious process, whatever it consists of, is ready to allow it all out into the light of day…. One unknown poet’s thought has always stuck with me; he said the following about writing poems….. “Poets never finish a poem, they merely abandon it.”…..

I can feel the chaos inside me swirling and mixing, but, trying to come together, but, nothing is ready to leak out into my awareness, so, we’ll go with someone else’s work…. Let’s see who we can find today to soothe my savage breast….. Okay, yes, that refers to music…. but, it works the same way…. try to stay focused, ffolkes, and enjoy….

Witch Burning

In the marketplace they are piling the dry sticks.
A thicket of shadows is a poor coat. I inhabit
The wax image of myself, a doll’s body.
Sickness begins here: I am the dartboard for witches.
Only the devil can eat the devil out.
In the month of red leaves I climb to a bed of fire.

It is easy to blame the dark: the mouth of a door,
The cellar’s belly. They’ve blown my sparkler out.
A black-sharded lady keeps me in parrot cage.
What large eyes the dead have!
I am intimate with a hairy spirit.
Smoke wheels from the beak of this empty jar.

If I am a little one, I can do no harm.
If I don’t move about, I’ll knock nothing over. So I said,
Sitting under a potlid, tiny and inert as a rice grain.
They are turning the burners up, ring after ring.
We are full of starch, my small white fellows. We grow.
It hurts at first. The red tongues will teach the truth.

Mother of beetles, only unclench your hand:
I’ll fly through the candle’s mouth like a singeless moth.
Give me back my shape. I am ready to construe the days
I coupled with dust in the shadow of a stone.
My ankles brighten. Brightness ascends my thighs.
I am lost, I am lost, in the robes of all this light.

~~ Sylvia Plath ~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know it will cause a lot of disappointment, but, I won’t be ranting today…. Since arising, I’ve managed to put together what you see for today’s post, in hopes of some angst showing up to provide the fuel to drive such an outburst, but, I’ve come to realize I’m waiting in vain. Nothing is going to come together in my head well enough today to make the effort worthwhile; any rant I attempt is destined to resemble a whine more than a rant, and I don’t want to get in the habit of settling for less than my best…..

What this means for y’all is another old-school pearl, of course….. I’ll set the parameters to look for quotes and/or aphorisms that will serve the same purpose as a rant, either about the BRC, the SCM, the DD’s (Dogma Dogs…. you know, preachers & priests….), or some other category of Asininny…. Poking fun at public icons is, patently, our favorite pastime here at ECR, with Smart Bee leading the way in that respect, so, this shouldn’t take too long…..

“A government that fears it’s people is a government that should be feared.” — Smart Bee

“Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.” — Agatha Christie

“They gave me a book of checks.  They didn’t ask for any deposits.” — Congressman Joe Early (D-Mass) at a press conference — to answer questions about the House Bank Scandal

“Machiavel says virtue and riches seldom settle on one man.” — Robert Burton (1577-1640) — The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part ii, Sect. 2, Memb. 2

“…when all government… in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1821

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” — Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), Collected Essays

“Once you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy.” — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Okay, so it took forfuckingever…. which is, as it turns out, just as well, since it came out so well…. It isn’t often I can find such a perfect closing line as Albert’s, especially as it applies to our beloved leaders, and the show they put on…. I only wish I could say the show is for OUR benefit….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All things considered, this didn’t come out too badly…. As a result, it’s actually done, and I can go on to try to mitigate what physical ailments are currently making their play for attention….. Since pain is only peripherally involved so far, it should be a fairly simple thing to figure out…. assuming, of course, I can whip my brain into submission…. I’ll let y’all know tomorrow how that went…. See ya, ffolkes…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

dozer3

 

He’s big… I don’t know if I can take the mime…..

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Ffolkes,

‘Tis April Fool’s Day, ffolkes, which is why I am NOT going to apologize for the title of today’s Pearl…. In fact, I’m feeling a bit of, perhaps, unwarranted pride in that one; it isn’t every day I think of such a fine piece of classical punning, much less get such a public opportunity to display it…. My only regret is that I can’t hear the groans and/or other sounds of sheer disgust that it may engender….

Now, some folks, even some ffolkes, might be upset to be given such grief over a mere pun, but, to us punsters, such reactions are a sheer delight,considered to be applause, as the proper reward for our efforts…. Hell, a good pun can actually make the audience nauseous, so the sounds of worshiping at the throne of Ralph are also considered to be music, to the ears of a true  punster…. I’ve heard reports of an unexpected pun causing a nosebleed, but, I just assumed that was on the part of the punster, as a result of the punch in the nose by his, or her, victim, er, audience…..

Now that I’ve come as close to an apology as I intend to come, we can head off into the wilds of Consensual Reality…. That is, we could, if I could find the damn keys to the gigoid-mobile. I had the darn thing waxed & polished up, and all the fold-down tables on the seat backs are new. We were also going to offer free WiFi on today’s flight, but, unless we find the keys, we won’t even be offering the daily tour…. Hang on, I think I remember where I set them down…..

YES! Here they are, right where I left them (Naturally…. did you ever notice that EVERY time we lose something, it’s always in the LAST place we think to look for it?….) (Well, of course it is…. DOH! Once it’s found, you don’t need to look for it anymore, whatever it is…. which makes it the LAST place, doesn’t it?….. Sometimes, I amaze myself with my own stupidity….) (Hah! Gotcha!…. It’s April Fool’s Day, and THAT was the SECOND, OR THIRD joke of the day…..)

Don’t worry, ffolkes, I’m almost done…..

What to do, what to do…. I’ve performed two or four obligatory jokes to honor the holiday we are celebrating today, & now find myself a trifle short of material…. Well, at least, short of the sort of material that might work here in the intro (I can put the pornography anywhere, and it will garner views, so I don’t use it here…. and, no, you can’t borrow it….). Maybe I should….. No, I promised I wouldn’t do that anymore….. Well, perhaps those old…. no, I looked at them a couple of days ago, and they won’t even sparkle any more, much less explode….. Hmm…. I know! We can break out the old, perfectly rounded, embarrassment-proof, left-over political dross left here by that candidate last November….. No, that’s out, too….. We took that stuff to the dump last month….

Oh well…. I suppose we don’t HAVE to make this any more of a standard intro than it already isn’t…. Nothing we have on hand is going to do much to make the price of the ticket worthwhile….. unless, of course, we can spot a herd of asininnies to torment. That always makes everybody feel like they’ve gotten their money’s worth….. which is a good thing, as we hate to have dissatisfied passengers on the Reality-busting gigoid-mobile, especially since we don’t actually charge any REAL money…. I always feel so, so GUILTY when someone isn’t happy with their ride; since it’s free, I kind of feel like I’ve let ffolkes down….

Now that I’ve typed up, let’s see…. SIX complete paragraphs, all chock full of time-and-taste tested April Fool’s Day material, none of which hits even a 2 on the sobriety scale….. I only wish I could say it’s even funnier than it appears to be, but, I’d just be fooling with you, so, I won’t say that…. I suppose NOW would be the best time to issue the warning….

On this particular day, one can NOT predict just exactly HOW MUCH, nor HOW LONG  I may be affected by the events of the day, so it’s best to leave a lot of clear space around wherever I may be standing, sitting, or walking, as foolish, bozoid events can break out at the slightest provocation…. In other words, it can get a bit weird around here, so, please, don’t be offended by anything you see or hear today, and, please, wear the Kevlar vests provided by our insurance brokers…. Thanks….

On that note, we should proceed, before anyone starts to panic….. Shall we Pearl?…..

“Evolution–life’s a niche, and then you die.” — Smart Bee
_____________________________

Yesterday afternoon, I found the following articles, all on one subject in which I am VERY interested, all of which, taken together, prompted the outburst you see below…. It’s not as fresh as the day, but, yesterday’s not TOO far gone, so, I think it should be relatively crisp and savory…. It’s all, once again, perfectly true in all its assertions, as evidenced by the information provided in two of the links, which lead to the report mentioned in the first post, complete with justifying data…. Let’s dive in, shall we?….

