Ffolkes,
Oh sweet blessings of Morpheus! It felt so good to sleep, I may go do it again in a little while, if I can persuade my brain/body to fall out again….. Sorry, can’t help it, it’s the hedonist in me; always wanting more of a good thing than is good for me. But, gosh and golly, it sure feels good…. Okay, enough on that… Hedonist, maybe, narcissist, never….

It’s been a week now, and apocalypse has not happened, so I guess all the Republicans can now relax. There is still a lot of sour grapes floating around places like Facebook, with the more vocal of my conservative buds still posting “Obama is evil” messages, and lamenting the loss of “their” country….. just as if it were ever really theirs. The reactions that we saw by Romney, Ryan, and that would-be king-maker, Rove, on election night were typical of what I’m seeing now, basically variations of shock and disbelief, as their delusions of adequacy came tumbling down along with their hopes. They coudn’t understand where they had gone wrong, which is precisely why they DID go wrong. They were operating from a false assumption right from the start, i.e., that their ilk were still in the majority in this country, so their efforts were doomed to failure from the moment they first gave a clue as to their intention to oppress every other demographic category but their own…..

These folks on FB who are still disgruntled are demonstrating exactly why they lost the election, and do not even realize the depth of their own bigotry. It’s kind of pathetic, when you look at it rationally, and not worthy of any more discussion. Therefore, I banish such idiocy from this blog, until such time as another of their pathetic attempts to garner public power comes to pass, in which case, well, the gloves will come off again…. but, there is no need to dwell on such ignorance when it is clearly in the wane in terms of societal prominence.

Not too shabby…. sleep can do wonders, can’t it? Here we are, not yet out of the intro, and I’ve already ranted a bit, chastised ignorance a bit, and banished a subject from discussion…. Nope, not too shabby at all, for someone who is somewhat less than completely awake. It almost convinces me I did the right thing by waking up when I did…. Now, if only Murphy would take a day or two off, maybe this lottery ticket might hit…. ya never know…. Just in case he doesn’t though, perhaps I’d best get on with today’s effort…. with Murphy constantly on the prowl, it’s good to keep one’s cards close to the chest…. Shall we Pearl?……
__________________________________

“Like, if guns are outlawed, the lawyer population will explode out of control.” — Smart Bee

You can’t hear me, but I’m guffawing loudly; you can’t see me, but I have a huge grin on my face. I love lawyer jokes. They are perfect humor, as far as I’m concerned, and I frankly don’t give much of a shit what any lawyers may think about it…. They’re the ones who went to law school, not me…. I once had a lawyer’s secretary tell me I shouldn’t make lawyer jokes when talking to her boss, but I just told her he’d probably heard them all, and if he couldn’t take a joke, then f….k him….. Well, I was polite, & didn’t use the “f” word, but the rest is accurate…. and, like her boss, she’s the one working in a lawyer’s office by choice….

I call them perfect humor because they express so well what the main body of humans feel, and turn it into an object of humor, instead of one that causes repeated pain, by considering just how badly one has been screwed by one of that infamous group. Lawyer jokes are so ubiquitous that all of us can probably tell one or two without even having to see them in print; all of us have our favorite lawyer joke, and we keep it at hand for telling. I’d bet almost anything that is truth, and anyone who contests it is just wrong, and should put their money where their disbelief is, where I’ll be happy to relieve them of it…..

Hell, I can think of at least three, just off the top of my head, without particularly making a great effort to recall. There’s the one about the skid marks, the one about the lawyer and St. Peter, and, hmm, how about the one about the lawyer, the politician, and the priest walk into a bar…..  There’s a million of them, and all of them are hilarious, because that is what humor and laughter is all about…. relieving the pain that is caused by real live solicitors and their fucking “billable hours”…. assholes, every one of them….

