Building rapport by flapping gums, Mambo-style….

Posted on June 19, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Zip….

Zilch….

Nada…. which translates as “Not a damn thing”….

Nothing….

Nope, not yet….

Hmm…. huh? Oh, sorry, no, nothing yet…

Hell, at this rate, I may as well go back to bed….

That’s it, I give up….

I was waiting for inspiration to strike, but, it seems to have taken the day off, along with Calliope, or whichever muse is involved with the written word, outside of poetry…. Calliope probably has more to do with music, by the sound of her name, and it really doesn’t matter a damn bit, because none of them are here, or are willing to help today, so, fuck ’em…. We can’t wait any longer, and I’m just getting more p.o.’d by the moment…. I should have know better than to take one of them at their word; they may be iconic forces of nature, but, they ARE female….

Before you get all pissy at me for being sexist, I’m not…. Well, maybe a little…. I have one (a sex, that is…), so, it’s natural to have a bit of an attitude that sees the issue from that perspective…. With that in mind, it remains my opinion, based on my experience, that it is the nature of women, as a separate entity from men, to be less than truthful, if they have a reason to believe the truth would not serve their purposes.

I’m not saying men are any better at it than women, sadly, but, our code of honor (at least, for those of us who have one…) will cause us to at least CONSIDER telling the truth SOME of the time…. From what I can tell from a lifetime of observation, the truth, to women, is something they use at whim, to suit their purpose…. I have yet to find ONE who is completely honest, at least when it comes to what they tell men…. Sorry, but, that is the truth, ffolkes, and you can call me whatever you like, but, it remains the truth….

I don’t hold it against them, most of the time; it’s part of their nature, one dictated by Mother Nature as part of their role as the primary care giver for children….. A woman must think FIRST of survival, of herself, and of her children; this is natural law, and not subject to change at this late date in our development…. Thus, it is clearly not in their interest to consider telling the truth, if it won’t help them survive, or protect their young…. The truth, to women, is primarily a tool, one they use to meet their needs, but, not something they consider written in stone…. which is fine, from an evolutionary standpoint….

On a personal level, however, since women are really no more ethical or moral than men, and possibly less, given this characteristic, this tendency on the part of the fairer sex has caused me no end of hurt over the course of my life…. Of course, the answer to the whole issue is clear, anyway…. All one needs to do to protect themselves against the kind of problems that untruthfulness creates is to cultivate the ability to NOT expect to be told the truth…. that’s it.

If one doesn’t expect the truth, it isn’t a disappointment when one is lied to…. It’s still a bother, and a mild pain, but, at least it doesn’t take one by surprise, which is usually what causes the worst of any reaction to such prevarication…. In other words, don’t expect women to be anything other than what they are…. human, and flawed, just like men… Once one sees the whole picture from this perspective, it becomes possible to appreciate the opposite sex in full, for what they actually are, not what we fantasize them to be…..

Okay, well, that was interesting, if a bit risky to my health & well-being…. I’m not sure, exactly, how we got off into THAT particular subject, but, I think we’ll drop it there, as it is one that tends to create more controversy than it warrants…. The ongoing war between the sexes, to my mind, is fabricated by the media, and those in society who spend more time thinking about other folk’s behavior than they do monitoring their own…. along with all the gullible fools who buy into that sort of nonsense to begin with….

It’s all a bunch of BS, anyway, as I’ve found, after many years of trying to disengage from the battle, the primary key to successful relationships is honest communication, something both sides of the human species need to work on, especially when dealing with each other…. An attitude of appreciative acceptance of the true nature of the beast, on BOTH sides of the issue, is the key to successful relations with the opposite gender….

Why, look, though! It seems my blathering, even if it’s about a real, honest-to-goodness issue from reality, has once again brought us sufficiently far down the page to call this a legal introduction…. Of course, it does nothing to introduce anything, other than as a sort of separating line between the silence, and the cacophony which now ensues…. but, then, around here, we don’t expect it to do that, nor would we know what to do if it did….

Besides, it’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that if I ever do figure out how to do this section easily, it may just be the death knell of this whole process…. and we wouldn’t want that, now, would we? Would we? Hey, aren’t you going to answer that?….. Ah hell, never mind…. let’s get on with this….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a woman…” — Lennon & McCartney

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

Having gone completely off the rails in the intro section (not to mention risking my male neck with a discussion of the ongoing battle between the sexes….) I think we’ll start today with an old-school pearl, just to sort of clear the pipes, or the air, or other such euphemisms for getting on with it…. Let’s see what SB has for us today….

“Life without learning is death.” — Cicero

“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” — Thomas Paine “Common Sense”

“All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.” — Edward Abbey

“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.” — J. K. Galbraith

“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.” — Edward Abbey

“If you work on your mind with your mind, how can you avoid an immense confusion?” — Seng-Ts’an

In a message announcing victory in the naval battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812, Oliver Hazard Perry informed the American land armies, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

In one of the earliest expressions of ecological concern, Walt Kelley’s cartoon characters stood in their polluted swampland home, where Pogo sadly informed his companions, “We have met the enemy, and they are us.”

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

I’ve searched for some time now, and can’t make up my mind on a poem for today…. To save time, and because I can’t find anything more appropriate to today’s tenuous theme, here is a poem I wrote during the National Poetry Writing Challenge in April of 2013…. such as it is….

Rhyming is better than lying….

It’s all too, too much, he cried
I can take no more!
It’s all crazy, my brain is fried,
battered, bloody, and sore.

Talking heads shout out hatred and fear
jam for my morning toast.
Pointing fingers far, middle, and near
enemies everywhere, almost.

Women, gays, and seniors fall prey,
easy targets, slow and weak.
Convenient fools, wanting only to play,
used, and abused, even as we speak.

It enough to drive me floridly insane,
or want to buy a gun.
I may end up in jail, or in massive pain,
but, oh, it would be fun….

~~ gigoid ~~

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

“Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!” — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

This section was originally scheduled for another episode of the Life and Times of Wise Old Pine Cone, but, the Wise One has been busy with his new student, and he wasn’t able to let me get enough pictures to make an entry…. but, we’re working on it…. For today, I DO have a couple of pictures that I got one day last week…. We were talking about advanced techniques of meditation, and the Old Cone revealed his power by demonstrating the art of disappearing…. Look closely at these photos, and you’ll see an amazing feat of martial artistry, and the power of the mind….

The two photos below were taken in the space of two seconds, which is enough to show the effect, though not the actual disappearance, which is too fast for even a digital camera…. Watch….

Here is the master, seated on his meditation stool….

Now, two seconds later, the same stool….

Amazing, isn’t it? Next, in the picture below, we see the master, almost naturally hidden by his own natural camouflage, standing by a bush….

Without moving the camera, two seconds later, this is what it saw…..

Absolutely incredible, eh? That would be a handy little trick, if one was involved with say, a group of NSA myrmidons, who want to discuss my politics, at THEIR house…. Being able to leave whenever I wish could be a good thing…. Regardless of my paranoia, though, it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?

I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next!…..

“The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.” — Lao Tzu

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

It seems I’m done…. which, given my lack of mental organization today, is not just a surprise, it’s a moral victory…. Hell, I would have laid even money today’s post would end up mostly from the archives; since it didn’t, I figure it’s got to be counted on the positive side of the scale…. But, then, I do tend to foster delusional beliefs in my own free time, so, I suppose we’d best take that, and just play it as it lies…. All of which means, of course, that I can now bring this to a close, which will greatly please my thumb, throbbing with each keystroke as it is…. It’ll be fine tomorrow, most likely, so, 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

Naturally, the investment of prior absolution for future transgressions received gratis by agnostics causes catechism envy in devout Catholics, and numerous Episcopalians….

Posted on May 8, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Since retiring in 2011, (2010, technically, but, ’11 was my first full year in that state, so, we’ll use it as the jumping-off point, for the sake of mathematical convenience….), I’ve been slowly, steadily having more problems with my ambulation, as my spine, hip & shoulder joints, and overall level of arthritic deterioration reaches levels of effect that can’t be ignored, or compensated for, without paying a price, measured in steps of the 10-point scale of pain…. This includes whatever pinching of my sciatic nerves is going on to create the numbness that forms on my thighs when I stand, or walk, too long…. I can now only get a couple of blocks before sitting down for a recovery period becomes mandatory, lest I go into distressed metabolic crisis mode from the grinding pain that builds up….

Now, I’m a tough guy, for the most part…. Football, basketball, judo, and kung fu (to name just a few of the sporting activities I once pursued, daily….) taught me well, how to use my body to the limit of its strength and ability, while ignoring certain levels of pain, which were part and parcel of smashing into other’s bodies in football, and other sports, as well as the physical training involved in the martial arts, not to mention throws, kicks, punches, blocks, and many other skills that are painful to learn; learning to turn off pain’s demands on our attention is a primary skill of any athlete, or martial artist…. Pain becomes another motivational factor, not a limitation….

Then, of course, age related issues intervene, and one can no longer tolerate the physical demands of sports and the arts; for me, this began around age 40-45, when certain issues involving digestion became the foremost point of experience for me…. It’s a condition called diverticulosis, and there are physical aspects of having it that preclude certain athletic pastimes, so, starting at that age, my level of conditioning began to decline, and I began to experience more pain, of several different types….

Why, you are asking about now, is he regaling us with these tales of woe from his past? Hell, I’m not exactly sure…. except that this morning, pain is foremost in my mind, since my body decided to gift me with two of three possible types of pain, both at a level I can’t quite get stuffed into the box where it won’t affect me so badly…. which, in turn, is making it hard to concentrate on this Pearl…. So, in what may have been poor judgment, I decided to try to use it as a springboard for discussion, and lead into today’s Pearl that way…. However, it seems to be more of a bitch-fest, and that wasn’t what I had in mind for today, by a long shot….

I think I was going to try to turn the discussion into how to deal with pain effectively, but, since I can’t seem to do that myself this morning, trying to tell y’all how to do it might be asking more of my writing skills than is wise…. It also might be more of an intellectual challenge than I’m up to, as I can’t seem to concentrate for long on any one thought…. That makes writing, or ranting, or even pearling, particularly problematic…. Since that’s all I do here, it’s going to be touch and go as to whether or not this bombs completely….