ETHNOLOGY, n. “The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.” –Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

Or, in this case, climatologists, and those who love them least….

I have used this little entry from the Devil’s lexicon merely to highlight two factors as part of our discussion…. The first factor is to lay claim, as our statistical universe, to both the perpetrators, and the victims who are affected by the issue of climate change; in fact, with this factor, we make the obviously valid assumption that, in respect to pollution and climate change, all the various tribes of Man are both victim and perpetrator, in one…. The second factor I wish y’all to remember is a reminder, of the practical mistake in using science as the sole arbiter of any discussion, much less those concerning issues that can lead to one’s personal annihilation, aka, the final end results of man-made, unchecked changes to the climate of our planet….

With that dubiously high-falutin’ paragraph of intent behind us, allow me now depress you…. a lot….. (Fear not, it’s only for a while, and we’ll try to keep it light and humorous, as far as we can with such issues….)

The first link leads to an article from the NY Times, concerning one of the latest reports on climate change, this one issued by an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprised of a significant number of highly respected scientific experts from many different countries, with advanced degrees, and established reputations, in a number of relevant disciplines….

The next link is  a short summary of the report in a PDF document format; the third is a link to the actual report, on the website of the panel who compiled it…. The last link included is a summary of the entire report, compiled by a reporter from a UK news outlet, put together for their readers, explaining many of the details of the report…. as well as including remarks from a scientist who takes a differing viewpoint….

I will comment on a number of ideas presented in the articles, hopefully AFTER you have read them…. but, if you want to skip most of the actual reading, that’s cool, the last part will stand alone, as long as you’re aware of the general area under examination….You’ll also be able to appreciate more whatever attempts at humor there may be if you do…. See you on the other side of the links…..

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/science/earth/climate.html?_r=0

http://ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/pr_wg2/140330_pr_wgII_spm_en.pdf

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2593198/Climate-change-lead-war-famine-extreme-weather-claims-IPCC-report.html
article-2593198-0DE95A5300000578-288_306x380    Pictured above is the handsome, eminent Dr. Richard Tol, a scientist connected to the University of Sussex in the UK, a self-identified climatologist, (What? You’ve never heard of him? Gosh….. Nor have I….), who, with a smug, smarmy expression, stated unequivocally that all the scientists who wrote the report just a paranoid lot, a gaggle of Chicken Littles….

Well, okay, he actually just said he thought the report was an over-reaction, because HIS OWN calculations show there is much less to worry about than these worrisome ninnies are bleating about all over the news…. (Okay, he didn’t say “worrisome ninnies” or “bleating” either…. Sheesh, try to be a little dramatic, and what do I get?…. Nothing but grief….), as he stood, in an unknown location, blinking bemusedly at the reporter, obviously trying to glean as much air-time as he could possibly garner, by coming out with such a preposterously silly-ass view….

I’m sorry…. I have to say, by all appearances, this guy sure seems to have not the slightest clue as to how to get other folks believe him when he voices such , er, well nonsense?,  Eh….? You’d think, if he was going to argue AGAINST all the “better known, more prestigious” scientists in the group of climatologists on the Intergovernmental Panel, who were picked over him for the project , er, who drew up the report, he would have at least arranged for a photo that didn’t make him look like he forgot to take his medications for the last few days…. or, alternately, that he not only knows what a hair dresser is, but, has been to see one in the past year….. Either one might just have helped his credibility factor a tad, don’t y’think? Nice tie, though….. once one gets past his expression and hair, which looks as he he set off a small explosion in it before breakfast….

But, then, humans, as a result of the bozoid features of their nature, will deliberately, and foolishly, speak out against just about anything at all, just to make noise…. I mean, look at the political world…. Well, no, wait…. Never mind, let’s don’t…. I’m not sure my stomach lining would remain intact after picturing the sheer amount of stupidity necessary, for all the pundits on the political front, to deny what is slapping THEM in the face, literally as well as figuratively….. There is, positively, (yes, you read it correctly… I said positively, NOT possibly…. positively….), no greater number, all in one select group, of sheer, ignorant fools, anywhere at all , than are currently taking up space in the Republican, and Democratic, Parties of the US Congress….

I’m talking about the sort of complete and utter idiots who continue to maintain their standing as naysayers on this issue, claiming to question both the fact of climate change, and the idea that it is caused by mankind…. They’re usually the same idiots who regard Evolution as an unproved theory, clutching their faith-based misconception of dogma tightly to their ears, as protection against hearing the definitive, obvious proof of its invalidity, rather than accepting its true status, as the FACT the rest of the scientific community regards it to be….. That much DELIBERATE stupidity, in one place, beggars the imagination, not to mention the danger it represents to the mind, and spirit, of anyone trying to calculate what are apparently negative IQ numbers….

I swear, last time I sat down to do the math on that ( That is, by calculating the # of Senators who disbelieve in climate change, and/or evolution, divided by the IQ points indicated  by being able to formulate that denial, expressed as a negative number, where necessary….), I was not just appalled, I was stunned into stupefaction myself, ending up feeling the NEED to eat chocolate, just as if I’d been face-sucked by a Dementor….

If the figures are correct, it lowers the average IQ of a US Senator down into the 55-70 range, with 100 as the average human’s intelligence quotient. When I tried to perform the same set of calculations for the House of Representatives, the computer laughed at me, refusing outright to even consider having anything to do with requiring it to express a number so minuscule….

I’m depressed now. Are you depressed? I am…. I think I said that….

Oh well, who cares? None of any of this will matter in 500 years, because, by then, IF there are ANY humans still alive, they will be those who, in the last moments before succumbing to death by suffocation, were able to, somehow, flee this planet, to establish a colony somewhere else in space, overcoming all the necessary scientific and technological obstacles to survival that will ensue, to, perhaps, be able to cling to a precarious existence, on Mars, or the Moon, or one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn….

Or, maybe, the Asteroids…. which are, in truth, the simplest way to live in space, if necessary….

Those bodies, millions upon millions of pieces of rock and ice, which orbit the Sun between Mars and Saturn, are what appears to be left over from another planet, apparently destroyed a couple billion years in the Solar System’s past… All those left-over planetary pieces are chock-full of all kinds of raw materials, most likely including water, and the raw materials needed to grow food, as well as to build our machines to travel and live in space, thus sustaining any remnants of civilization we may be able to save…. if any at all…. Power, of course, would be available in the form of both sunlight, and the presence of a gravity well in the system at large, as well as in the almost unlimited materials present in the asteroids themselves….

After the aforementioned passage of the next 500 years, given the parameters of this, and other, reports on the subject, it is for sure and for certain, almost a foregone conclusion, NONE of us humans will be left alive on THIS planet, because it will no longer be capable of supporting our form of life….. By that time, it will exist as a new planet, empty of life as we know it, one with a non-oxygen based formula in the atmosphere, fatally toxic to us, and to every other form of mammalian, reptilian, amphibious, land, or solely water-dwelling, avian, and possibly, insectoid life that now exists here….

Who knows if bacteria, virae, lichens, fungi, and molds will survive?…. We’ve found some of them on space rocks, and on spacecraft returning to Earth, so, they’re pretty tough, it seems…. But, the rest of us?  Unless, as I said above, we manage to emigrate at least a few of us to another place, we’re history, count on it….

Believe it, ffolkes, because THIS is the most likely scenario, of all the ones I’ve looked at in the last 50 years of watching this “sad tale of never-ending woe and struggle”….

I’m gonna go find something more fun to do, to drive off this depression…..

“Hold the MAYO & pass the COSMIC AWARENESS…” — Zippy the Pinhead

O’Neill: “Tell you what, let me put it nicely. Get me the hell outta here!” — from Stargate
_____________________________

Here is a poem from Lewis Carroll…. I’m hoping I won’t need to explain the reason it fits in with today’s theme, other than to say, when reading this, allow free rein to your sense of metaphor…. (Hint: Little Birds = denizens of human society….)…. Enjoy!…..

