Now that my shoulder is back in the socket, after getting thrown out by patting myself so hard on the back, I think I can continue to type… not that it seems to make any difference in anything. It’s a good thing I don’t do this for money, or for self-promotion; I’d be starving, big time. I’m pretty sure the sobriety and deeply controversial nature of most of my ranting, along with the length of what I write, has been striking many of my usual readers with its repetitive qualities, such that not many are stopping in very often of late to read…. Oh, I’m getting readers, and have had some great dialogue in the comment section; just not a lot of traffic overall….

S’okay by me… I write to stay sane. I also figured out something the other day, as I sat one early evening, thinking about, well, stuff…. I do that a lot…. just sit, and think. Always have; it seems to provide me with the time alone in my head that I need to feel as if I’m keeping up with things in there; you know, sweeping out old bullshit, programming new stuff, planning for future events, examining new ideas and stuff learned for validity, truth, and/or flaws in reasoning, stuff like that…. If it were a computer (my head) you could call it file maintenance, or defragmentation, or maybe running a registry cleaning software program…

Any who, while sitting and thinking, I realized that the routine I’ve developed over the last three years has been my mind’s adaptation to retirement, which it accomplished in order to keep me young…. All my life, I had routines that I built to deal with the demands of life, all of which involved getting up early in the morning, to get a jump on the necessary thinking, organizing, and just plain waking up that can make the difference between a good day, and a bad one, no matter what kind of work I, or anyone, is involved in; good planning makes for good outcomes…. Now that I have no real reason to get up in the morning, my mind decided to give me one, and made it necessary for me to write….. otherwise, I would certainly have gone mad…. stark raving mad, rather than my current level of mild anxiety mixed with unpredictable, intermittent emotional fragility, easily handled…

So, my job now is to write each day, in order to keep the demons from staying too long, joining up with their mates, and giving me REAL problems to deal with… If in the process, I can write something that makes someone smile, or think, or burn with outrage, or fall on the floor laughing, then I’ll be content…. Money isn’t necessary to make me feel satisfaction; I get mine from a well-turned phrase, or an apt insult to someone who deserves more than I can hit them with…. it’s enough for me….

Why look! I’ve meandered and blathered again, mostly about stuff that means little to nothing, and have again arrived at a suitable jumping-off point just at the right moment, when I’d finished my egotistic drivel…. This means we don’t even need to use one of the emergency methods, though, we did go a bit long again…. S’fine…. it’ll all come out in the wash, right?

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!” — Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

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Since the intro went so long, even without ranting, I’ll go old-school in this section, to try to keep from scaring anyone away this early…. Here is a pearl with parameters set to poke at our Beloved ruling class, and the public morality that allows them to keep on keepin’ on with their unruly shenanigans…. Hopefully, today, we’ll see some blood….

“Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy but, when put to the test, usually find it to be an ‘inconvenience.’ We have opted instead for an authoritarian system *disguised* as a Democracy.  We pay through the nose for an enormous joke-of-a-government, let it push us around, and then wonder how all those assholes got in there.” — Frank Zappa

“A man that expects to train lobsters to fly in a year is called a lunatic and is locked up. But a man that thinks people can be turned into angels by legislation is called a reformer and allowed to walk free.” — Mr. Dooly

“A pig ate his fill of acorns under an oak tree and then started to root around the tree.  A crow remarked, `You should not do this.  If you lay bare the roots, the tree will wither and die.’ `Let it die,’ said the pig.  `Who cares so long as there are acorns?'” — Smart Bee

“Nothing links man to man like the frequent passage from hand to hand of cash.” — Walter Sickert (1860-1942)

“And the Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns.  Hell, this country was FOUNDED by religious nuts with guns!” — P. J. O’Rourke

“Sure we’ll have Fascism, but it will come disguised as Americanism.” — Huey P. Long

“Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything?   If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.” — Will Rogers

Not too shabby at all; there’s some sharp sticks in there, ffolkes…. hope they caught one of the bastards right in the eye….. I love starting the day with some good red, American politician blood flowing…. It keeps all of us on our toes to see that shocking red color, and to know it’s our own fault if we let it continue this way…. Besides, they breed like flies, and there’s always another one ready to step into the old one’s shoes, bloody or not…. Sometimes, I swear, shooting politicians is like trying to stem the tide…..