I’m going to take a chance, though, and continue on to the rest of today’s effort…. It may turn out to be a mistake, but, that’s a risk worth taking, to get past this morning’s wonderful state of agony with a bit of aplomb….

Shall we Pearl?…..

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

I definitely don’t have an organized, official-type rant in me today, so I’m going to use a pearl format that I’ve used a few times previously, to good effect…. I’ll let SB pick out five pearls, then I’ll comment on them, hopefully in a way that will lead us somewhere worth being…. or, we could end up somewhere we’ll never find our way home from…. It’s a risk, but, I’m pretty confident I can find my way back from wherever we find ourselves, so, let’s give it a whirl….

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Essay on Criticism, Part ii, Line 15

It’s always good to start with a poetic pearl; it’s just classier…. This, of course, is a very familiar poem, (Okay, it’s actually an excerpt from a larger poem…. be that way….) even to those people who don’t read a lot of poetry. The first line has become almost a cliche in common speech patterns, as it has been used ever since first appearing, to indicate the perils of both possessing knowledge, and the lack of it, when reasoning, or, trying to reason…. It is only those of us who go on to read the rest of the epic poem who can truly understand the poignancy of this lament, as the last two lines of the quatrain show plainly the marked price of original sin…. and, in the process, gives us a hint of WHY we ate the apple…. Powerful stuff, of which Pope created a LOT…..

“You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.” — Margaret Thatcher

When I first saw this, I thought it was the PERFECT way to show how the thought processes of politicians operate; upon reflection, I believe it to be even better than that, as it shows not only WHAT virtually every one of them thinks, but, also shows the self-delusion that MUST take place in a pundit’s mind for them to turn that direction….

This little statement implies that, not only is a little white lie okay, when it’s for the good of those who are being led (“good”, naturally, being decided by the one elected, not the folks being led….), it’s practically a duty to lie, in order to be in the position to make that decision for others (you HAVE to be evasive?)….. Of course, this doesn’t admit to possessing, or come anywhere near any display of ANY sort of ethical, or moral reasons for acting in this manner, as there aren’t any that are justifiable…. That, unfortunately, has never seemed to matter much to them, or kept them from making up their lies….

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” — Marcus Aurelius

Okay, so, this one ISN’T about politicians, or preachers, or corporate snakeheads…. it’s about Life at Large, and how to live it well… And, darn it, it doesn’t need any more embellishment from me…. Oh, well, onward….

LAWYER: A professional advocate hired to bend the law on behalf of a paying client; for this reason considered the most suitable background for entry into politics. — Definition from “THE CYNIC’S DICTIONARY”

Now THAT’s what I’m talking about!…. This is a wonderful observation, made all the more appealing to me because it SOUNDS as if it is said in jest, when, in truth, it is a perfectly sober, accurate definition, based on long-term observation of Reality, as it pertains to society and culture….

Our government is inundated in lawyers; in certain circles, of which I am a conversant member, we refer to their presence in such numbers as an infestation, which gives a better feel for what they’re really like, to wit: vermin, such as rats, mice, or fleas…. the assholes…. As Jay Leno once noted, the definition of the word “politics” is from the Greek…. That is “poli” from “poly”, meaning “many”, and “tics”, meaning, “small, blood sucking vermin”….

Sorry, maybe I DO have a bit of a rant in there…..

“Nations and empires flourish and decay,
By turns command, and in their turns obey.

— Ovid

Now this is a very deep, incredibly insightful little couplet, from an poetess who lived well over 2000 years ago…. Even then, so long ago, there were enough ffolkes who could see the grand folly that permeates human society and culture, and were able to foretell the outcome of their own era’s repetition of what had gone before…. Now, if only we could get some of those who are in the position of leadership in this country to comprehend this concept, there might be a better chance for us to survive….

I’m not particularly hopeful that will ever happen, though, as I’m firmly convinced the men and women who inhabit the halls of our government wont’ ever get a clue, as they have what they consider more important work to do, that of emptying as much of the public treasury as they can fit into their own pockets; that doesn’t leave them room enough to accommodate, or even entertain, any such altruistic notion as species survival…. more’s the pity….

So, there you have it, a pearl of nondescript origin, in a reasonably new, different format, to take the place of what would probably have been merely another indictment of a lot of guilty folks, which happens often here, and is no doubt becoming a bit stale…. Hopefully, this little breath of fresh air will clear the atmosphere sufficiently to allow us a bit of breathing room, so we can come back to rant again another day…. When I do, I’ll be using this brilliant manifesto of technique, voiced by an old British bulldog, who became a politician, though reluctantly, I think….

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time–a tremendous whack.” — Sir Winston Churchill

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

Having begun the day, in section one, with a bit of classicism, it must be time for another reprint of an old favorite, from one of the masters…. Enjoy!….

A Thing of Beauty (Endymion)

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkn’d ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

~~ John Keats ~~

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

As noted, today, pain is causing this process to move along at a rapid pace, without a lot of heavy thought, which would be beyond my current capabilities…. It’s really too bad, too, because I’d hoped to spend a bit of time today visiting a few of my regulars, to let them know how much I appreciate seeing them at my site each day…. That will probably have to wait until, at least, later in the day, if I can manage to get some relief… In the meantime, here is a fresh, old-school pearl, with parameters set to let SB pick today, as I don’t have the patience to sit that long…. Hope it comes out okay….

“The more you know, the more confusing everything becomes.” — Smart Bee

“Man, were he not corrupted by Governments, is naturally the friend of Man, and that human nature is not of itself vicious.” — Thomas Paine

“It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.” — Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)

“Following the Noble Path is like entering a dark room with a light in the hand; the darkness will all be cleared away, and the room will be filled with light.” — Buddha

“It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what’s cool.” — Calvin & Hobbes

“His own character is the arbiter of every one’s fortune.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 283

“I may not understand what you say, but I’ll defend to your death my right to deny it.” — Albert Alligator, in Pogo, 26 September 1951

Hmm… a little obscure, but, all in all, not bad at all…. I’ll take it.

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

As well, since I have little choice in the matter, at least, none uninfluenced by the level of pain I’m currently living with, I’ll take whatever is above, as is…. No matter how many potential typos it has, it’s going out sans editing or proofing, other than what I’ve managed to do while trying to swim this horse across the Rubicon, or the Styx, or whatever mystical, metaphorical river you choose to call it…. Me, I’m calling it done….

See you tomorrow, ffolkes, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise…. (Pido disculpas por la blashpemia, pero, es necessario para mantener mi dignidad, si no otra razón….) (I know, it’s probably well mangled Español, but, I don’t claim any particular fluency, just basic comprehension, suited to my purpose… Plus, as an obsessive type, I looked up the words I’d forgotten….) Ta 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

“Patently absurd,” said Blackie, from the grave….

Posted on April 26, 2014 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

Back in the 1970’s, George Carlin used to have a routine in his stand-up shows, in which he discussed the “forbidden words”, to wit: shitfuckpisscuntcockcrapvagina, conveniently listed for you here without spaces, making them one vast, effective expletive, rather than seven small verbal bombs…. In this format, the seven unacceptable words are, in a small, illegal way, legitimized, formed into a word that is not only less offensive to write, and to hear, but, makes a quite efficient swear word, one that, as I can testify, releases a lot of tension, if stated rapidly, in a loud, assertive voice…. Well, maybe not…. but, it DOES make you feel better, even if it’s a bit too vulgar for regular usage among crowds of people….

Those seven words, when viewed as a list, comprise the majority of the words that TV and media censors, aka the FCC, using the standards provided by the Mrs. Mabel Grundy Foundation for Fundamentally Overbearing Morality, (rated at 8 on the 10-point Crackpot Scale….) decided should never be uttered on ANY media venues in this country, lest the morals of our children be forever compromised….. Of course, this does not take into account that nobody, not even the FCC, mostly, listens to them at all, but, hey, it keeps them busy and out of our hair, so, let them issue their little lists, and we can get on with the day….

Those words, in the order in which I wrote them, without spaces, as one very dirty word, are from another old literary cult classic, a book called “Candy”, an egregiously sexist, pornographic, thankfully short novel by a contemporary author, which I, being the adolescent dog I was back then (in the 60’s….), read avidly, behind locked doors, having been surreptitiously been provided the book by a friend who had stolen it from an older sibling (the most common method for sharing books among adolescent boys at that time….), passing it to me with much clandestine mummery after class one day, with the admonition, “Man, you GOTTA read this shit!”….. As may be guessed, at 13 or 14 years of age, boys are rather fixated on the subject of sex….

Hmm…. I suppose, if I had a clue as to what this is all about, I’d have to share it with you, so you would understand why we are laboring through this patently useless, and, sadly, mainly charmless discussion of stuff that means little, and has no apparent relation to anything remotely intelligent, or even interesting…. unless, of course, the antics of sexually frustrated adolescent males has some appeal for you…. It doesn’t have much for me, having lived through it once; it’s really no fun going back there, so I don’t…. and, I won’t…. at least, not now….

No, this has all been just another attempt to find something worthwhile with which to begin one of these Pearls…. Obviously, it’s another relative failure, except for the actual fact that it has gotten me where I need to go…. As you can see, my blathering has again pushed us far enough down the page that we can legally get on with business, suffering no financial or ethical penalties, for having subjected the public to unwarranted floods of wordy bullshit so early in the day….. Not that it bothers ME, but, the Feds get shitty, so I try to follow SOME of their rules, just to keep from having to wrestle with them every day….

All of that having been said, as it often is, we can now begin today’s dive for some suitable pearls…. That is, we can, if y’all have your masks, and your spear-gun, already in place, ready for today’s adventure, as we bravely set out to explore the wilds of consensual reality, naked and unafraid….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“To find a fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.” — Plutarch (46 AD-120 AD)

This is very true, so, it would behoove all of us to remember to be nice….. especially to those who inadvertently cause us mild discomfort, by making us read such useless crap….

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

One of the hardest parts of blogging on a daily basis, I’ve found, is keeping the chosen material fresh, especially when I tend to rely on a small set of subjects upon which to rant on a regular schedule…. As you know, if you’ve been here previously, I do like to take my shots at the BRC, which consists primarily of the men who prey upon the rest of humanity for their own benefit; most especially, I like to take my best shots at those assholes who prey on women and children, enslaving them as sexual objects for their own profit and sick indulgence….

