Today was a strange one for this time of year — thousands of birds flew over the house, heading in a northerly direction.
The calendar shows this 24-four period is the 11th of January, not March, April or May…
Thanks to my sister, I now know the embroidery style that her mother in-law uses to create fascinating works of art:
I think the kits that her mother in-law used were called Matsuhato.
Which leads to the next thought.
In times past, battles were remembered by bards with ballads and seamstresses who sewed elaborate tapestries.
In the battles to come, let us remember our fallen warriors — whether under cyber attack or defending our physical freedoms — using Bunka or whatever means our warriors’ family, friends and supporters may have at hand.
Who amongst you will create the kits that will feature the flaming fields of war?
Who will sew the tartans to drape over the weapons newly-forged in Ruralite furnaces?
Who will create the sinewed covers for the field drums, whether made with animal skin or simulated on tablet PC screens?
My friends, it is too late for the war of words.
The battle cry has echoed in the hills and valleys, shook the shaky foundations of the once hallowed halls in Urbanski territory.
The trumpets of Jericho wait no longer!
TO ACTION!!!
Guinevere sat stomach-down on the semicircular sofa, legs bent at the knee, feet up in the air, propping her facial cheeks on her palms while she read a book.
Lee counted off the steps of a “paddle” dance.
The soft sound of filtered air tickled their ears, overcoming the pure silence of the near vacuum of space.
Lee blinked his eyes twice in rapid succession to turn on the comm system between the two of them.
“Whatcha readin’?”
Guinevere batted her eyes to turn on the voice simulator in her head. “A book.”
“I can see that. What is it?”
“Well, I was tired of mentally flipping through raw data. I wanted something different, something that activated my tactile sensations.”
“Oh, I get it. It’s a book. But what is it?”
“The…what did they used to call it? A 3D printer or replicator or something? Anyone, the State Changer read my thoughts and reproduced a book, with real rough pages!, about a period of time and the mix of subcultures during that historic period.”
“You mean, before the Change?”
“Well, yes, of course. What else did you mean?”
“So, what’s the title?”
“‘Globish.'”
“Huh? Glibberish?”
“No. ‘Globish.'”
“Glow fish? I thought they were banned?”
“Artificial insertion of glow material was banned for a time, but glow fish which were genetically modified to emit low levels of lights have been perfectly acceptable for decades.”
“Yes, yes. You and your constant attachment to the ISSA Net. You know, there was a time when…”
Guinevere stood up and pretended to play an air violin. “You were saying…?”
They both laughed.
“Oh, never mind. Me and my old man speech. So, what’s the book about?”
Guinevere shook her head. “You’ve got dance practice, don’t you? Why don’t you continue to practice and I’ll read my summary of the book, so far, into one of your memories for later retrieval?”
“Fantastic idea. By the way, that’s a great outfit you have. Where did you get it?”
“It’s what they call retro Star Trek — beige tunic and black slacks — all the rage in the colonies right now.”
As Guinevere rotated out of view in the toroid low-gravity inflatable “Bigelow Donut” of their tourist pod, Lee kept practicing the paddle moves in the zero-gravity dance sphere.
He wanted to show off his new moves at the charity ball in a few days, where funds were being raised to benefit people whose in-flight cyborg fusion surgeries had failed and were no longer considered viable members of Colony D#F3’s replacement crew, slated for recycling when they arrived at the docking station unless they had the labour/investment credits to pay for another attempt for a successful surgical procedure.
Although everyone knew someone who had been recycled and eventually found its reconstituted way back into society, there were more people who had been recycled whom no one had heard from again.
Meanwhile, in the adjoining tourist pod, Kathryn secretly practiced a new dance form never seen in public…
The year was 2013, the Year of the Underground Gunsmith Shop Revolution.
The rallying cry: “The West wasn’t won with a registered gun.”
Revolutionaries met in secret, creating their own version of the Underground Railroad, hiding from the tyrants of the Bureaucracy, following in the ghostly footsteps of the Prohibition Moonshiners.
The late-night hammering and pounding in front of DIY forges rang out in Ruralite territory.
After building their own weaponry and ammunition, members of the UGSR took the law into their own hands, hunting down the criminals themselves, dumping the bodies for all to see that no longer would the people, the REAL people, not the contented sheep in their flats, semi-Ds and McMansions, no longer would they let the weak and the mentally ill decide the fate of lawful gunowners.