Little Birds

Little Birds are dining
Warily and well,
Hid in mossy cell:
Hid, I say, by waiters
Gorgeous in their gaiters –
I’ve a Tale to tell.

Little Birds are feeding
Justices with jam,
Rich in frizzled ham:
Rich, I say, in oysters
Haunting shady cloisters –
That is what I am.

Little Birds are teaching
Tigresses to smile,
Innocent of guile:
Smile, I say, not smirkle –
Mouth a semicircle,
That’s the proper style!

Little Birds are sleeping
All among the pins,
Where the loser wins:
Where, I say, he sneezes
When and how he pleases –
So the Tale begins.

Little Birds are writing
Interesting books,
To be read by cooks:
Read, I say, not roasted –
Letterpress, when toasted,
Loses its good looks.

Little Birds are playing
Bagpipes on the shore,
Where the tourists snore:
“Thanks!” they cry. “‘Tis thrilling!
Take, oh take this shilling!
Let us have no more!”

Little Birds are bathing
Crocodiles in cream,
Like a happy dream:
Like, but not so lasting –
Crocodiles, when fasting,
Are not all they seem!

Little Birds are choking
Baronets with bun,
Taught to fire a gun:
Taught, I say, to splinter
Salmon in the winter –
Merely for the fun.

Little Birds are hiding
Crimes in carpet-bags,
Blessed by happy stags:
Blessed, I say, though beaten –
Since our friends are eaten
When the memory flags.

Little Birds are tasting
Gratitude and gold,
Pale with sudden cold:
Pale, I say, and wrinkled –
When the bells have tinkled,
And the Tale is told.

~~ Lewis Carroll ~~

_____________________________

Aye, the Tale is told, and told well…. I do enjoy a good metaphor, don’t y’all?  We’ve made it as far as the last section, without any major mishaps, or any sort of diversionary actions that smack of Murphy’s tender touch…. for which, we are eternally grateful. In the perhaps futile hope of continuing this run of sheer luck, we’ll proceed to dive, to see if there are enough pearls available to fulfill our goal for the day…..

Parameters, today, are unnecessary….. serendipity is at loose in the world on days such as today, so we’ll trust in that to provide us with what we seek…. knowing that what we find will be worth the search…. If not, well, I can always comfort myself with the old saw about the journey being more important than the destination….. Abondanza!…..

How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.

— Robert Browning (1812-1890) — After

“If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow.” — Chinese Proverb

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” — Bertrand Russell

“A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.” — Michael de Montaigne (1533-1592) — Book iii, Chap. ix

“I am, therefore I am.” — Akira

“It is ridiculous to lay the blame of our wrong actions upon external causes, rather than on the facility with which we ourselves are caught by such causes.” — Aristotle

And in your dreams you can see yourself
As a prophet saving the world
The words from your lips
I just can’t believe you are such
A fool.

— Frank Zappa, “Oh No”.

Wow…. Serendipity, indeed….
_____________________________

Well, Stanley, this is ANOTHER fine mess you’ve gotten me into…. It is, however, done, and, if I say so myself, it’s done reasonably well….. Of course, one must keep in mind what day it is, too…. On that scary note, I’ll see y’all tomorrow…. Okay, sorry, can’t help it…. I suppose it’s not as scary, as it is resigned…. Okay, now I’m done…. probably finished as well, but, only time will tell on that one…. See ya…. for real this time….

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

dozer3

How to train predator birds with vertigo….

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Ffolkes,

A word is dead
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?….

How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ
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!….

Drinking Alone

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…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

dozer3

As dragons go, Smaug is a wuss…

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Ffolkes,

If it weren’t for the previous twenty-five years, I’d give up trying to sleep altogether…. Those years, spent living, for the most part, without the boon of sleeping more than six or seven hours a day, on average, (if I was lucky), gave me plenty of reasons to try to find ways to increase the amount of time I spent horizontal, unconscious, in imitation of Morpheus….

Dwelling, as it were, upon the fields of Endymion, became an important task, if only to arm myself with more than the minimum of energy to deal with the demands upon your average middle-aged husband and father of two….. Sleep is a weapon, as you may know…. It helps dealing with the energy levels of the kids, when one doesn’t have to, almost literally, drag one’s sorry ass to the bathroom each morning before work…. Too late now…. However, I managed to make it through all of that, reasonably successfully, (in my own mind….), without the sleep…. But, I missed it….

As a consequence of this search, this last few months, experimenting with cannabis products to find the best ones to replace or augment my other pain medications, has had sort of a vacation-like quality to it, as I’ve found a couple of products that have enabled me to sleep better than I have since my twenties. The last couple of days, I’ve actually gotten spoiled, getting upwards of eight to ten hours of relatively uninterrupted sleep, awakening stronger than I’ve felt in many years…. Amazing what a bit of unadulterated rest will do, isn’t it?….

Once again, I see I’ve allowed myself to ramble through my own backyard, unashamedly sharing my patently boring personal intimacies, but, in the process, filling in a lot of empty space on the screen, all with reasonably good English…. If nothing else, I punctuate splendidly, and my grammar is a thing of beauty to behold, don’t you think? I do…. Of course, none of what has gone by has any relation to what we are supposed to be doing, which is finding an interesting way to pass time while y’all wend your way to your seats, to get safely strapped in for the day’s dive….

Oh….. It seems that while I was rambling around like that, that is exactly what happened…. I’ll be damned…. I’m not sure it has EVER gone quite so smoothly…. I’m not sure if I should be happy, or nervous, waiting for the other shoe to drop…. Oh, hell, I’m going to assume the best, for once, and get on with the show, before anything has a chance to go wonky….

By the way…. I forgot to tell y’all…. I found an old report, from back in February of 2012, when the doctors were finally able to pinpoint what’s wrong with me. At that time, I was diagnosed with  “witzelsucht” (vit’sel-zoocht) [Ger.] , which is defined as, “A mental condition characteristic of frontal lobe lesions, marked by the making of odd jokes and painful puns, and the telling of pointless stories, at which the patient himself is intensely amused.” …..

Oh….. Well….That would explain it….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Let us suffer any person to tell us his story morning and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will become our master.” — Edmund Burke

Hmph…. a lot HE knows! I’ve been at this now for going on THREE twelve-months…. I don’t see anybody calling ME master!!!! Okay, I’ll stop now….
_____________________________

Beset by personal demons on every side, I’m retreating, at top speed, to a more stable vantage point…. Once I’ve gained my footing in a more trustworthy setting, I’ll be back to rant, or pearl, or do whatever I need to do to keep this on track…. For the nonce, hold your breath….. If I’m not back by the time you can count to oh, say, seven hundred eighty-three, then, go ahead and take another breath…. I shouldn’t be too long after that….

Better…. I found a nice little hill, with a commanding view of the surrounding terrain, and a nice, tall cliff at my back; very defensible, with a pool of water in a cave in the cliff, in case we come under siege…. Now I can afford to take the time to decide on a rant, or go dive for some pearls…. In fact, I’m going to do that, without telling you first which one it will be…. You’ll just have to figure it out on your own, when you see what comes next…. Hell, you could get lucky, and I’ll find some ART….

My god, it’s something new and different! What WILL he think of next?….. Enjoy…..
George & parents    Okay, ffolkes…. the decision as to a rant or an old-school pearl has been taken out of my hands…. The above photo, the first portrait of all three of them released by the royal family since George’s christening, last October, is one of two potential pieces of news that would serve for this section’s espoused purpose….

The other choice is a story about California State Senator Leland Yee, and his partner in crime, Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a Chinese Triad Tong leader, both residents of SF’s Chinatown, who were recently arrested on charges of money-laundering, corruption, drug trafficking, and murder-for-hire…. As a long-time city and state politician, Lee makes an excellent target for a rant, as a very obvious member of the BRC caught with his hands in the till….