However, as I tried to explain in the last post in which I spoke of this, it is extremely hard for me to write about, as it tends to kick in my PTSD symptoms…. I get a large jolt of adrenalin when I start to think about this, and my mind turns immediately to buying weapons, ammunition, and starting the planning process to go hunting, for pimps, snakeheads, and any other assholes involved in the sex trafficking trade….

Bleeding hearts may proclaim all the sad stories they know, or speculate, stories that might explain why these assholes are the way they are, but, I don’t really give a shit how they got the way they are; to do what they do, a conscious choice must be made, and, to my mind, that is enough to warrant removing them from the society of decent people, permanently…. If that means I’m playing God, well, so be it…. I am liable to be as good at it as any of the delusional versions; I have the advantage of actually having a physical form that can be touched, so there’s no question of my involvement, or my reality….

Just writing those last two paragraphs has me so worked up, my breath is speeding, my heart rate has jumped over a hundred, & my musculature is loosening up, relaxing and stretching…. I’m starting to breathe more deeply, too, as the adrenalin widens all of my blood and air passages in preparation for fight, or flight…. Having spent eleven years living with random adrenalin attacks, while working at Atascadero and Napa State Hospitals, frequently wrestling with the violently insane to save their life, or my own, I am all-too-familiar with those symptoms…. which include the necessity for waiting for up to three or four HOURS for them to wear off completely…. It’s a pain, to be honest, and I don’t like it at all…

Which is why I am going to cheat…. I’m going to reprint a rant from the archives, one of several I wrote during the year it was first posted, when I first began to write about this issue regularly…. This is one of my better rants, so I hope you enjoy it…. I have added, here at the beginning, a perfect pearl that I found as an appetizer to what follows…. Here then, our rant for today…..

“Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.” — Frank Leahy

From 12/4/12:

“Free enterprise ended in the United States a good many years ago. Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and drive out the small entrepreneur. In their conglomerate forms, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the legitimacy of the state.” — Gore Vidal

In his book, “Friday”, Robert Heinlein details a society of humanity’s possible future, one in which corporations have continued to grow beyond the boundaries of mere countries, until their interests become paramount even over that of the state, as observed by Mr. Vidal. We, of the society here on Earth in the early 21st century are witnessing that growth, as I write, and as you read…..

The small enterprise markets still exist, but only on the fringes of the economy, the major portion of which is busy manipulating the population into serving the economic trends that the corporations control, in the essential markets that cover everyone… In other words, the corporations monopolize most of the economy, allowing the fringe markets to exist to provide exotic, alternative toys and entertainments for the working classes.

Mr. Heinlein’s character, a young woman with designer genes, genius IQ, and Heinlein’s innate sardonicism, as part of an assignment, is required to perform a research and analysis of how the large multinational corporations affected the political and economic scenes of their society, obliquely referring, of course, to the one we have now. It is a very interesting part of a very good book, and well worth a read, not only for its perspicacity in explaining the piracy we are seeing today, but because Heinlein was a master storyteller, who created fascinating characters in fantastic situations, making it all seem perfectly normal and real.

“The phenomenality of organic, conscious existence should, could have made impossible the sadism, the unending hurt of our ways. The impotent fury, the guilt that master and surpass my identity carry with them the working hypothesis, the ‘working metaphor’, if you will, of ‘original sin’. To this expression, I am unable to attach any reasoned, let alone historical substance. On the pragmatic-narratological plane, stories of some initial crime and inherited culpability are universal fables — uncannily profound and lasting. Nothing more. Yet in the presence of the beaten, raped child, of the horse or mule flogged across its eyes, I am possessed, as by a midnight clarity, by the intuition of the Fall.” — Rudolf Steiner, Errata: An examined life, Phoenix — (a division of Orion Books), London, 1998), p. 169

At first, this quote may not seem to be related to the first. However, it is this “original sin” of which he speaks that is the root cause of the problems with corporations in society. Those humans who reject commonality with the rest of humanity are the villains, in this play that passes for modern culture, for they do not accept their debt to the rest of the species, and have determined that they will use whatever means they need to become ascendant over the rest of us. Greed is only the most obvious of the ills that this group has subjected our culture to, with cruelty, dishonesty, and lack of compassion as side attractions. Through the actions of their corporate entities, they work to maintain their power and control of others, all for the sake of their own aggrandizement….

These are the men who run the trade in human trafficking, abducting and abusing children and women, for sex and slavery. These are the men who run the brothels, and the underground casinos, and the money-lending, and the protection rackets, and the drug dealing rings. What many folks don’t realize is that they are also the men who run for political office, or become preachers/priests, and the bankers, and the CEO’s, and other corporate officers, who make their decisions based on self-interest, never on altruism. They seem, and act like, they are the leaders of society, when, in fact, they are the very reason our society is headed for extinction….

Unfortunately, these men (and they are almost ALL men….) will not give up their power and control without a fight. They will not respond to reason, giving up all their wealth and perceived power, to benefit the rest of mankind. They will not suddenly see the light, and give it all back. They will have to be rooted out like weeds, tough, hardy weeds, and destroyed, if we are to have any chance of survival…. It is unfortunate, but no other method will work, and it brings with it the danger of falling into the same kind of behavior by which they operate. But, I can see no other way to solve the issue, since they will not cooperate with the rest of us for the benefit of all….

1. If you keep doing what you are doing, you will keep getting what you are getting.

2. What you settle for is what you end up with.

3. If you think that worrying about a problem is the same thing as solving it, then you must live in some other universe where different laws pertain.

–Smart Bee

Note from 2014: To finish this, here is one last pearl, with a perfect description of the assholes who prey on their fellow men, or worse, women and children…. Pearls like this are good channel markers, for helping to identify the dickheads….

“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.” — Epicurus

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

I’m going with another of my own poems today, mostly to keep from allowing any of what takes place here to ever be blamed on anyone else…. This one is a long comment on my constant companion in life…. No, not Patricia, but, that old friend (one learns to live with it, or go crazy, you see…. better to have a friend, than a constant enemy….)…. Pain…..

Denial of Comfort

Baleful chairs become the enemy, heralded in red
seemingly welcome softness beckons with a smile,
waiting, content with slaughter, they are finally led
screaming in agony, deluged in venom all the while.

Desperate distraction becomes such a friendless fire
for all the patterns of autumn’s pale dismay,
leaving sincerely latent trails in spirals of twisted wire,
while memory insists, again, upon failure, palpably evil, and fey.

Fat, jaded tears would have fallen in good time,
if only the suitable suitor had scaled the garden’s wall.
Credence for discounted prices luckily in their prime
bring only fascinated eyes into such a hallowed hall.

Searching for answers is ever a clever portrayal
with studious accouterments to fulfill each common rule.
Arguably patient pictures of science and honest betrayal
shall evermore languish, in light of passion so elegantly cruel.

~~ gigoid ~~

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

So…. today’s Pearl has been created on a fairly typical morning, of those that have come of late…. That is to say, I’ve gotten a goodly amount of sleep, more than I have been used to for many years…. (How much more? Well, let’s see… I fell out at 6:15 PM, and got out of bed at 3 AM…. That makes about 8+, almost nine hours, in my book, which is four or five more than my average for the past three years…) What does this mean?….

Not much, in truth…. It does mean, however, you get a freshly composed old-school pearl today, instead of more from the archives…. I found these two aphorisms from Cicero, which make a nice pair of bookends for what I think will be a fine, upstanding example of a very serendipitous pearl…. Enjoy!….

“No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate who considers pleasure the highest good” — Cicero

“He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.” — Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” — Yogi Berra

“If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it if you have love, compassion, and tolerance. The clear truth of a person’s love of God is if that person genuinely shows love to fellow human beings.” — Dalai Lama

“Making fun of born-again christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.” — P. J. O’Rourke

“There’s no easy quick way out, we’re gonna have to live through our whole lives, win, lose, or draw.” — Walt Kelly

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:

Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

— Cicero

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

He was pretty big, Ma, but, I beat him….. Well, I got this far, even if I didn’t win…. Hey, maybe I did! I forgot, I’m the one who makes the rules by which I play the game; hard not to win in that case….

Okay, I’m done playing around with the power of metaphor for one morning…. and if you don’t catch that reference, well, I have to ask…. Are you listening at all?….. Metaphor is what we do here, very nearly ALL we do, so, pay attention, ffolkes, or you’ll miss the most important ones, which can come at you from any direction, at any point in this narrative…. Speed, and staying alert are your best weapons in this dangerous world, and nobody will ever be able to say we didn’t try to prepare y’all to deal with that, to the best of our ability….

Tongue firmly in cheek, of course…. 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

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

Posted on March 27, 2014 by gigoid

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….
_____________________________

“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 ~~

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

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……
_____________________________

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”
_____________________________

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

21 seems to be all Murphy wants today…. but, 21 what?….

Posted on November 17, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

It isn’t often I am favored with obvious clues from the universe as to what is coming up on the agenda….. Therefore, it comes as no surprise this morning that I don’t seem to be able to decode whatever it is trying to tell me with all these rather blatant little pointers, these little precognitive moments….. Moments such as looking up at the clock to note when I begin, to see it is EXACTLY 5:00 AM as I type the first letters….. or that I awoke at EXACTLY 4:30 AM….. or that the EXACT meaning of a word implies a certain complex concept, while simultaneously supplying meaning to a formerly inane title segment…. I wonder if the white raven that was sitting on my chair as I came out of the bedroom has any place in all this?…. Have I ignored TV so long I can’t figure out an obvious plot device like that?…. Maybe….

Actually, the above paragraph is one of those throw-aways of which I am so fond of creating, a collection of meaningless ideas strung together in such a way as to compel one to read it, but never quite reaching a degree of meaning that will offer the reader anything other than the beginning of a headache…. Since I awoke with one that is pushing right through the Norco, making my right eyeball throb like a dub hound’s bass speaker at top volume, I figured, why not share the wealth, eh? If I have to sit here in excruciating pain, with both hips screaming, back muscles threatening spasm, and a throbbing eyeball, it’s the least I can do…..