The weak and the mentally ill who used to rely on random violence to give themselves a sense of purpose because they could not stand up to their own internal damnation or physical bullying by those mentally stronger than them would, no more, torture the innocent or make splashy headlines.
The land would soon be free of them and their filth.
Viva la Underground Gunsmith Shop Revolution!
Their logo — Charles Darwin calmly seated in a rattan chair, holding an AR-15 rifle in his hands, the weapon propped on top of a knee crossed over one leg, the motto written in bold type above his head: DARWIN SAYS, ” GO AHEAD…MAKE MY DAY!”
Anyone remember Epictetus, the Greek philosopher who was born a slave?
Well, his insights were ageless then and just as poignant now.
However, let’s all pretend that modern psychologists can justify their lofty professional salaries by polling the people and rewording the writing of ancient Greeks, as if there’s something new to be said:
“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ”
― Epictetus“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Epictetus“First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.”
― Epictetus“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”
― Epictetus
And now, the rest of the story you’ve been waiting for…
“Gentlemen,” said General Eisehower to a roomful of reporters during World War II, “I know you’ve all been guessing where we’re going to attack next. Well, I’m going to let you in on the secret. Our next operation will be Italy, early in July. General Patton will attack the southern beaches, General Montgomery the eastern.”
“General,” said one newsman, as the reporters gasped at the revelation, “if one of us leaked that plan, couldn’t it be disastrous?”
Ike nodded. “The slightest hint in your stories will tip it off to German intelligence,” he said. “But I’m not going to censor you fellows. I’m just leaving it up to each man’s sense of responsibility.”
“Wow,” exclaimed one reporter, “what a dirty trick!”
But not a word of the operation leaked out.
— see previous blog entries for attribution, or not; from Battlefield President: Dwight D. Eisenhower (New York, 1967), page 11.
Does American violence — including gun owners’ belief in the right to shoot others when they feel justified — go hand-in-hand with American mass media imperialistic/oversaturation tendencies and lower longevity than other, less dominant, subcultures?
In other words, what is the alpha male/female and how does it manifest its domineering personality in the myriad variety of social settings of our global economy?
Can you have one without the other?
Disarm the populace and the U.S. “eminent domain” mindset gives way to other cultures taking over the species’ sense of direction and/or ultimate purpose?
What are the unintended consequences that we haven’t accounted for in trying to stop our “shoot first and pretend to ask questions later” subcultural habits?
What can we gain by looking at other cultures that have transitioned from warmongering to peacemaking? Were they ultimately winners or losers on the stage of world history?
Movie of the week: The Arrival
As the countdown winds down — only 13630 days, according to the main schedule — we look at one of the interim milestones as well as some of the news items that indicate our species’ desire to divert our attention from diverting our attention from reaching our goals.
= = = = =
Like other Presidents who exerted forceful leadership at critical junctures in American history, [Franklin D.] Roosevelt was the recipient of both passionate adoration and blind hatred.
Roosevelt jokes — and jokes about his wife, Eleanor, who was always on the go — abounded.
Some of them Roosevelt enjoyed; others he regarded as beneath contempt.
His favorite cartoon showed a little girl running to tell her mother standing in front of a fashionable home: “Look, mama, Wilfred wrote a bad word!” The word on the sidewalk was “Roosevelt.”
And his favorite story was about the commuter from Westchester County, a Republican stronghold, who always walked into his train station, handed the newspaper boy a quarter, picked up the New York Herald Tribune, and then handed it back as he rushed out to catch his train.
Finally the newsboy, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, asked his customer why he only glanced at the front page.
“I’m interested in the obituary notices,” the man told him.
“But they’re way over on page twenty-four, and you never look at them,” said the boy.
“Boy,” said the man,” the son of a bitch I’m interested in will be on page one!”
In that vein…
At a Cabinet meeting one day Roosevelt gleefully told the story about an American marine who, ordered home from Guadalcanal, was disconsolate because he hadn’t killed even one of the enemy.
He stated his case to his superior officer, who said: “Go up on that hill over that and shout: ‘To hell with Emperor Hirohito!’ That will bring the Japs out of hiding.”
The marine did as he was ordered.
Immediately a Japanese soldier came out of the jungle, shouting, “To hell with Roosevelt!”
“And of course,” said the marine, “I could not kill a Republican.”
— more stories collected in Presidential Anecdotes by Paul F. Boller, Jr. (Kingsport, TN, 1981)
Is Hillary Clinton really the ‘most widely traveled’ secretary of state? : http://wapo.st/13fzF2D Answer: No.
treetrunkdings 