Political corruption for a rant, or some nice, bland little rant about the uselessness of royalty in the modern age?…. But, I don’t know….. with a Grand Doofus Face like Prince William’s, how can I pick on them, royal twits that they are?… It’s not honorable, nor is it cricket, to pick on the handicapped…. Besides, it’s a cute kid, and he’s got a tough life ahead…. Politician Lee and Tong Leader Chow are too obvious a target for my taste…. Such a rant would be like taking candy from a baby…. So, we’ll go with an old-school pearl, and keep the parameters loose, so there isn’t any real damage to anyone, other than, perhaps, to their sense of fair play…. Let’s dive!….

“In adversity remember to keep an even mind.” — Horace (8 BC)

“Keep the juices going by jangling around gently as you move.” — Satchel Paige

“One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.” — Josh Billings

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

“Fear is the lock, and laughter, the key to your heart.” — Steven Stills

“Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love all year round, madam; that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals.” — Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro

A monk asked Nansen, “Is there any great spiritual teaching that has not been preached to the people?”
Nansen said, “There is.”
“What is the truth that has not been taught?”
“Nothing,” Nansen replied.

— Smart Bee
_____________________________

It’s now just barely 4 ack emma, so decision making is probably not an advisable pastime for someone such as myself, who makes an unfortunate habit of being up at this hour…. It’s probably not advisable, even though I’m careful about making decisions more critical than which subject matter to choose, regardless of the potential for nonsense…. I’ve haven’t lived to this ripe age without a certain degree of intelligence making itself felt; I’m actually getting pretty good at thinking ahead. Sometimes, though, the process of making ANY decision becomes a chore, an ordeal of note, otherwise known as a pain in the proverbial ass….

Such is the decision as to the poem for today…. I can’t seem to pin down any particular mood, or feeling, which might give me a clue about which author to pick…. I just used Emily yesterday, twice, so, I don’t feel right about going to that well again…. Oh, hell, I’m not in the mood to waffle about it any more, so I’ll just pick one of mine, and be done with it…. I’ll look for one that isn’t TOO depressing, just as a minor parameter by which to choose…..

Relative Cynicism, with Caramel Sauce

Absolute stillness follows violent movement,
  it can happen during a downhill race,
as an immovable piece of asphalt pavement
  meets the once handsome racer’s face.

Yuk, yuk, yuk said that asshole Moe,
 after poking both of Larry’s eyes,
bashing face, head, & crotch of Curly Joe
  and only ever got hit with pies.

Lonely moments never really come along
  when Murphy’s got us in his sights.
Not for money, love, or siren’s song
  will he abrogate his natural rights.

All we can do is sigh, or laugh in pain,
  as Life portions out our ration of shit.
Silver linings melt in the slightest rain,
  so we may as well learn to live with it.

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

“For several years more I maintained public relations with the Almighty. But privately, I ceased to associate with him.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

I can relate…. This sentiment seems to me to be one that might be common, to any of us who have refused to fall into the delusional system that is so prevalent in our society, the one they call religion…. or, in deference to accuracy, in my estimation, the cult of deliberate ignorance…. For well over 10,000 years, since before the advent of writing, people have been trying to foist the idea of supernatural origins for all we see in reality upon the rest of humanity, as a means of justifying their own particular penchant for manipulation of others, their avarice, and their gratuitous, insane notions of piety….

I suppose, if they didn’t work so hard to make other people go along with their insanity, it wouldn’t piss me off so much….. I understand they are just trying to figure out in their own minds how to deal with their own fears, and their unwillingness to use what brains they have to take care of themselves, to take responsibility for their life, and their actions…. These cowardly fools would rather place their ignorant faith in a supernatural entity, for which there is no convincing evidence in reality…. God has always made an excellent scapegoat, though, which is why He is so popular among the cowardly….

It has always been somewhat irksome to me, ever since I was a child, to have people expect me to fall right in with this nonsense…. Even at the tender age of four, I knew there were flaws in the story I was getting… There were too many internal inconsistencies in the logic, which caused my already logical mind to question what I was hearing, even then….

There were too many flags coming up from my internal crap detector, which tended to go off like crazy, every time I went to Sunday School…. and this was in the Presbyterian Church, which is about as bland and flexible a creed as exists among the myriad of Biblical interpretations that are floating around out there in the world at large…. Plus, I just KNEW it had to be a big joke, or lie, or something, when they tried to convince me of the “rightness” of “everything” I was reading in the Bible…. For example, that women were less important than men, especially in the church, as exemplified in the following short discussion….

“In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were her dwelling places upon earth. In the Renaissance, while remaining the Queen of Heaven, she became also the human mother in whom everyone could recognise qualities of warmth and love and approachability… The stabilising, comprehensive religions of the world, the religions which penetrate to every part of a man’s being– in Egypt, India or China– gave the female principle of creation at least as much importance as the male, and wouldn’t have taken seriously a philosophy that failed to include them both… It’s a curious fact that the all-male religions have produced no religious imagery– in most cases have positively forbidden it. The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle.” — Kenneth Clark, 1969

Let’s not even get into the other crap they were trying to get me to buy…. original sin, the holy ghost, blasphemy, worshiping graven images, etc.,….  it’s all even more outrageously manipulative, and unbelievable than believing women are inferior to men, by design (which is, obviously, not true….). Also annoying is the way this philosophy, Christianity, is touted as oh-so-wonderfully inclusive, oh-so-compassionate, and oh-so-generous in nature…. all the while they are trying to convince everyone of these qualities, they are displaying their bigotry, ignorance, aggressiveness, and fear of aliens of all kinds….

These people, the white Christians, have been shown to be ultimately responsible for most of the wars we’ve seen over the centuries, as well as having the responsibility for having kept the general populace under the control of the savage master ruling classes, those humans with no compassion at all, assisting them blatantly with their constant admonitions to obey worldly authority, on the promise of immortality…. AFTER THEY DIE….

Can you think of ANYTHING more stupid? To buy into the notion that our actions on this plane of existence have some kind of regulatory effect on where we might go when we die, is the most egregiously distorted view of reality I can imagine, one with absolutely NO proof, or even evidence that can be even pointed at, much less held in the hand….

Well, ffolkes, I just can’t bring myself to do it. I won’t refuse responsibility for my own actions, and adjust my behavior to fit some other asshole’s idea of what is right, just on the promise of a reward when I die…. It doesn’t make any sense, and I’m not going to do it, so there….

To finish out this indictment, of religion in general, and of Christianity in specific case, here are five pearls that show exactly what is important in modern society, all to maintain the status quo….

“Irresponsibility isn’t a sickness–it’s an art.” — Remington Steele

“If words were invented to conceal thought, I think that newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention.” — Thoreau

“Prejudice is when you don’t hate an individual, but you hate what they stand for, when without knowing them personally, you decide they are worthy of your derision.” — Callan Williams

“Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.” — Robert Orben

“Ignorance is Strength.” — George Orwell’s 1984

These statements, then, become the rallying cries of modern society, pointing out to people how to be successful in life, by encouraging everyone to avoid all blame, and all virtue….. And we wonder why we’re going to hell in a handbasket….

A fig for those by law protected,
Liberty’s a glorious feast;
‘Courts for cowards were erected,
Churches built to please the priest.

— Robert Burns (1759-1796)
_____________________________

This will someday be noted as an example of a “typical” Pearl from this era…. I can’t say at all how good it is, or even whether it is readable; that would be too egotistical, even for me. I will say this…. It’s done, and I’m glad, because I managed to create this one in spite of all the handicaps I’ve been encountering of late, most of which I’ve been strong enough to keep from mentioning (that’s scary, eh?….)…. Any who, as I said, and will now reiterate, it’s done…. 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 the dubious

dozer3

Assaulted with logic by a Master of Balliol…..

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2

Ffolkes,

Oddity after oddity keeps piling up in front of me, daring me to question why all these strangenesses are happening so closely together…. Therefore, going with standard policy, I won’t bother to even think about it, as I’m not in the habit of answering dares from reality….. I’m old enough to have learned the usual consequences of that sort of stupidity, & have no desire to spend the rest of the day dealing with whatever my stupidity has cost me, in terms of having to fix something that can generally found to be both real, and critical to my serenity of spirit…. elusive as that may be…..