Not that anyone else deserves the pain I feel almost all the time; I’m still trying to figure out what I did to my karmic burden to cause this state….. If one believes at all in the balance of good and evil in the universe, karma is basic, a system of understanding and approaching life with compassion rather than aggressiveness, and the joy of striving for love, rather than the pain of striving for power….

I do believe in that balance, though it often seems that our neighborhood here in the Universe at Large is somewhat overloaded with folks who don’t feel the same way, spending most of their time in the pursuit of what I consider to be useless stuff, like money, or power over others…. I mean, power over others is EASY to assume, if one has no compassion…. it is much harder, and shows much more inner strength, to be able to have power over one’s self….

SIGH…. The power over ourselves of which I speak often, even mostly, eludes us, though, which is probably a big part of why the world is so screwed up….. Not only that, but, it seems I’ve once again fallen into the trap that often gets me in the mornings…. Another intro section full of nonsense, near-sense, and epiphany…. or what could serve as epiphany, had it occurred inside someone’s head, rather than here on my screen….

Since, however, I’m not one to waste anything I can use, especially if it adds to the word count, I’m keeping all of it, and going on to bigger and better things, if I can persuade myself to stop typing anytime soon…. I’m falling into the “can’t seem to stop” mode that occasionally plagues me….. That CAN be a problem, though it does help in creating these Pearls…. Besides, as I’ve iterated previously, it’s MY blog, right? I can do just about whatever I want, as long as it doesn’t draw the government myrmidons down on me…. or, even if it does…. I’m armed, even if I don’t appear to be…. Not only that, but, I have the power of the pen on my side, and THAT is powerful indeed…. Well, that’s what I’ve heard, anyway…..

Shall we Pearl?…..

“True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, not all that could be.” — Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

Aha! That’s been my problem the whole time…. Now, why didn’t I think of that?….. I’ll have to work on that a bit, won’t I?….
_____________________________

“Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the _real_ object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?” — Patrick Henry

It has been a while since I spoke on the matter of gun control, and the Second Amendment… Since I HAVE done so previously, and in a way I found to be clear, and compelling, I am including that diatribe below… This is from the POVW posted on 11/20/12, a couple of weeks after the national election….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I suspected, the news has become a desert…. Since the election settled so many questions that had been paramount, there has been virtually nothing going on that is worth any outrage, and certainly nothing that would stimulate enough angst to produce a rant. The Republicans are all walking around shaking their heads, and wondering where they went wrong, or trying to fool the public into believing they are going to cooperate with the administration (a load of crap if I ever heard one….), and the Democrats can’t stop grinning long enough to get anything done yet…. It’s like watching a video of a particularly exciting Sunday School class…. pretty enough, but boring as hell….

A few items worth discussion have come up…. There is more noise being bandied about regarding gun control again, as I see some folks posting statistics about guns and people getting killed…. What, did they think?…. Were they expecting that, all of a sudden, after the election, human nature was going to change? It always amazes me how much outrage, and surprise, people seem to exhibit when another atrocity killing is brought out by a news outlet. People are going to lose their cool, and their control…. that is a fact of life, and a law of nature.

This issue, of the failure of human nature to control its homicidal urges, isn’t going to change, and wishing otherwise is a fool’s game. In addition to this fact we need to consider another, of equal importance…. guns are real. When they are used to kill, it is not as if the gun is responsible, yet people seem to think that allowing the government to regulate who can have guns, and who can’t, will somehow stop all that from happening. It won’t, and thinking it will is the worst sort of self-delusion….

“Gun Control – the belief that government, with its great wisdom and moral superiority, can be trusted with a monopoly on deadly force.”– Smart Bee

Smart Bee has hit upon the main argument against gun control, as desired by the idiots who think it will help. Sorry, don’t mean to be derogatory, but it is undeniable, inarguable idiocy to think that the government is capable of controlling itself any more than individuals can; what evidence is there to even hint as much? None, none that can be seen, because there is none that can be produced. If you think that the government has even the slightest intention of using such a monopoly with restraint, or with any sort of integrity, well, then, you have fallen into some serious deep shit in your mind, and will need to seriously consider some intensive psychotherapy.

Hell, just take a look at recent statistics as to how many civilians have been gunned down by corrupt cops…. It may surprise you to see that the numbers are at least equal to, if not greater than those deaths by gun that are attributed to civilian citizens. In the town I live in, alone, there have been at least seven civilian deaths at the hands of police, using guns, just this year…. I’ve lived in a lot of rough towns, and in my estimation, this is not a particularly large town, nor a particularly violent one.

“Most people seem to think that trampling individual rights is OK if it is “for the good of society as a whole.” However, society is but a large number of individuals, and how can harming the individual parts better the whole?” — Andrew Ford, forda@agcs.com

Hearing a government official claim that by restricting a right it is good for society as a whole is, to me, the very same as hearing someone wearing robes and a conical, comical hat, claim they are looking out for ‘my’ interests over their own…. I’m not gonna buy it, not now, not ever. There is NO TIME when it is acceptable to restrict an individual’s rights, unless their exercise of that right is denying the rights of another. Doing so is entering the slippery slope that leads to the loss of that right. The good of society does not lie in that direction, but rather in a direction that protects that right, and all of the others we were left as our legacy.

Hearing ANYONE say they are acting “for the good of society” reminds me of the thief saying he is taking my things “for my own good”….. it doesn’t compute. Nor would I trust it if it did…. I may be a cynic, but in this case, I know I’m right…. The beloved ruling class is NOT going to look out for your best interests, or mine…. No matter how often they say they are, or how often they try to convince you, they are NOT going to do that. They are trying to control you, and screw you, and unless you hold on to your rights, and protect them with your own gun, then they will continue to try to take them away…. Sad, but true….

“Sure, understanding today’s complex world of the future is a little like having bees live in your head! But…. there they are!!!. . .” — The Firesign Theater, “I Think We’re All Bozos on this Bus!”

I have made friends with the bees in my head; they know that I am armed and dangerous, to anyone who tries to convince me that our beloved ruling class has my best interests at heart. They don’t, and never have done…. I know this to be factual, and continued attempts to try to convince me otherwise are not only doomed to failure, but are likely to prompt an unexpected response; I can personally guarantee it will be one they will regret…. And, if they so decide, well, all I can say is “just desserts”….
_____________________________

POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

I don’t pretend to always understand exactly what Emily was up to in her poems; to try to unravel the mind of a poet, and a woman poet, seems to me to be a task fraught with both frustration and danger; hence, my reluctance to approach that task…. However, understanding is, fortunately, not a prerequisite for enjoying her poems…. I hope you do, too…. Enjoy them, that is….. At least it’s not a magazine….

‘T was just this time last year I died.
I know I heard the corn,
When I was carried by the farms,–
It had the tassels on.

I thought how yellow it would look
When Richard went to mill;
And then I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.

I thought just how red apples wedged
The stubble’s joints between;
And carts went stooping round the fields
To take the pumpkins in.

I wondered which would miss me least,
And when Thanksgiving came,
If father’d multiply the plates
To make an even sum.

And if my stocking hung too high,
Would it blur the Christmas glee,
That not a Santa Claus could reach
The altitude of me?

But this sort grieved myself, and so
I thought how it would be
When just this time, some perfect year,
Themselves should come to me.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

_____________________________

Though I am up, and awake, and relatively free of major pain (I DID take my meds upon arising, so it’s all under control, for the moment….), there isn’t a whole lot that is sticking in my head for long…. I seem to be unable at this point of maintaining any train of thought for long; that’s the main reason I went with an old rant in section one. Fortunately, not as much mental effort is needed to produce an old-school pearl, so, that’s what we’ll do now, and hope for the best…..

“He is nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent.” — Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 BC), attributed

“The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.” — Hubert H. Humphrey, 1965

“Among mankind money is far more persuasive than logical argument.” — Euripides

“Life is cruel? Compared to what?” — Edward Abbey

“Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 633

“We have met the enemy and they are us and you are me and we are all together” — Walt Kelly, Lennon, and the Beatles

“If you can see a thing whole… it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives…But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful a life is, is to see it from the vantage point of death.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, Dispossessed

Sometimes, the less effort I put into these pearls, the better they turn out…. like this one, which became a quite excellent little monograph on human nature, and Life at Large…. Serendipity hides all over the place, neh?….
_____________________________

Having arisen at a time that is, for me, of late, rather late, I am somewhat later getting done…. I hope that hasn’t adversely affected this Pearl; I hate when that happens!…. Let’s go see….

Once again, through a process I don’t fully understand, this came out okay…. Enough so that it can go out, just the way it is, with only minor proofing, and a lot of hope…. I hope somebody reads it, that is…. See ya next 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

Avoiding those odd “Elvis” moments….

Posted on September 27, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

It is not without a certain degree of trepidation that I come to this decision; no one at all could ever consider taking such a step without thinking about what might happen, if things do not go as planned. If things don’t work out as hoped, the carnage will be extensive, and the world, as we know it, will never be the same…. Contrarily, if what I am contemplating works as it should, no one will ever know they were mere seconds from annihilation, destined to exit this plane of existence, not with a bang, but with the poet’s whimper….

On the other hand, I could quit fooling around, and tell you that all of the above is just another silly collection of words, put together in such a way as to draw your attention, and engage your mind in some sort of fictional scenario, with no real connection to reality…. How’d I do? I don’t know about y’all, but I was completely fooled….. and I was the one writing it! Now, THAT’S some powerful writing!….. Just kidding, ffolkes….. I’m fully aware of how my pomposity, my arrogance, my regular and harsh criticism of religion and its icons, and my so-far-left-I’m-right political positions, have a tendency, no doubt, to make people uncomfortable, or, at the very least, leave them with feelings of guilt, which nobody cares for at all….

The guilt, if I’ve done my job correctly, comes from knowing that we, the American people at large, are responsible for the mess we are in, due to our long-term habit of putting our head in the sand every four years, and voting for yet another batch of lying, cheating, immoral assholes, establishing them in their elected positions, where they will proceed, like every other politician in the last 100 years, to fuck things up beyond all belief….. Sometimes, I think that what they studied in college was not law, but bozoid technology….. how to make best use of those tools we all employ at one time or another to make fools of ourselves…..