Okay, maybe not ALL of them. I know one personally, and he’s a good guy. Of course, he no longer works as a lawyer; his sense of integrity didn’t fit in well with the general run of them, I think, and the others drove him out of the business; he won’t speak of it, but knowing him as I do, I imagine it had something to do with him making a decision according to what was the right thing to do, not the legal thing…. There are others out there; I’ve heard of their work, though I’ve yet to meet one. These are people who became lawyers because they believe in the law’s purpose, which is to protect people from each other. They work to assist people to do what is best for the client, by helping them find their way through the maze created in the name of society.

As far as I can see from my observations of society, though, the great majority of lawyers are in the business because of their love of money, not their love of the law, or of others. They know that the law, in all its majestic complexity, is impenetrable to the common man, who is helpless in the face of it. These human predators learn the language and map-reading skills that allow them to navigate these complex legal pathways, and then set themselves up as essential guides through the wilds of the court system. Being essential, they can therefore set their own prices for their services, and those prices are at least as out of line with reality, in terms of their real worth, as those of professional athletes, doctors, corporate executives, and politicians. In addition, lawyers have the added advantage of having other lawyers in the position to approve their fees and methods of thievery as being legal, since the judges, who interpret the laws, and politicians, who write the laws, are about 75% lawyers themselves…. It’s a closed club, ffolkes, and the rest of us aren’t members…..

So, as long as lawyers exist in our society, they will attempt to manipulate and control the rest of us; they figure that is their right, as the ones who are in charge of keeping the rest of society under the aegis of law, not for OUR benefit, but their own. And, as long as they, and politicians, and executives, and doctors, continue to abuse their professional status by stealing from the rest of us (Athletes are just the lottery winners, that the men who are really in charge hold up in front of us to tempt, and to make us think it could happen to us…. They’re of no real significance in reality, other than as dupes and decoys…. distracting the rest of society with the glitter attached to their shoes…..), why then, I’ll keep telling jokes about them, as often as I have to, to keep myself from finding a gun and starting to eliminate the problem another way…..

Here are my two favorites….. with no attribution, because I’ve known them for so long I have no idea where I first heard them…. Lawyer jokes are kind of like mushrooms after a heavy rain; they just pop up everywhere there’s a shady spot with some s__t nearby for food…..

A lawyer came to the gates of Heaven…. St. Peter says, “We don’t get many of you up here…. but, we’re offering a deal right now. You go to Hell for as many years as you caused Hell for others on Earth, then you can come back up for the rest of eternity in Heaven, for your good works and faith.” The lawyer says, “I’ll take the deal.”  So, St. Peter says, “Okay, so that will be 31,272 years in Hell, then you can….” “Wait a minute!” yells the lawyer. “I’m only 65 years old!” St. Peter smiles, and says, “Oh, yes, but we calculate by billable hours….”

There are two smears of roadkill on the highway…. How can you tell which is the snake, and which is the lawyer?
There are skid marks leading up to the snake.
__________________________________

A Song About Myself

I.
There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be-
He took
In his knapsack
A book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels,
A slight cap
For night cap,
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This knapsack
Tight at’s back
He rivetted close
And followed his nose
To the north,
To the north,
And follow’d his nose
To the north.

II.
There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
For nothing would he do
But scribble poetry-
He took
An ink stand
In his hand
And a pen
Big as ten
In the other,
And away
In a pother
He ran
To the mountains
And fountains
And ghostes
And postes
And witches
And ditches
And wrote
In his coat
When the weather
Was cool,
Fear of gout,
And without
When the weather
Was warm-
Och the charm
When we choose
To follow one’s nose
To the north,
To the north,
To follow one’s nose
To the north!

III.
There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
He kept little fishes
In washing tubs three
In spite
Of the might
Of the maid
Nor afraid
Of his Granny-good-
He often would
Hurly burly
Get up early
And go
By hook or crook
To the brook
And bring home
Miller’s thumb,
Tittlebat
Not over fat,
Minnows small
As the stall
Of a glove,
Not above
The size
Of a nice
Little baby’s
Little fingers-
O he made
‘Twas his trade
Of fish a pretty kettle
A kettle-
A kettle
Of fish a pretty kettle
A kettle!