Having thus dodged a number of bullets at once, I’ll head off into the wilds of Consensual Reality,to see what kind of mischief I can find….. I suppose it doesn’t HAVE to be mischievous, but, that’s the venue I end up choosing most often, and I’m not one to break tradition, as you know, without sufficient reason to do so….. We have NO reasons today, so, mischief it is, provided I can find any…. It isn’t very hard, most days…..

Of course, most days, I’ve got more than five functioning neurons to work with; this morning, my brain feels as if I swapped it out for a bowl of oatmeal, or something; I just can’t seem to get going faster than it takes to keep up with this little snail over here….. Oh, wait, that’s a hallucination…. Never mind….

No, actually, my brain IS pretty foggy today, a result of once again getting more sleep than I know what to do with…. I had an attack yesterday afternoon, where my back seized up for some unknown reason, putting me into severe grunting mode for about an hour and a half, until shortly after six o’clock, pip emma, when I gave up the fight against gravity, & trundled off to bed…. Once I found a comfortable position, I fell out almost immediately, oddly enough, and spent the next nine hours in a restless, but heavy sleep…. go figure.

Now, it’s a bit past 3 AM, and I am once more up, typing, and hoping to find a bit of clarity, or inspiration, both of which have thus far been well-hidden from my desperately seeking gaze…. The cat is happy, but, I’m a bit less than perfectly situated, attitude-wise…. I’m feeling a bit of a grump, actually, & finding it convenient that nobody else is about, as I’d be sorely tempted to take a big bite out of them, just for existing in my space…. As you can tell, I’m finding it a bit tough to gather my wits about me….

I suppose I’ll have to cut this off here…. It would be completely self-centered, and more egotistical than usual, for me to continue in this vein; probably isn’t very interesting for y’all either…. So, I’ll head out now, to go for a dive…. Maybe the peace and serenity that often settles over the oyster beds at this time of night will seep into my soul while I’m there, and help me find some peace of mind…. Or, maybe not…. I suppose we’ll see, won’t we? We always do….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Some obstacles exist in order to challenge us. They are a test of our resolve.  Others however, are there to awaken us to the undesirability of a course of  action. Their purpose is to make us turn to some more fruitful path. The hard  part is telling one kind from the other. ” — Smart Bee

Sometimes, Smart Bee is smarter than others…. This pearl was the very first one that came up in front of me today…. As you can see, it is a PERFECT pearl for the introduction that precedes it, restating the gist of the entire six paragraphs in three short lines…. and, in the process, waking up my mind, with the shock of recognition….. My first thought, upon reading it, was, “Well, no shit!”…. a clear indication of how much I liked it….

Okay, we can go Pearl now….

“The moment of enlightenment is when a person’s dreams of possibilities become images of probabilities.” — Vic Braden
_____________________________

Given the state of my intellect this morning, I’m not going to even attempt a rant until the third section…. I could hurt myself, as well as many of my Gentle Readers, in the state I’m in, if I tried to bring myself to the point needed to carry out one of those rather emotional episodes….. As cathartic as the experience may be, it’s still pretty volatile…. Since I’m well aware of my own (potential) lack of control today, we’ll skip right past a rant, to the next available old-school pearl we can put together on short notice…. Let’s not waste any more time, & get right to the dive, shall we?….

“So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Life of Pericles

“Diogenes said once to a person who was showing him a dial, “It is a very useful thing to save a man from being too late for supper.” — Diogenes Laertius (c. 200 AD) — Menedemus, iii

“If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.” — Latin Proverb

“Morality is learned, not legislated.” — Smart Bee (at gigoid’s insistence…..)

“Bother!”, said Pooh, as he rolled another joint for the President. — Smart Bee

“Although it is tempting to resent disaster, there is not much use in doing so… Whether we remain ash or become the phoenix is up to us.” — Deng Ming-Dao

“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.” — Carl Sagan

Not bad at all, even WITH the “one of these is NOT like the others”  entry, from Pooh…. but, I will point out, even that one has a point to make….
_____________________________

I’m in the mood for Emily, so Shawna will have to skip over this section today…. (Sorry, S….)…. In fact, I’m SO in the mood for Emily, you get a two-fer….. Enjoy!…. I did….

A Book

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

A Bird Came Down

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,–
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

_____________________________

“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends…that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” — Adlai Stevenson

I really, really love this; it’s a PERFECT political insult, and much closer to reality than most would care to admit…. Of course, both parties lie about each other, so, one must keep in mind that to be truly perfect, one must realize it works also in the opposite direction, swapping the position of the party names in the joke…. An all-purpose political insult is always good to find, to paraphrase Mae West….

My memories of Adlai Stevenson are vague, beginning as they do when I was very small; he was involved in national politics during the years following WWII, and after I was born in 1950, during the Korean conflict, which, thanks to my birth, my father was not required to attend (though he did get stationed in Japan AFTER that time, in 1954, when the US ARMY was still there in force, keeping a weather eye on the Japanese, AND on Korea…..) But, I do remember that he was the sworn enemy of Joe McCarthy, that bigoted paranoid who caused such a stir back in the early part of the second half of the century….

During those years, McCarthyites pounded the public awareness with all kinds of verbal garbage, trying to drum up the public’s fear of Commies and Pinkos…. I remember a lot of the rhetoric being bandied about then, and can only be glad that such nonsense didn’t last too long…. thanks to people such as Adlai, who, even back then, as a four to seven-year old, I could tell was hated by the McCarthy camp….. The vitriol with which they spoke of him was VICIOUS, and had the effect of convincing me, and probably several adults, his was a voice of reason, one who spoke gently, clearly, and with intelligence, in contrast to all the loud, bombastic, ignorant bullshit being flung about by the idiot Senator and his cronies….

Today, of course, our political legacy from the past is one of unadulterated fiction; in my admittedly critical point of view, there isn’t a single elected official among the 455 men and women who sit in our federal government (SOTUS, HoROTUS, pOTUS, vpOTUS, & 12 judges on the SCOTUS….) who speaks to the public with only the truth to guide their words…. all of which is a long winded way of saying they ALL lie to the public, regularly, and consistently….

If you have evidence to the contrary, PLEASE, PLEASE, show it to me…. I honestly would LOVE to see some conclusive proof that even ONE of our elected officials habitually tells the truth when making statements to the press…. Just ONE would be good… It would imply the potential presence of others, which would be a big improvement over what we have now, which is a big ZERO….

SIGH…. I’m ranting, aren’t I? I didn’t even notice when it began, but, I guess I am…. Oh well, it’s never out of place, not in this society…. I’m going to pull an Adlai, though, and do something which, if not enlightening or particularly uplifting, may well come as a relief…. I’m stopping the rant here, and will come back to praise Mr. Stevenson (and, further vilify Mr. McCarthy) another time…. For now, let’s find some old-school pearls on the subject of our Beloved Ruling Class, and have some fun with that…. It will be better for all of us, I’m sure…..

“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.” — G. K. Chesterton, ILN, 3/14/08

“We have met the enemy; in fact, we elected him.” — Cruickshank’s Law #1

“To be overtly queer, in a culture that denigrates and hates queerness, is to be political.” — Michael Bronski

“Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.” — Seneca (8 BC) — Hercules Furens, i, 1, 255

“Anyone can grab a Tiger by the balls, but it takes a real man to squeeze!” — Smart Bee

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.” — Mark Twain

“There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth.” — G. K. Chesterton, ILN, 7/18/08

Aha!…. An Oreo pearl…. and if I need to explain that, I’ve done something very wrong….. Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, because I damn near orgasmed there on the Twain quote!….    Bwuuuhahahahahaha!!!…..
_____________________________

I was right, or write, whatever the case may be, when I implied my own level of mischievousness today; it almost got away from me, but, I managed to keep it within the assigned limits, so, we’re good to go…. I’ve proofed the above, but, if my recent attempts at that are any indication, you’ll find at least one, if not many, egregious typos and/or errors of syntax, or grammar…. You can bet on it…. If not, well, good, but, otherwise, so be it…. I’m done with this one, and will now perform the necessary incantations and spells to get it online…. See y’all tomorrow, ffolkes…. Be well, and happy…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

dozer3

Four coconut-periwinkle macaroon omelets, please, to go….