What is THIS all about? Good question…. Over the last couple of days, I’ve been looking back at all I’ve written in the last couple of years, since beginning this blog, and I realized that I’ve been beating a horse so dead, it’s petrified, and has been erected as a statue in the local park…. I’ve ranted and railed against the machine, belittling the churches and their deliberately delusional perpetrators, and accused ALL politicians of psychopathic greed, not to mention congenital prevarication….

I’ve pointed out the lies that the politicians tell us, either by omission, or by commission, and bemoaned the entitlement and arrogance of the para-military police forces that most of our towns and cities have espoused…. All to little purpose, and littler effect, as it turns out, as the same people keep on screwing us over in the same old ways…. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m getting a bit tired of putting out so much effort to such small effect; I’m accustomed to my work having some kind of positive outcome, but, it’s hard to call the response I’ve had as being overwhelmingly so….

While it’s true that most of the ffolkes who do comment here tend to agree with my take on matters, it is also true that, even given the 315 followers I reportedly have, the number of people who SEE it isn’t exactly what can be called a huge audience…. Now, that’s okay, in one respect, which is, I don’t care about the numbers, very much…. I write to get this stuff out of my head before it rots, not for the usual purpose of stimulating action in the public; it’s always been more about saving my sanity than it has about saving society….

BUT…. and it’s a big BUT…. saving society wouldn’t be such a bad thing, now, would it? It would be nice if I could tell myself that what I say here has some positive effect in that direction, even if I wasn’t telling the entire truth…. SIGH…. As a curmudgeon, though, and as a self-made, self-taught, self-reliant philosopher, no matter how much better it would make me feel, I can’t do that, because it just isn’t true….. If we don’t stick to the truth, it’s all just an exercise in futility, and we may as well just go lay down in our graves now….

So, anyway, I see now that this has turned into not merely a rant in the intro, but has become what seems to be a series of personal revelations about the relevance of what I’m doing here…. Though I don’t really care about how many ffolkes read this, as it is written for another purpose altogether, there is another part of me that would like to have the world pay attention to what I’m saying, for their own benefit…. It’s a bit frustrating, and that frustration may prompt some radical changes around here, in how I approach the entire subject of ranting….

If I can make it more effective, I’d be willing to put more effort into publicizing it, to get more ffolkes to read and spread it around…. I’d even be willing to take more meds, so I could spend more time reading and commenting on other blogs (which I would LOVE to be able to do, but for the pain it causes me physically…), so that my readership would continue to grow, to a level that had some real power of distribution….. Ah well, it’s all just speculation, at this point, so, we’ll just have to see how it goes…. but, expect SOME changes, for sure…. I’m just not certain what form they’ll take, or how it may affect the rest of what I write, but, I HAVE to do SOMETHING, or I’ll drive myself crazy…. which, I admit, is not a long drive…

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Don’t take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.” — Josh Billings

(Trivia note: This statement is a more effective method of animal husbandry than is first apparent, which only strengthens its metaphorical nature…. As any farm boy knows, you can’t persuade a large animal to go anywhere by putting a rope around its neck, and yanking on it, especially large animals such as cattle, or mules, or donkeys, of either gender; they’re all quite stubborn, and stupid, to boot. However, any and all of these animals will go wherever you wish them to go, if you will merely grab them by the tail, with a good strong grip, and give it a firm twist…. Guaranteed, the animal will move IMMEDIATELY, and briskly, in whatever direction they were pointed at the time the tail was twisted…. 🙂 )
_____________________________

“Ignorance is temporary. Stupidity lasts forever!!!” — Smart Bee

A few days ago, in the news, one of the Republican Senators, John McCain, took some heavy shots at a freshman Republican Senator, some guy named Cruz, a desperately confused young Latino, for his useless, and even harmful, use of a filibuster-like speech to delay a vote that was going to happen anyway…. It was actually kind of cute, the way they bickered over the issue, and provides a perfect example of how, even amongst themselves, these psychopathic idiots cannot figure out how removed they are from real life, or how little all their contortions have any positive effect on the public… They all just look like little kids, running around getting mad over trivial stuff, and never getting anything done that would benefit anyone other than themselves….

“He probably just wants to take over my CELLS and then EXPLODE inside me like a BARREL of runny CHOPPED LIVER! Or maybe he’d like to PSYCHOLOGICALLY TERRORIZE ME until I have no objection to a RIGHT-WING MILITARY TAKEOVER of my apartment!! I guess I should call AL PACINO!” — Zippy the Pinhead

I don’t think even Al could help in today’s political world…. Any who, what McCain objected to in Cruz’s speech were some comments he made comparing certain people with a certain view to Nazis… I’m not sure to whom he referred, but, it definitely offended McCain, and he made some comments of his own…. over which I had to laugh, heartily, as I could think of nothing other than “the pot calling the kettle black”….. If there is ANY political group that has shown characteristics shared by the Nazi Party in the last 50 years, it is the Republican Party, which can barely figure out how to phrase the planks of their platform without resorting to racist epithets….

Not only the Republicans, but the entire government machine, by its very bureaucratic nature, at times will naturally fall into postures which remind one of the fascists who once ran Germany, but are now confined mostly to chat rooms, and a few conclaves in Minneapolis (I hope…)…. As a perfect example of what I’m saying here, I offer the following article, from yesterday’s SF Chronicle, which describes the latest events in the housing market in SF, wherein nobody cares when the elderly and the disabled are abused, all in the name of BUSINESS….

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tech-boom-forcing-longtime-S-F-family-out-of-home-4843955.php

“Our eviction-assistance team has been there several times and left notice for the family to contact us, but the family has chosen not to do so,” said Fahey. “We certainly don’t want anybody going without a place to live, but we have our orders.”

“I feel bad for the old people being evicted, and I can see why there is so much controversy,” said Allie Crocco, 25, who works in finance and moved into an apartment a few blocks away this summer. “But on the other hand, there’s a lot of money to be made in these buildings.”

There you have it, ffolkes…. Rampant Nazi-like behavior, with quotes…. The first of the two highlighted phrases, both of which came from the above article, was uttered by one of the people responsible for evicting people, under the law that was specifically passed for that purpose, to make it easier for businesses to get around the existing laws that protect the tenants…. Please note how it echoes the statements of more than one Nazi prison guard convicted during the Nuremberg Trials after WWII…. The other quote is from a person who lives nearby the house where the old couple is being evicted, and clearly demonstrates the lack of empathy in those who are not involved in the issue…. To the average joe in our society, if there is money to be made, it justifies ANYTHING, no matter how egregiously immoral it may be….

IMHO, no further rant is needed to make my point, so, I’ll trust in the intelligence of my Gentle Readers to fill in the rest of what might have been said, and, mercifully, was not….

“Coming up: our definitive answer to the JFK assassination, the Iran contra coverup, the cure for the common cold, and our hidden videotape of Madonna’s torrid affair…” — Anchorman, “Zombies in PJs”, Eerie Indiana
____________________________

I’m hopeful for the quality of today’s Pearl, so the poem needs to be just right…. Let’s see what I can find….. Ah, this will do nicely….

Personal Helicon

for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

~~ Seamus Heaney ~~

_____________________________

“It is quite untrue that British people don’t appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.”–Sir Thomas Beecham

“Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, Utters another.” — Homer (c. 700 B.C.)

As you can see, for this final section, Smart Bee has presented me with two directions to go… The two don’t stretch, in any way I can think of, to work together to make a point, at least, not one I’d care to make, so I’ll have to either make a decision, or trust to fate, an uncertain proposition at any time…. I’m feeling lucky, though, so let’s see what happens if I just dive in, like this… Oooh!, that’s cold!…. Okay, take a deep breath, and follow me…. Don’t worry, any sharks you see are just metaphors….

“Don’t take life too serious. It ain’t no ways permanent.” — Pogo, by Walt Kelly

“Here, let me show you.” — Famous Last Words

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Every society needs someone whose job it is to tell the Emperor he’s naked.” — Smart Bee
(Me! Me! Pick me! I’ll do it for free!…. Oh, wait, I already do that…. okay, well…. to continue…)

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” — Albert Einstein

“At any price that I can pay, let me own myself. And the price is worth paying if you keep what you have bought… A man may apply his independence to what is called worldly advantage, and discover too late that he laboriously has made himself dependent on a mass of external conditions for the maintenance of which he has sacrificed himself. So he may be festooned with the whole haberdashery of success, and go to his grave a castaway. Some men hold that the risk is worth taking. Others do not. It is to those that I have spoken.” — Rudyard Kipling, speech at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, 1923, — quoted in _Kipling’s Science Fiction_ edited by John Brunner

“Small change can often be found under seat cushions.” — Lazarus Long
_____________________________

“Within the oyster’s shell uncouth
The purest pearl may hide,
Trust me you’ll find a heart of truth
Within that rough inside.”

— Mrs. Osgood

And aren’t we all glad that is so!… Well, I’m glad…. You’ll have to make your own decision as to how you feel about it…. What I’ve done here today, well, it’s the same, but different, sort of…. which is exactly what I need to think about…. See y’all tomorrow, perhaps with a new gestalt….. No new physique, no altered proportions, of anatomy or build, perhaps, but, just maybe, a bit of a change in the silhouette, some contrast to the shadows that haunt the edges of my perception….

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

Soused on pilfered gin, all in a good cause…..

Posted on August 9, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,

As much as I love it when a plan comes together, I hate even more when it doesn’t….. such as this morning. I can tolerate Murphy’s usual screwing around with those parts of life that will fuck me over the most; I even tolerate it when the asshole just won’t let up, and hits me over and over throughout the day…. But, this I won’t tolerate…. He’s trying to fuck with my computer, and that is unacceptable…. I don’t need that kind of aggravation, not any more, and I won’t put up with it for long at all….. If he continues in this vein, there WILL BE A RECKONING!!!

Sorry for the outburst, but, computer issues due to just plain orneriness is something I just won’t allow. If this were an old machine, or had a history, or was getting overloaded with too much crap software, or something explainable, I could accept a bit of mucking about on boot up….. But, the kind of stuff Murphy had it doing today just won’t cut it, not when I know there is no reason beyond Murphy’s own assholiness to hold as responsible….. Sorry, but, I’ll not have it, and if he doesn’t like it, well, he can come talk to me, and I’ll explain it, in words of no more than one syllable…. or, if that isn’t working, I can just show him with my hands….. he’ll get the picture quite quickly, in that case….

