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….

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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

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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…..

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

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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…..