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Ffolkes,

Save for the hour, I’d be happy to be up and writing; that’s on the one hand….. On the other hand, given the hour, I’m happy to be retired, without the need to get going to get ready for work (when you see those 4 letters arranged into that word, imagine it spoken aloud with Maynard G. Kreb’s pronunciation, sort of a high-pitched squeaking, with a heavy note of fear, and a querulous, wavering tone…. WUURK?!….). In fact, I’m up at what seems to be my new normal time, between 0330 and 0400, in time to beat the coffee, but, not the cat….

Not that I’d actually BEAT the wee thing; she’s annoying, but I’m not a species chauvinist, and would never allow myself to treat an animal like I would a human…. they deserve far better than that…. To a human, I can justify almost ANY sort of cruelty or antagonism, as they are, at least, my peers, and whatever I can do to them, they can do to me (if they dare….)…. With animals, that does not hold true; to abuse ANY animal, in my mind, is about as low on the morality scale as one can go….

My own moments of regret over immoral behavior, and, the time spent flogging myself in the lower levels of my personal hell, all have their origin in those few times in my life when I’ve forgotten that, and have been inadvertently cruel to an animal…. Whatever I’ve done to any human has already been returned to me, tenfold, so I don’t fret at all about whatever happens with them…. Animals, by nature, do not have the same sort of cruelty in them, so it isn’t cricket to put the onus of our own nature on them; nothing they’ve ever done deserves that kind of dark, evil response…

Hmm…. How the hell did I end up there? That has to be one of the oddest little mind-trips I’ve ever taken, all the more so for having done it right out here in the relative open, where anyone & everyone can witness the strange manner in which my mind “does its thing”…. so to speak. I haven’t the foggiest why I felt compelled to take that little journey into the dark side of Man’s nature, but, it must have had something to do with the cat…. She’s gotten used to me being up early, & now feels entitled to my company when SHE wants to get up…. Hence, early morning mischief, to get my attention….

Ah well, being up early seems to work better for me, anyway…. and the wee furry beast has at least stopped trying to wake up milady Pat, so that’s a good thing, I suppose….. Now, if only there were some way to sync the hours that Pat and I sleep, maybe we could spend a bit of time together, while actually awake and aware, rather than being on the same schedule as two people working opposite shifts to save on babysitting, like when we were young, raising kids….

Ah well, one can’t have everything, I suppose…. I complain about our BRC’s false sense of entitlement so often, I feel as if I should keep from exhibiting it in my own life, as far as possible…. I take what reality gives me, and try to be happy with that…. It also gives me the chance to practice the wisdom of Lao Tzu, as related in yesterday’s Pearl, who reminds us…. “He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”

Shall we Pearl?…..

“OK, so you’ve got a Ph.D.  Now, don’t touch anything.” — Smart Bee
_____________________________

Back in the early days of this thought experiment gone rogue, which WordPress, and the forces of peer pressure insist I call a blog, the Pearls of Virtual Wisdom were shaped differently…. Originally, back in the time before the word “blog” existed, in the original email format, Pearls consisted of a short, hopefully powerful intro, followed by three to five pearls, which comprised the majority of the material under consideration.

By the time the Daily Pearl was posted on 3/12/2012, it had grown to include five sections, each of which began with a single pearl, followed by my thoughts, which, in that period, constituted the larval stage of the politirants and religirants you see in today’s version of P’sOVW…. Here are two entries from that date, one of each…. (Minor changes made to reflect the passage of time, blended “so’s you’d never know’t”…. I hope….)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From 3/12/2012:

“I don’t make jokes.  I just watch the government and report the facts.” — Will Rogers

I was going to use this as a springboard for another rant on our beloved ruling class….. But, the more I thought about it, the longer it percolated in my brain, the sadder I grew….

I used to feel a lot of love for my country, if for nothing else, because of the dream of liberty and human empowerment that our system of government was envisioned, and intended, to create, and maintain. The founding fathers had a vision, of a country where every man and woman had the same opportunities, to live their lives as they chose, as every other person, without censure, and without the fear of being persecuted for their beliefs, no matter how different they were from everyone else’s.

A dream of a place where children could grow up without the fear of hunger, or abuse, or death from the skies. A place where a man, or a woman, was respected for just being human, without having to prove their worth to some ignorant asshole who is afraid of any color skin but their own.

Instead, we live in a society whose diverse segments have an extreme, and sadly justified, mistrust of each other, where the rich and powerful, instead of uplifting their fellow man, use their influence and wealth to divide and discriminate, always with the intention of keeping the less fortunate in a powerless state, too downtrodden to even hope for better.

We live in a society that ignores its elderly, and abuses its children; a society where people are starving amidst mountains of food.  We have a produced a culture that glorifies war, and sees peaceful coexistence as weakness; a culture where it is a crime for a man to kill another for honor, but is praised for being part of an army of professional killers.

This country has reached the sad point in its history where the twin concepts of honor and duty have been supplanted as the basis of our national character, replaced by the glaring presence of avarice, false entitlement, and expediency.

Yes, I am saddened by Will’s joke, because it cuts far too close to reality, and home…..

From today, 3/28/2014:

“They scream into my ears,
But what they say will only make me deaf.”

— Claus Larsen
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.” — Calvin, Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes

Jimmy Swaggert, and the other 5 or  6 televangelists who regularly get caught literally with their pants down come immediately to mind for a list of potential recipients of divine extermination intervention…….

Newt Gingrich, along with a large number of his cohorts in Congress, obviously, for congenital lying, and excessive sliminess….

Rick Santorum, because I can’t imagine an entity as smart as God is reputed to be to let this ….. person…. (I believe using the word “person” is being kind, but, we’ll give the benefit of doubt for the time being, for expedience… See, even I fall prey to that failure of ethics…), well, I don’t think He will let him speak in his Name for long, not without exacting some price….. (I’ve heard that divine price-tag can be a bit heavy….)….

Twitt Romney, that elitist asshole…..

…. and, finally, as Yul Brynner stated so beautifully in his only attempt to sing on film: “Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…..” to which I would add, “and a cast of thousands, ad nauseam infinitum…..”

I suppose it also says something less than admirable about the media to note that much, or even MOST of the crap to which we are exposed, by the members of the (supposed) fifth column, consists, in the main, of reports on the activities of the LEAST admirable examples of our species, who, unfortunately, are the ones who make for salable news…. These newsworthy individuals provide the material that will pay for the advertising costs, so the shadowy corporate masters are satisfied that we will hear about the latest, greatest new products, each of which fills some previously unknown manufactured need.

The most lucrative subject matter, the stories that sell the most papers, or which comprise the material for the most successful TV shows is, as it turns out, an endless variety of dramatic fantasies, describing in minute, intimate detail, all of the stupidest, most egregious examples of the (verifiably…) insane antics of a (seemingly) limitless number of the WORST of humanity….

Loud, perverted, fanatic religious zealots (aka. preachers….), unprosecuted criminals wearing power suits and ties, (aka, politicians….), and a parade of sports and entertainment figures with an average IQ of 77 (actors, actresses, ball players, and police/military myrmidons)…. These are the current examples of “famous celebrities” we are supposed to fawn over, to use as our idols, for emulation…. at least, if we are to believe what we see on the TV (total vacuum)….

I often feel a sense of despair after reading the news…. fortunately, I have WordPress to alleviate any dangerous build-up of bile….. but, all too often, it sure makes me wish for a few well-placed bolts of lightning to provide some comic relief, at least…..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From today, 3/28/2014:

“Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.” — Plato (428-348? B.C.)

Well, that was certainly confusing, eh? Maybe, just maybe, evolution is a good thing…. ya think?….
_____________________________

Today’s poetry section is the last to be completed before finishing; I don’t know if that means anything, or not, nor do I particularly care, at this point…. I’m getting tired…. I’ve written fresh, I’ve ranted a bit, I’ve edited a lot, and I’ve tried to maintain an even keel, all of which can be exhausting, given my standards for myself….