I know, I talk a big game, but, how am I going to get him to hold still? Those iconic forces of nature can be tricky to pin down, possessing those supernatural powers over the rules of space and time as they do….. But, I don’t care how big and bad he is, he fucks with my comp again, and he’s dead meat…..

There, I feel better, if only for venting. I suppose that’s why I rant…. to get all that powerful negativity out of my head, and out into the real world, where it can be better dealt with in a way that won’t harm me, or anyone else. It’s a harmless enough pastime, especially when one considers how few people actually see it in one day; nobody is going to get hurt if they don’t read it, and hopefully, even if they do read it, it won’t cause any bleeding…. I know that I hate to bleed anywhere near the computer, so I’m sure other ffolkes don’t much like it, either…. Not bleeding is a good thing, in most everyone’s world, so we’ll try to keep things such that it can be avoided….

I can’t say that I am terribly proud of this particular opening section; so far it’s even more lame than usual, even for this blog. But, we’ve already reached the point where we are over the limit for allowable deletion, so I’ll have to let it go out the way it is, sans any elegance or witty repartee. Rats! I did so hope to include some witty repartee today…. it’s been so long since I tried my hand at it….. Ah, well, I’ll just have to settle for whatever SB comes up with as pearls today, because, I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date….. not really, but, it’s time to go dive in….

Shall we Pearl?…..
_____________________________

I’m in a curious mood, one that feels as if I should not trifle with it, lest it become something more suitable for a horror movie, with great gobs of blood, gore, and destruction….. None of us wants that on a Friday; it could affect the entire weekend. So, I’m giving Smart Bee its head, to see what it can come up with that will possibly turn this in a new direction, before it gets dangerous to navigate…. let’s see what it can do….

“Knowledge is a polite word for dead but unburied imagination….think twice before thinking.” — e.e. cummings

In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. “What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe.” “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play” Minsky shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher. “So that the room will be empty.” At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.” — AI koan

“Enter freely and leave some of the happiness you bring behind.” — The Insidious Wu Han

“It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.” — George Santayana

“People who wear mirrored sun glasses should seek professional help.” — Smart Bee

“Oh Lord, grant that we may not despise our rulers; and grant, oh Lord, that they may not act so we can’t help it.” — Lyman Beecher

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” — G. K. Chesterton, ILN, 4/19/30

Ooh, ooh, that’s a good one…. I can’t say for certain what direction it brought us to, but, it will, I have no doubt, be better than where we were headed…. Well, one always hopes…..
_____________________________

On days such as this, where I’m living under a set of rules that may or may not be clear, I tend to look for the same kind of obscurity, or at least, semi-transparency, in the poetry that will fit in with the mood of the day. Most often, in such cases, Emily is perfect, and today is such a case…. Don’t ask me to explain this one, because I won’t…. because I can’t…. I like it anyway…..

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 ~~

_____________________________

It isn’t your fault, but, I was up quite late this morning; turning over to try to go back to sleep actually kept working each time I did it, starting at 0400, all the way up to 0705, when I finally arose…. I reiterate, it isn’t your fault, but you’re going to get the perk that goes along with that, which is the simple fact that I don’t have the time to put together a rant…. This means, of course, that we’ll be going old-school for this section again today, and you will just have to learn to appreciate it…. Just think about the rant you’re NOT having to read….

Now that we have successfully promulgated, and denied, the normal course of events in such cases, I am free to go on to the gathering of the pearls, always the most fun part of this process….. Well, it’s fun, as long as Smart Bee is cooperating, and it has been doing well today so far…. let’s hope it continues…. Before I bore y’all completely senseless, which would mean calling the crew in to perform the sleeping body disposals, I’m going to go diving….. see ya on the flip side, as they say….. Well, I guess they don’t say that any more, so…. hell with it, I’ll be back….

“Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders.” — Edward Abbey

“Integrity has no need for rules.” — Albert Camus

“The whole principle is wrong; it’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t eat steak.” — author Robert A. Heinlein on censorship

“If you wants to get elected president, you’ve got to think up some memorable homily so’s school kids can be pestered into memorizin’ it, even if they don’t know what it means.” — Walt Kelly, The Pogo Party

“Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough.” — Confucius, 5th century BC

“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” — G. K. Chesterton, TREMENDOUS TRIFLES

“Hello. Just walk along and try NOT to think about your INTESTINES being almost FORTY YARDS LONG!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

What a perfectly random group! The point it takes us to is the absolute perfect representation of whatever it was we did here today, don’t you think? Of course, whatever that may be is beyond the capability of the English language to accurately describe, but, there is nothing new in that, either, not for this blog…. I like to think we push the boundaries back a little bit every day…. Oh, look, it’s quitting time!…. See ya….
_____________________________

As noted above, I got a late start today, but, managed to rush it all through without any bloodshed…. Let’s see if it’s at all palatable…. Well, it’s savory enough, even if potentially unpalatable for those who can’t, or won’t, use more than three neurons at once; that’s okay, it’s not designed for their consumption, anyway. Regardless of any of that, it will do, and, hallelujah, it’s done…. On time, too…. I’m going to count my blessings, and be on my way…. TTFN, amigos…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you….

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

Parking parallel is de rigeur on Mondays….

Posted on June 12, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
Fiddle di dee, fiddle di die, the cow jumped not over, but, onto the moon, bending and breaking it beyond all recognition. The cat wasn’t playing a fiddle, but did have a boom box blasting…. according to the latest reports. Little dogs do more than just laugh at such sport, they usually pee on it. And dishes, well, they’re well known to prefer dark, sharp knives over spoons anyway….

“A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.” — Willie Wonka

Especially when it attacks first thing, before coffee, before reason…. It is smart, therefore, to just go with the flow, and let it out as needed, knowing full well the consequences of such actions. One must, however, consider the overall effect, and keeping it inside can cause much more damage than letting it out. As I am fully aware of all this, when it strikes me, I just let it right out, and use the time I didn’t spend agonizing over it to clean up whatever spillage there might be…. saves me time and energy this way, y’know?….

It also allows me to find a way back to reality from the fringes inhabited by all such nonsense; such foolishness cannot spend too much time close to the normal side of reality, lest it turn mundane, so one must go where it resides in order to pluck it up for use. I find it to be a quite relaxing time, those hours spent in pastimes reminiscent of circuses and carnivals, soaking in the happy laughter of fools, and the merry giggles of the clowns. Even the “nyuck, nyuck, nyuck” sounds coming from the Stooges corner bring no annoyance, as they blend right in with the blaring of the bicycle horns and big, red noses worn by so many in that neighborhood…..

Hmm… looks like I wandered a little further away from the mundane than I had realized; that last paragraph slipped over into nonsense again, instead of heading back toward sober reason. I do enjoy my time there, but, I tend to have trouble letting go of it; for a while upon returning, it is difficult to even consider religion or politics, without applying some Carlinesque twists, to soften its gravity.

Needless to say, it also makes it hard to rant about much of anything else, as everything is viewed through a prism of humor and silliness, and doesn’t appear half as bad as it actually is in real time. All in all, this is probably a good thing, as it keeps reality from hurting too much on a daily basis; it merely makes it hard on the political/religious reformer in me, to NOT be able to rant sufficiently….

I suppose that idea makes y’all burgeon with hope for this Pearl, but, that, too, is a foolish thing to do… As yet, this Pearl has no obvious shape or intent, so it’s next to impossible to say what will happen… The first pearl Smart Bee shows me will often set the tone for the whole day, so we’ll see how that goes… I do know that starting with nonsense always makes me happier… I may be a reformer, and a curmudgeon, but I really do enjoy life more when my bozoid side comes out early in the day…. Who knows? We might even end up with something amusing, or elevating, rather than something depressive and dark…. I suppose, though, we’ll never know if we don’t get on with it, so….. Shall we Pearl?…..

“I only wish I may see your head stroked down with a slipper.” — Terence (185-159 BC) — Act v, Sc. 7, 4, (1028.)

Now, see what you’ve done!…..
__________________________________

Okay, so I get it now…. The universe sometimes gives us directions we may not clue into fully…. I see, now, why reality chose to push me toward silliness and bozosity today (Bozosity is the state of being a bozo….). What we have, following this introductory blurb, is a group of aphorisms about religion…. I guess it made more sense to put it like this today, than it did to rant about it, as I normally do… Or, maybe reality is tired of my rants… either way, y’all win today, because this is just as pointed, just as accusatory, and, in its own quiet little way, as much of an indictment as are my most telling, and compelling rants on the subject…. Enjoy! And be careful, the point it makes is quite sharp, and WILL cut you if you are negligent of care…..

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — Essay on Man, Epistle i, Line 87

“Religion is the opiate of the masses.” — Karl Marx

“You can’t depend on the man who made the mess to clean it up.” — Richard Milhouse Nixon (1952)

SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

— Bother! said Pooh, after he spoke the Lord’s name backward.

“If God is dead, who will save the Queen?” — Smart Bee

“True myth may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blonde Hero–really look–and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. ‘You must change your life,’ he said. When the true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.” — Ursula K. LeGuin

Whoa! Sorry, that last one slipped in there without telling me… but, it kind of fits, if you look at it with just the right squint to the eye…. I mean, if the first six quotes didn’t give you a clue about how religions are bad for you, the last one drives the point home, with the very last line….. I don’t know about y’all, but I LOVE THIS STUFF….. Oh, and just in case it wasn’t clear already….

“A mind not to be changed by place or time, the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” — John Milton
__________________________________

It’s probably a literary law of some kind, but, when one is given a hint like the one above, one MUST take that hint…. Far be it from me to ignore a slap to the side of the head like this one…. Here, then, is the poem to which Ms. Le Guin refers, above…

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

~~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~~

__________________________________

“I don’t want to panic, but my alphabet soup says, “Forget about me … just try to save yourself.” — Tom Wilson (“Ziggy”)

Now you know just how I feel every morning! This is the real reason I gave up on Alpha-Bits cereal, in spite of what was published, and in spite of whatever you may have heard. I got tired of being warned every morning re: approaching Armageddon, and started eating more oatmeal, just so I didn’t have to face that every day. It’s disheartening to be reminded on a daily basis that your breakfast is significantly smarter than the majority of US citizens, at least when it comes to their government, which is completely controlled by corporate interests, as well as when it comes to society at large, about which one may confidently say the same.