IV.
There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see-
There he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red,
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England-
So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder’d,
He wonder’d,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wonder’d.

John Keats
__________________________________

“He who dies a thousand deaths meets the final hour with the calmness of one who approaches a well remembered door.” — Heywood Brown

I almost passed this by when I first read it, then I thought a moment about it, and it occurred to me that it sounds like a defense of cowardice, which is what we usually associate with the phrase “He who dies a thousand deaths”….. Upon further reflection, though, that phrase, though certainly appropriate for describing the state of uncontrolled fear that brings a human to react with cowardice, could also be used to describe some of my own experience in dealing with violence. To generalize that thought, it could be said that a person who faces situations where death is hovering nearby, always a threat to manifest its presence in reality, is also dying a death each time, because their imagination is always aware of that proximity of possibility….

I made the mistake once of counting how many times I faced off with a person who wanted to rip my head off, and would have done so had I not acted to prevent that from becoming reality. Suffice it to say it was entirely too many times, though somewhat less than a thousand (not by much, but less….), and my imagination was stimulated into conjuring visions of possible outcomes that included my own death, each and every time. Of course, the key to success in such situations is to be able to put aside, or ignore, those visions, in order to keep them from becoming real, and I learned very well to react very quickly in a way that allowed me to control the outcome, rather than random chance or, worse, having the other party assume that control. Fortunately for all involved, I never lost…. at least, not in the sense of becoming physically injured, or dead. (Nobody else that I controlled was ever hurt or killed,  either, a fact I’m pretty proud of…. and mental injuries are another story, entirely….)

The quote above is one that I find to be a comfort to me as I get closer to the time when death will come to make my acquaintance in this lifetime. As a conscious being, I naturally have to believe that my mind, or soul, if you prefer, will not cease to exist; only a change that we do not understand will happen, one which no one has ever successfully explained with any degree of certainty. There is, of course, no evidence to support the belief that we do not merely stop existing, like the flame of a candle, when we die, that we will somehow “wake up” somewhere else, according to our particular set of preferences in such philosophies.

Nothing tangible can be produced, or has ever been produced, that makes such a belief a conclusion; contrarily, there is also no evidence available that it is not true. We each have a strong feeling that our soul is indestructible, like energy of any type, but no incontrovertible proof is available for either side of the issue. Thus, we can only hold on to our sense of spiritual connection to the universe, that part of us that knows that, like sunlight, or electricity, or heat, our conscious mind is a manifestation of energy, one that, like all the other kinds of energy we perceive, does not cease to exist, ever. It may change forms, or even types (as light can become electricity, or motion become heat….), but it does not leave the universe at all.

To me, and to certain philosophies, the qualities of water are a good example to use as a way of understanding this principle. Water cannot be destroyed. You can, by altering its temperature, cause it to change form, from ice, to water, to steam…. but it cannot be destroyed at all. Our minds, and thoughts, can be thought of as water, ever flexible, ever changeable, yet never ceasing to exist in any way, and retaining within its being all the qualities that make it, and us, what we are…. another unique part of a beautifully complex and wonderful reality…..

To me, that is, indeed, a comforting thought…..

“If I am I because you are you, and if you are you because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you” ~~ Hassidic rabbi
__________________________________

Well, I like it, but, then, I’m prejudiced, I suppose. All in all, it came out well, save for the fact that the poem I’ve been working on isn’t ready yet, and I’m getting a bit lightheaded from the blood loss…. ah well, a bit of Keats should fix that. Now we’ll see if I can get my hips and back to cooperate long enough to get down to somewhere I can post it….. No worries, I’m stubborn, so…. in the meantime, y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

gigoid

Kowabunga!