Since so much of this post comes from my tortured mind, I’m thinking I should include a poem of my own, and in fact, will do so, twice, if only to save the energy of looking on the web for someone else’s work…. First, a haiku about poetry, which I wrote on 3/12/2012, finding it only yesterday… followed by another by yours truly, from whenever…. sometime last year, I think….

POETRY

Flashing, bright words create
inevitable images;
truth consumes.

~~ gigoid ~~


Here is a poem from last year, with many of the same protagonists under discussion as in the rants below, and above…. Enjoy….

Accentuated Lessons

Bold statements of calculated intent
Become common rule of the malcontent.
Avarice assumes such attractive wear
Beguiling deception, illusory and fair.

Grasping and pulling with ghostly hands
Legally proper in all the signatory lands.
Seeking and finding each vulnerable soul
Anguish as payment for exacting the toll.

Wraiths of commerce’s invisible dead guards
Still haunt the dreams left in sad empty yards.
While absentee nobles sit in stiffly elegant splendor
Served by sad-faced detainees in abject surrender.

Escape from reality is illusory at best
Often we falter and fail its daily test.
Only when focused on inner strength
Does peace stay with us for any length.

Peace lies within, always…..

~~ gigoid ~~

_____________________________

WARNING: Fresh rant ahead…..

Say first, of God above or man below,
What can we reason but from what we know?

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Essay on Man, Epistle i, Line 17

At this point, I am still unsure whether or not I have a rant in me this morning…. However, I read these two articles yesterday, whereupon I set them aside to form the basis for discussion today….. so I guess I’ll discuss them…. The first is another fine treatise from the pen of Jon Carroll, on the responsibility and failure of the mainstream media in today’s complex world, written by a card-carrying, professional member of that media, written with excellent insight, and brave honesty…. not unusual for Jon, who has a long-standing habit of doing just that in his semi-daily column…. Please read this, then we’ll go on….

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/What-is-the-legacy-of-legacy-media-5352083.php

The next article gives a perfect example of the problem related above, as the media perfectly parrots some(any)thing told to one of them by the administration…. Read this one, too, please, and we’ll go on with our examination of the issues involved….

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Obama-End-collection-of-Americans-phone-records-5353850.php

You may recall two or three days ago, when I made some predictions following another announcement by the White House, regarding, in general, the public outrage over Eric Snowden’s revelations of the ILLEGAL and UNWELCOME actions of the NSA, wherein it was proven, by their own documentation, they had been spying on the American people, right along with their spying on the rest of the world….

Barry got the picture, that folks were more than just a little pissed off about what they’d been caught doing, so he decided to do the dance, the “diddling the truth dance”, to distract the public from the real issues, thereby setting the stage to remove this subject from the public eye….. as is their common technique for dealing with unwanted publicity….

Keep that in mind, ffolkes, in looking at ANY of the statements from the pundits…. Their purpose, in whatever they say, is to soothe the outrage, and get the subject off the table…. They have absolutely no interest in, nor any intention of actually ceasing their illegal acts, but, they don’t want the public watching them over the shoulder, as they continue to illegally gather information that is none of their fucking business, ostensibly as part of their insane, paranoid efforts to remove the threat of terrorism…. which, one can see with the most cursory examination, is not an issue subject to dismissal quite so simply….

In their chaotic bumbling around in fear, they are willing to forgo any and all morality in the name of security…. Nor is it their ONLY purpose in collecting all the information they can on private citizens…. In today’s world, control of information is control of perception, and they’re well aware of this….

This attempt to remove terrorism from possibility is, of course, at best a silly notion, without any real chance of happening in today’s world; it merely provides further strong evidence of their own insanity…. Acting as they do, aggressively and antagonistically, as a way to achieve security is, not even arguably, but, most certainly, completely counter-productive for that purpose….. Actually, if looked at logically, such behavior is far less secure than learning to live with one’s neighbors without arguing…. But, in order to be able to follow THAT path, they would first have to give up their false sense of entitlement, their bigotry, and their fear of the “other”, defined as anyone different than themselves, by THEIR definition….

As I said yesterday, I hate being right about this kind of stuff…. but, I am right, so, that’s the way it is…. (If you disagree, feel free to join in the discussion… I’d LOVE to hear the justifications anyone might have for this type of insanity….) The administration has, thus far, come out with exactly what I expected, and what I’ve predicted they would do, by publicly shuffling the responsibility off to Congress, knowing that will waste tons of time, while Congress postures, spews BS, produces paper, and generally blunders about like a blind bull, without ever coming to any conclusive decisions…. This has the long term effect of sending the entire issue to the back halls, and back burners, to be forgotten, because this Congress cannot agree on bathroom breaks, much less any cogent legislation….

Any more bets? Boy, if they keep this up, and I can keep finding suckers to take my odds, I could get rich, well before any legislation on this is ever passed, and certainly before the White House condescends to act at all…. It’s almost too easy…. but, I suppose, that’s what all of our beloved leaders say, every day, when they see how easy it is to lie to the public…. It’s important, in today’s world, to remember the following piece of REAL wisdom….

“Cheese food is not cheese.” — Mom’s Hint #052
_____________________________

Well…. contrary to popular belief, and despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m speechless…. I’ve been up, and typing, almost continuously since arising, with only the breaks needed to keep from getting into a worse-case pain configuration….

(Side note: A pain configuration is my own term for a postural setting for my body… When I can manage to find a position, sitting, standing, or lying down, that is reasonably comfortable…. defined as “the least painful” position…. I try to remember it for future use, and to stay in it for as long as I can…. Then, of course, I have to move, and find another setting…. with a new postural configuration, and new time limits to explore…. SIGH…. It’s a silly way to have to live, but, it’s better than the alternative…)

Now that I’ve come this far, only to fall right back into an intimate TMI episode, I’ve probably bored you senseless, enough so…. Shit, you can’t even bring this into focus, can you…. WHOA!!!…. Wait, I’ll catch them with the auto-hammock…. Whew!…. Okay, that was close…. I’m glad it worked…

C’mon, wake up…. There you are….. Okay, breathe, in, out, in, out….

Alright now? Sorry, I’ll try to keep it moving along enough keep you from seizing up again…… Well, no, I won’t, because, hey, we’re done here, aren’t we?…. Yep, I’m sure of it…. So, see ya…. Y’all look a bit pale, you might want to get some water, and lie down for a while when you get home…. Ta then…..

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

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

Which is Why….

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

gigoid the dubious

dozer3

Cops & donuts– Match made in heaven, or evil twins? Film at 11…

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3

Ffolkes,

Today we are happy to welcome the advent of a heretofore long-standing non-existent state of being, which, given its long absence, may or may not be entirely welcome…. There, is that obscure enough for you? I think it’s a cool bit of literature, myself, sort of teasingly compelling, but, then, that’s to be expected from me, as the author. Regardless of that, though, it’s still a real-time, official announcement, though not fully sanctioned by the PTB, due to my not telling them about it…. You see, I just found out a short bit ago, so, I didn’t have time to register… I’ll get around to it one of these days, if it ever happens again…. Can’t tell right now how long it’ll last…

Okay, so now that we’ve gotten to the second paragraph, I’ll clue y’all in to just WHAT THE HELL I’M TALKING ABOUT….. Basically, this is it… we, or rather I, am in an entirely unaccustomed, and completely unfamiliar state of mind, induced by the application of NINE straight hours of sleep…. Yep, nine…. I was not just amazed, but completely flabbergasted, one of the language’s finest words, if not our favorite condition to encounter in ourselves. Nonetheless, paranoia aside, I awoke, looked at the clock, & laughed out loud in joy…. once I’d cleared my head enough to calculate how long I’d been asleep….