We won’t even bother to mention the religious hierarchies’ connections to temporal authority, or to the shadow masters; we took our shots at them above, and wish to be fair, if not merciful. We’ll just say this on that: if you think the churches and preachers are NOT in the pockets of the corporations, well, I suggest you try to obtain for yourself a new mind, because the one you have isn’t working very well….

I mean, think about it… Who are the favorite members of any congregation, no matter what the denomination (clue: it has to do with the word “denomination”….)? Why, the men, and a few women, who contribute the most to the church roof fund, right? The ones who put the most gelt in the collection plate are the ones the church leaders ~~pander~~, er, cater to, not the ones who reach out with empty hands….

“If this isn’t war, why is CNN massing on the border?” — Smart Bee

Let us also NOT get into the culpability the media holds for its part in the farce that comprises the play put on the world’s stage by society. We could point out the numerous, obvious perpetrations of cluelessness, or lament the lack of courage in modern journalists, either of which is common in the media.

How else can one explain how sheer lies are repeated endlessly, without challenge? How can one explain why certain questions aren’t asked, or certain articles suppressed, at the request, or the legal insistence of governmental authority? It isn’t explainable, unless one remembers that the media relies on government to supply the reason for its existence, and one is reluctant to bite the hand that feeds, eh what?….. Sycophancy is not limited to dweebs, and/or acolytes…

Instead, let us indict the true culprits for today’s worldly mess…. ourselves. Pogo, by Walt Kelly, said it long ago…. “We have met the enemy, and he is us…..” We are responsible for all that is wrong with the world, because we, the great unwashed masses, allow the governments and churches, and their puppet masters, the corporations, to determine how the world will be run…. We accept all their lies, and go on with living our lives as slaves, subject to the whims and twists of fate, because we refuse to take the reins of our own lives into our hands, and assume control….

The shadowy rich assholes who are the real power behind all the governments of the world are not going to stop their self-centered, selfish hoarding of the world’s resources, nor will they ever make a decision based on the welfare of society as a whole. They will always make their decisions in relation to what is most beneficial for themselves, and what will allow them to maintain their stranglehold on the rest of the world….

That is their primary concern, and they have guarded that concern for well over three thousand years, without ever letting the rest of humanity realize to any great degree just how much they control…. No other theory holds any water, nor fits the given facts of history, as well as this, and I regard it as gospel truth…. According to the available evidence, this is not a theory, so much as it is a fait accompli….

“In the game of life you get to choose where you keep your brain – heads you win, tails you lose.” — Smart Bee

I guess I had a rant in there after all…. We are all screwed, ffolkes, just as often and as hard as THEY want; moreover, unless we decide, as a group, to do something about it, it isn’t going to change until we are all dead and gone, leaving this planet, and the universe, to go on without our promise, or our participation…. I hate to be a downer, but, I don’t see how we can fix it, without some serious upheaval, for which I am not particularly hopeful, given the general level of “stupid” in much of humanity…. Oh well, as Epictetus said, “Happiness and freedom depend on the realization of one principle. Some things are within your control. And, some things are not.” So be it….

“UH-OH!! I think KEN is OVER-DUE on his R.V. PAYMENTS and HE’S having a NERVOUS BREAKDOWN too!! Ha ha.” — Zippy the Pinhead
__________________________________

I am afraid I have to report that most, if not all, of the above was written while in an altered state of consciousness…. which should make for some interesting reading, you betcha…. Let’s just see….. Well, since it would be overly egotistical to call it brilliant, I’ll merely say, well done, and let it go at that…. For a morning so devoid of original direction, it seems to have found its way into the light fairy well, which bodes well for the rest of the day…. That is, if I were the type to be susceptible to precognitive signs…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

In the name of all that’s wholly…..

Posted on June 2, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
And then I woke up….. normal. Which is to say, of course, I was having a nightmare, again. It’s a recurring theme in my dreams, to wake up without my attitudes, so carefully developed over many years. It’s fairly easy to shake off, and the attitudes can be replaced easily, but, it would be nice to not have to go through the fright and subsequent panic that ensues when I discover a shred of guilt within me, or find some piece of unwanted sympathy for the devil hanging about. It’s a sure sign when I find myself agreeing with some politician about something…. doesn’t matter what it is, if I’m going along with the public’s object of affection, I know I’m in trouble, giving-a-shit-wise….

Hmm… not too bad, considering it’s a pre-coffee blurb. I actually did wake up at what is a reasonably normal time, after pushing hard to stay up past 9 PM last night (made it all the way to 9:08, too….); I’ve been waking up at 5 or 6 AM for years, so it feels relatively common to get up at shortly after five today. Slept pretty well, too, all things considered, and feel as well as I ever do, so, I guess I can say that I’ve finally gotten past the fatigue, time-warp, and overall systemic disruption due to the changing of time zones for a two week period. All I can say is, Whew! Who knew it would kick my ass like that? I thought I’d breeze through it without any problem, but, it’s been a struggle, for certain….

I’m sure glad my next two trips are scheduled to be out of the new San Francisco cruise terminal, round trip, one to Alaska later this month, one to Mexico next March. This will keep me (us) in the same time zone the whole time, on both trips, so the time zones won’t be a factor… and that’s just fine with me. It’s a sobering thought to know that, for the rest of my life, I will need to take that factor into account in my calculations and plans for any trips. At my age, it’s nothing to be sneezed at, and, to be honest, isn’t much fun. Makes me wish I was the Doctor, and had a Tardis in which to do my toodling about the Universe….

Enough rambling for one morning… Even though it’s a Sunday, I have things to accomplish today, so I’d best be getting on with today’s Pearl… They don’t just write themselves, you know…. though it may seem that way at times. In fact, part of today’s effort will be from the archives, as it’s been kind of fun looking through them; there is so much material there, I don’t remember writing half of it, so it’s like discovering a whole new set of books at the library (which is under repair right now, and unavailable, so new stuff to read is welcome indeed….). The rest will be as it comes, as usual, which means I have no idea what it will be comprised of, or what it may resemble…. probably, that’s a good thing….. Shall we Pearl?…..
__________________________________

Yesterday, I took some time, finally, to go cruising through my Reader’s Page here at WordPress, to do just a little catching up to all the blogs I’ve been unable to visit recently due to my travels, and limited time to read online. As always, I found great stuff, but one new website, referred by another blogger, Lou, at http://talesfromthelou.wordpress.com/, is an incredibly lucky find His is a very interesting blog, always with a new conspiracy theory, a new piece of knowledge about current events or scientific research, new or old diets, cool pictures, or oddities from the news around the Internet; good news, bad news, odd news, all of that, and more, can be found at Lou’s site.

The site he to which he referred us is called Humans of New York, consisting of photos of people on the streets of the city, who agreed to have their photo taken, along with a comment, or description of their reaction to the picture, or just something they wished to say. It is a very, very interesting collection of wisdom and humor, from normal ffolkes doing normal things on the streets of that most not-normal city…. great beauty, great wisdom, great laughs, a few “aww”‘s, and a lot of fun…. It’s located here: http://www.humansofnewyork.com/

That’s all, just go, and have fun…. 🙂
__________________________________

I’m in the mood for Emily…. This is appropriate for the time of year…..

A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

~~ Emily Dickinson ~~

__________________________________

I’ve been looking through a bunch of old Pearls, from back in 2011, and found the following…. it’s a nice little discussion of something or other, and though I can’t quite remember why I chose it, it’s still pretty good, so, please, enjoy…..

“The world is full of burled and gnarly knobs on which you can hang a metaphysical system. If you must.” — Edward Abbey

Here then is a logical mind. My evidence? His reluctance to impose an invented set of rules on a world that resists any such restraint, is, in my mind, eminently sensible. Why do we have to make up stuff to try to explain how the universe functions? What quality does our curiosity have that compels us to seek out some kind of system to help us to deal with reality as it is?

Humans seem to want some kind of order to their existence, and for some reason, can’t seem to come to terms with things the way they are. They seem to need to apply their own set of prejudices to the world, an impulse stemming from some unknown inner compulsion that has held back the tide of human progress for just about our entire history.

My own opinion is that human nature, being what it is, noted way back in the old days, that a man with no principles can manipulate other people through their own set of behavioral rules. By balancing a friendly, smiling face with a completely sociopathic conscience, they have been able to keep most of mankind in thrall ever since we first started farming and coming together in cities to trade. And they continue today; as a matter of fact, the news of late has been full of evidence of their millenia-long hold over the rest of humanity. We (the gullible masses, identified by H. L. Mencken by the word ‘the booboisie’) have even given them a name; we now call them the 1%.

“The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.” — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The battle lines for Armageddon have been drawn, and the combatants have chosen their sides; the war is coming, and I wouldn’t do a thing to stop it, because freeing ourselves from the people who live for power is our only hope for survival as a species. The 1% probably believes that they will be the only survivors of a world-wide catastrophe, and odds are, they may be right. But I’ll be damned if I’ll go without putting up an epic fight, for my life, and my liberty……

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” — Walt Kelly (in POGO)
__________________________________

I note that the above is overly sober in nature, generally, and feel like I should lighten things up a bit…. So, here is a fresh, random, harlequin pearl, with only the word “furfl” (no typo) in mind to use as a parameter of choice…. Enjoy! It’s not often you get a bonus pearl like this these days…..

“And o’er the past Oblivion stretch her wing.” — Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — The Odyssey of Homer, Book xxiv, Line 557

“I have ever held it as a maxim, never to do that through another, which it was possible for me to execute myself.” — Montesquieu

“The refusal to put away childish things may be a prerequisite of a genius.” — A. Einstein

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” — Clive James

“Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.” — George Bernard Shaw

“How did the great rivers and seas gain dominion over the hundred lesser streams? By being lower than they.” — Lao Tzu

“I am the shadow my words cast.” — Octavio Paz

Oops! Sorry, didn’t mean to make it scary there at the end… I have to admit, though, it certainly came out furfl, didn’t it?…..
__________________________________

I give up. I’ve lost my mind completely, and can’t really say I mind too much. I’m gonna go see how it reads now….. Well, it reads. As that seems to be all I can say for it, or against it, we’ll let it go, and see what happens…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

Those corpses died in the wool…..