Oops…. sorry, all you folks over there at the NSA…. I used the words “shoot” and “politician” in the same sentence; it’s a figure of speech. We’re only shooting insults, not bullets…. Bloody idiots…..

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Here is another new poem, just bled out yesterday, that speaks for itself….

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“I was brought up in the other service; but I knew from the first that the Devil was my natural master and captain and friend.  I saw that he was in the right, and that the world cringed to his conqueror only from fear.” — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), “The Devil’s Disciple”

It is possible, if one reads with intelligent absorption, and open perception, to hear the echoes of sardonicism in Shaw’s words; for my own part, I can almost SEE his tongue, firmly lodged in cheek, while he wrote this, struggling with all his might not to burst out into maniacal laughter….. This may have been the single most satisfying phrase anyone has ever had the fortune to write; it pokes the entire Western culture, with its overbearing elitism, its incredible arrogance, its pompous, stuffy demeanor, and its sheer insane insistence on basing an entire society based on a set of delusions fostered upon them by insane fanatics with no other morality than the dictates of their own perverted fears of the unknown, right in the proverbial eye….

It’s wonderfully antagonistic, too… I like that. Shaw had a lot of fun with this one, for, by it’s nature, his contention sets itself up in direct opposition to every point of morality favored by those in Christian society; since his own philosophical structure is NOT based on delusions, it is simple for him to see, and point to all the nonsense in the dogma that is supposed to act as the guide for his behavior…. which only enrages them, as they have no hold on him, or any way to shut him up, without showing themselves as the lying, or at least, misguided fools they are….

Now, I could discuss (rant about) this for a long time, and would enjoy every moment. It’s great fun to think up ways to annoy those hidebound dinosaurs; it IS a bit dishonorable, as it is not very nice to engage in battles of wit with unarmed opponents, but, then, I’ve never been very nice… not about this. But, in hopes of luring perhaps a few of my readers back, I’ll use this opportunity to reproduce an old-old-old school pearl, first posted here on 10/31/2011, when the entire Pearl of Virtual Wisdom was an old-school format…. So, what you will now see is the whole Pearl from that date….. Enjoy, it’s a good one…..

Ffolkes,

Due to circumstances that are completely within my control, I have  lot to do today, so I will be using the old format for this morning’s offering, with just a short intro, and then some mighty fine virtual food for thought. Between fighting off depression, scratching for change, and juggling creditors, I have neglected my homework, which only hurts me, so there ya go. I sleep a lot, probably because when I’m asleep, I feel more in control of my life.

Pitiful, isn’t it? Ah well, life is Change, and this situation too shall pass in time. I’ve procrastinated almost as far as I can with the homework, though I’m sure I’ll come up with at least one or two ways to put it off before I actually get to it. I’m creative in that respect, if in no other…….any who, here are today’s Pearls, all of which can be found in Category “Finest Kind Stuff”………

“To be “matter of fact” about the world is to blunder into fantasy…. and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.” — Robert A. Heinlein

“All the knowledge in the world is not wisdom”. — Albert Einstein

“Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.” — Steve Ely

(Sound familiar? Has a certain Tea Party ring to it, no?…..)

“Please come home with me…  I have Tylenol!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

Well, there you go, Ollie, another fine mess…..and in Technicolor too!  Y’all take care out there…..

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With this Pearl, I declare this blog officially back to relative normalcy; up at the usual time, finished at an appropriate hour, and posted before 7 AM…. I’ll take it.  In fact, I’ll take it as it is, and be done with it for today…. I’ll see you mañana, amigos…..