It’s an astounding feeling, one I vaguely recall from those halcyon days of my youth, to actually arise feeling as if one has had enough sleep, fully able to throw off the perfectly natural impulse to go back to bed, with ease…. Though I don’t find myself any more clear-headed than I achieved when calculating my downtime (obviously, if this introductory section is any clue…), I FEEL wonderful, physically speaking, at least for the moment…. I’m sure gravity will have its usual effect on me over time, but, for now, I’m happy with how it feels to get this far into the day without suffering too much pain….

Okay, enough crowing… boasting becomes ugly quite quickly…. It would be easy to go overboard in my joy at having done what the rest of the world gets to do on a regular basis, so, I’ll cut this off right here…. Instead, I’ll try to figure out a way to get from here to the first section, without making too big of a mess, or disrupting the flight holding patterns of all the other pilots in the air… I know it makes the controllers nervous when I change course over the airport, but, on a day like today, they’ll never catch me anyway, so we can pretty much do as we like…. at least, until they catch us, which they haven’t been able to do yet….  Our chances are good…

Shall we Pearl?….

“Clear the laundromat!!  This whirl-o-matic just had a nuclear meltdown!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Yow!…..
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“It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.” — Galileo Galilei

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Officials-Senate-considered-phone-company-option-5349450.php

As predicted in yesterday’s rant, the pundits in the House and Senate are now showing us the expected waffling and discord around the subject of data storage, all of which assures me I was right to say they will accomplish nothing other than producing a lot of hot air and paper, all without actually changing ANYTHING…. Any bets?…. I’m willing to wager just about every penny I can scrape together on this one….

In truth, I hate to be right in instances such as this…. What I related yesterday in my politirant can now be seen to be a perfectly accurate assessment of how the tactics of the White House would play out on this stage, according to the script they are trying to establish, as the one they want us to believe as the truth…. I mentioned how Congress would take up the challenge of reforming the NSA regulations on phone tapping and data collection, whereupon the bickering would begin, and nothing would actually get done… Read the article above, then tell me I was wrong…. Can’t do it, can you?….

Nope, they’re fulfilling my prophecy perfectly, which means, the next event to be staged will involve some sort of faux crisis, or as close to one as can be managed on short notice, to pull the attention of the media, and thus, the public, away from the spying issue altogether…. I’d rather not say I expect to see another school shooting, or some random college nut case who goes wonky during exams and takes a rifle up to a tower, where he starts picking off his co-sufferers…… but, that sort of event is usually what happens to draw our focus away from where the administration doesn’t want it to be….

SIGH, as I said, I hate being right like this, because it all seems so damn SORDID and CHEAP…. The American public is so fucking EASY to FOOL, it’s like taking candy from a baby, which politicians have been known to do. It is, to my mind, simply disgusting, and makes me want to puke when they feed us this sort of bullshite, expecting us not only to believe what they say, but support them in what they do…. the assholes. They haven’t the slightest clue that there are a great many of us out here who DON’T BELIEVE A FUCKING WORD of what comes out of their mouths….. In fact, it is my not-so-humble opinion there is a sure way to tell when they lie to us, by simply watching their mouths… if it’s open, and words are coming out, they are lying…. Be sure of it….

On that note, I am done ranting, for now…. I’m too angry to write well, or, for that matter, to think objectively, both of which are preferable in ranting mode… So, the rest of this section will be an old-school pearl, with the guiding parameters set to take shots at the BRC, or the Asininnies, whomever comes first into the cross hairs….

Honest politician — Oxymoron

“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.” — Lao Tzu

(This is included to show the 180º, completely opposite philosophy of the one held by ALL our elected officials…. To a politician, enough is never enough…. it is in the nature of the beast….)

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences.” — Robert Ingersoll

(I can only wish more of our pundits knew this….or, at minimum, acted as if they suspected it to be true…..)

“Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.” — Walt Kelly, Potluck Pogo

“If someone tells you he’s going to make a “realistic decision, you immediately understand that he’s resolved to do something bad.” — Mary McCarthy

“Oft hath even a whole city reaped the evil fruit of a bad man.” — Hesiod (c. 700 BC) — Works and Days, Line 240

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself.  Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

All things considered, not a bad set of charges…. I think any reasonable grand jury would vote for indictment….
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“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Sometimes, prose can almost feel like poetry…. such as the above line from Mr. V…. Words are powerful, aren’t they? Other times, it almost seems as if a poem is a discussion, more prose than poem, yet, fills the mind with more than just the meaning of the words used…. I love language, it’s just so…. so… so COOL!….. Here is an example of the phenomenon of which I speak…. Enjoy!….

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

~~ Robert Frost ~~

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Just for fun, here is an excerpt from an old Pearl, on the subject of poetry, that I think will make a nice bonus to today’s poetry section…. It might also be a surprise, for those of my Gentle Readers who know my opinion of Will S…… It fits well with my comments above, regarding how I feel about words…..

From 12/10/2011:

Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Romeo and Juliet — Act ii, Sc. 2

First, let me say that I’m not Willie’s biggest fan. Oh, I give him his props; he is arguably the best author of his, or any other age, as well as one of the most prolific. But, being somewhat lacking in expertise, in the area of Middle English slang, reading his work takes on a more forbidding aspect….. I get bogged down trying to struggle through the admittedly beautiful, but barely transparent language he used. I have a hard time reading it, as I have to stop frequently to puzzle out his meaning before I can go on with the story. It must, however, be admitted… he was, indeed, most incredibly talented at painting wonderful pictures of his time’s culture, using an incredibly extravagant number of words, strung together with great beauty. He did it a lot, too….

I’ve included this couplet from Romeo and Juliet, mostly because it is what I consider to be a ‘perfect’ example of the art of poetry.  Perfect rhyme, perfect cadence, perfect illumination. “Sweet sorrow”. What a wonderful pair of words to have found each other in his play! Everyone alive has felt just that, no explanation necessary. These are words of such power that they still carry the same sense of rightness today, the same emotional content, as they did when they were written.

He wrote these lines so well, that the couplet has been preserved through over four hundred years by word of mouth, not by being transcribed to paper; even people who are completely illiterate have heard these lines; even as non-readers, they know who wrote them, and most even know the play it is from. Now THAT is  is some powerful poetry……
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Here we are, finally, in section three; naturally, since it has gone so smoothly, I haven’t a bloody clue as to what to put here…. I’ve already ranted, complete with an old-school pearl… The poetry section had a bonus, so this Pearl is already fat with material…. Anything more would be gilding the lily, to be sure…. But, what the hell, I’ve always enjoyed that procedure…. Futile as it may be, in the most real of senses, it sure does make some nice looking lilies, you know?

So, without further ado (or any more crap….), here is a seven-star, randomly chosen, harlequin pearl, with duly-executed side-comments, for your enjoyment, elucidation, delectation, and/or disbursement to the farthest reaches of your recycling bin….

“A proverb is the wisdom of many and the wit of one.” — Lord John Russell

“There are so many ways that we sabotage our own divinity, our own possibilities. and the mythologies of race and gender may well head the list.” — Callan Williams

(Oops…. How did that get in there? Oh well, it’s quite true, so, it can stay…. just don’t try to make it fit in with the others, okay?…. I wouldn’t want anyone to hurt themselves…. Just file it for later perusal, and you’ll be fine….)

“Is it clean in other dimensions?” — Zippy the Pinhead

(THAT’s more like it…. Okay, we’ll finish strong….)

“If a person offend you and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures. Simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick.” — Mark Twain, Advice to Youth Speech, 1882

“Although most cowboys are not politicians and most politicians are not  cowboys, they share the common experience of being able to do a fairly decent job of throwing the bull.” — Smart Bee

“I believe everybody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn’t trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string.” — Scott Adams

And here I wait so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all of these things twice

— Bob Dylan, “Memphis Blues Again”
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As I thought, this one kind of got away from me a little bit…. It doesn’t seem to have caused itself much harm, though, and I don’t see any particularly large fields of debris on our back trail, so, my guess is, we’ve go a winner here… It’s good enough to float, and fly, so, I’m launching it just as if it mattered….. As for y’all, well, I’ll see y’all tomorrow, yes? Yes…. 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 the dubious

dozer3