Posted on May 30, 2013 by gigoid

Ffolkes,
And then, I woke up….. which may or may not have been a blessing; we have yet to reach a decision on so important a matter. Until we do, I suggest we all just settle down, and let the police do their work. Not that I’d ever get in their way, but, they do tend to get intense when they’ve been without a doughnut for over two hours, don’t they? And since yesterday, when one of the doughnuts bit back at an officer, well, they’re understandably a bit sensitive on the matter…. Silly officers….

Ah, that’s better…. This should improve matters by quite a measure in the next couple minutes; the above was written pre-coffee, so I can’t really claim responsibility for it, as we all know what going without coffee does to me. Now that I’ve had a sip or three (the first ones go down fast….), I may even be able to reach a degree of coherence heretofore unseen in these parts. It’s worth a shot, don’t you agree?

It’s much better than relying on my brain to be intelligible under duress, which is the listed definition of not having coffee, in the dictionary I use…. Murphy or no Murphy, without coffee, the world ceases to make any sense to me, and it is a good thing, for me, and for society at large, that I have arranged to have it within seconds of being awake and up. If not, I don’t know for certain if the space-time continuum would be safe, so it’s a good thing….

Perhaps, if I were less of a compassionate man, I wouldn’t be concerned about the state of the space-time continuum, but, I am, I can’t help it; if it goes, we all go, so, I’m just doing it for all of you, you see…. Really, I am. Of course, by doing so, I save my own sorry ass, so let’s not forget that little grain of salt, either.

With all that said, you may have guessed that I got too much sleep, and you’d be nearly right, as I got way more than the usual amount, arising at an almost reasonable hour, at 0437, after falling asleep at about quarter past eight. I forced myself to listen to the ball game, which started at 7:15, and it worked to keep me awake for a while longer…. It’s actually quite odd to feel almost normal, but, not surprising, I suppose….. feeling odd, that is, not being normal…. Ah shit, there I go again…. The hell with it….

Shall we Pearl?…..
__________________________________

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

For much of my life, since reaching what I like to call the age of reason, at about 10 or 11 years of age, I have been aware of this aphorism from Aristotle. If not the aphorism itself, the principle was clear to me from a young age, and I chose then to always strive to be excellent, in whatever I chose to do. You see, I also found out, it requires a deliberate choice to pursue excellence, because it a) doesn’t just happen by itself, and b) it annoys other people. It is the second factor that dictates the need to make a deliberate choice; most people make the opposite choice, to be average, to not stand out too much, unless it is to their advantage to do so, to control or impress others, not for the state of being excellent.

More explicitly, most people try to excel at tasks, or games, or whatever, in order to promote their own agenda, not for the sake of just wanting to do things right, or to scratch the itch of curiosity, or to be the best person one can be. And society at large is quick to show their disapproval if someone is too different in this respect; the normals are afraid of both of the other ends of the human spectrum, the incurably unintelligent AND those who perceive more, and when most people are afraid of something, they make life hard for it, if not downright unbearable, and/or dangerous. Pink monkeys don’t go over well in a brown monkey tree….. They tend to either leave the forest, live in misery, or dye their fur brown, in short order….

This is why the choice must be made, to pursue excellence; it’s not an easy decision, but critically important. It is also a decision that can’t be made half-way; once committed, it extends to EVERY area of one’s existence, requiring effort and dedication to achieve to any significant degree. I can only speak for myself, but it was the best decision of my early years, and I have never regretted making it, because the rewards are much greater than mere comfort, or any other I can think of that comes with giving in to peer pressure; to live with not seeking all there is to see, hear, and do in life, and do it with style, intelligence, and honor.

“By steadily disciplining the animal nature, until it becomes one pointed, it is possible to establish conscious awareness of The Eternal.” — Lao-Tzu

This is a bit metaphorical, but describes well the intensity and consistency of effort that is required to maintain an excellent attitude about life. It’s hard to keep it up all the time, and I have to admit I’m as human as anyone else, and get tired, not to say just plain frustrated, when I cannot easily, or even eventually, reach the goals I’ve set for myself. Fortunately, I also know that being human is okay, and just because I am not always at my best, does not mean it is not still within me, ever within my reach, whenever my perceptions are clear enough to show me the way. The path to Truth, fortunately, is always well lighted, though it may get confusing, and sometimes seem dark through the power of illusion; it never stops being the Truth, though, and that makes it always attainable….

Perhaps there will be some who will read this treatise, and think it arrogant, or condescending; I hope not, because it isn’t intended to be so. It is intended to be a sharing, of the understanding I have that can be of help to anyone in their life. This understanding is based on what I know to be true, and not on fear, or lack of understanding of what is real, in both Nature, and in people. There is great potential in people, much more than we, as a species, or as individuals, ever achieve…. partly because much of humanity is content to be normal, to sit back and let other people decide how the world should go, because it’s too much work to try to control their own world.

We can be so much more than a society of couch potatoes, sagely listening and nodding our heads in agreement with the talking heads we see on the Tube, or laughing ourselves mindless over the insane, or downright stupid acts of imaginary people meant to be metaphorical, but only seen as role models for a reality that doesn’t exist.

Even the advent of computer technology, with all its nearly unlimited potential for what only twenty years ago would have been called “magic”, has not inspired people to strive to be excellent, in work, in play, or in ethics; certainly not in government. Instead, we are drowning ourselves in fashion apps, or photo apps, or social media apps, and losing even more connection with the real world in the process….

Ah well, I suppose all will turn out how it will, in spite of my objections, or anyone else’s indifference. C’est la vie, as the French would say…. such is life; I think it appropriate that we hear from the ancient sages about that, as we started, to close this series of thoughts and rambles perfectly… well, maybe only one ancient sage…..

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not.” — Epictetus
So be it…. gigoid has spoken.
__________________________________

After writing the above, I believe I have already written a poem that will fit right in with that theme, at least metaphorically, which is our primary defining characteristic around here… Ah yes, here it is…..

A Failure to Germinate

Marking the days in elements of sad disarray
only holds me thrall, as I laugh while I may.
With cold, hard hands so impatient and cruel
pulling me to this vale of tears, a pathetic old fool.

Feelings sit silent, cast in shadows and light
breaking forth to implicate such vengeful might.
Just below the surface they patiently hide
to sally forth bravely, colors bright as they ride.

Tears and pain transform valued assets in hand
while comfort and serenity retreat to a far land.
Bold, bright patterns of hope garnish my ruinous state
until reality enters, full of disdainful portions of hate.

I sort out the illustrious measures of vision gone mild
only to find them transformed, now vicious and wild.
In my deepest desires I find myself calloused and cold
with faithless advocates whose souls have been sold.

My search finds little to support any hope of relief
far too much time has passed to bolster such belief.
The sad becomes real, and real becomes unfounded
until flights of such fancy are all dead, and grounded.

Nature has informed me of the newly hatched crime
that reality has boasted of proudly, time after time.
The last answer we think of is always the best
as we come to terms with fate, our hope at rest.

~~ gigoid ~~

__________________________________

So, here’s the deal…. I cruised SB, looking for quotes that would fit in with today’s apparent theme(s), whatever they are. This group is what my unconscious mind picked out; I didn’t pay much attention, other than as a peripheral check to determine whether it was publishable according to legal standards. Legal or no, here they are, and I’m seeing the whole group for the first time, just like y’all… this could be fun…. or not…. let’s see….

“Every guilty person is his own hangman.” — Seneca

“For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality. And the solution has been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. But for the contemporary mindset the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of man.” — C.S. Lewis “The Abolition of Man”

“The mirror sees the man as beautiful, the mirror loves the man; another mirror sees the man as frightful and hates him; and it is always the same being who produces the impressions.” — Marquis D. A. F. de Sade

“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” — A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

“A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it…Skepticism is the first step towards truth.” — Smart Bee

“It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.” — Alfred Adler “Problem of Neurosis” [1929]

“A possum must be himself, and being himself he is honest.” — Walt Kelly

Not bad, not bad at all…. I’ve seen worse, and not too many better, so, pay heed, because it really does give some good advice…. And, it WAS fun….
__________________________________

Well, let’s see how well I approached normality….. Oh, good, not close at all. Whew! I was worried about that a bit; I haven’t had this much sleep in weeks, and I wasn’t sure how it would affect matters…. Doesn’t seem to have caused too much havoc. It’s good enough to float, I think, so we’ll kick it out there and see….. I don’t know about y’all, but I had fun, so, not to be threatening, or anything like that, but, I’ll be back tomorrow, if the creek don’t rise any further…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

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

Ned Moore, aka gigoid, is a 70 year-old, (!!!… When did that happen?….), retired dilettante, who would rather read than eat, most days. His first blog, "gigoid’s folly", has been emailed out to folks he knows for about 18 years now. He still considers it his best defense against angst, and the ever-present specter of sheer insanity..... Due to rigorous curmudgeon training requirements, he has discontinued his Facebook presence, but still indulges in the occasional Twitter session... In essence, he's socialized, but, not overly sociable; all labels and stereotypes are forbidden in his presence... and he doesn't care what anyone thinks about that..... In fact, he doesn't want to talk anymore.... If you feel you MUST contact gigoid, his email address is: alphagigoid@gmail.com You can go read now.... Go on, beat it.... gigoid, the dubious

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gigoid

Exploring Consensual Reality

Tag Archives: Walt Kelly

Building rapport by flapping gums, Mambo-style….

Naturally, the investment of prior absolution for future transgressions received gratis by agnostics causes catechism envy in devout Catholics, and numerous Episcopalians….

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

21 seems to be all Murphy wants today…. but, 21 what?….

Avoiding those odd “Elvis” moments….

Soused on pilfered gin, all in a good cause…..

Parking parallel is de rigeur on Mondays….

In the name of all that’s wholly…..

Those corpses died in the wool…..

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