Quotes for the day

Leo Cawley, Vietnam veteran:

There is almost no human activity that is as intensely social as modern warfare… When a military unit loses its internal cohesion and starts to fight as individuals there is such a radical and unfavourable change in the casualty ratio that it is almost always decisive… Every general staff in the world since 1914 has known that the bravery of individual soldiers in modern war is about as essential as whether they are handsome.

J.G. Ballard:

…the slaughter in Star Wars, quite apart from the destruction of an entire populated planet, is unrelieved for two hours, and at times stacks the corpses halfway up the screen.  Losing track of the huge bodycount, I thought at first that the film might be some weird, unintentional parable of the US involvement in Vietnam, with the plucky hero from the backward planet and his scratch force of reject robots and gook-like extraterrestrials fighting bravely against the evil and all-destructive super-technology of the Galactic Empire.  Whatever the truth, it’s strange that the film gets a U certificate — two hours of Star Wars must be one of the most efficient means of weaning your pre-teen child from any fear of, or sensitivity towards, the death of others.

Is AT&T losing customers to Verizon in north Alabama?

The pulsing migraine headache that has dogged me from the moment I was born is pulsating “louder” than ever today.

I am screaming in my thoughts in order to be heard, using alliteration as method to contain the contagion of madness that wants to spread into the rest of my body.

Using old tricks of my youth to hide my insanity from the rest of the world — running through vocabulary words in any language to keep myself connected with the society into which I was born and am expected to communicate in a legible manner.

The litany of voices I hear and read wants to repeat itself here through the funhouse mirror/brilliant cut crystal ball of a writer.

…the dance instructor I just met who tells me her whole life story in a few minutes — married, divorced, miscarriages, births, lack of silliness, not a girl, not interested in guys, Western Swing dance champion who prefers Balboa dance style, etc., like she has been through this interrogation by strangers a million times and learned to push people away quickly, or…what?

…on social media: the animal rescue posts — please rescue this dog/cat before it’s euthanised, pitbulls aren’t dangerous, found a cat with kittens in a back alley that need to be adopted, etc.;  the gun owners who feel threatened by government regulations and must let us know their fears through LOUD STATEMENTS EVERY DAY; the people who claim they are loving devotees of their religion but they relentlessly post hateful comments about others (Christians against Obama, Buddhists against overcrowded cities, etc.).

So, in my mental confusion, I put a paper bowl filled with water, oatmeal and ground-up flax seed in the microwave oven, set the timer for 20:00 instead of 2:00 and, after taking a shower, I returned to find I had made dried oatmeal/flax seed cakes instead of a bowl of hot cereal.

Happiness!!!

The universe entertains me constantly, poking me in the side and saying, “See? Isn’t life beautiful? You didn’t burn oatmeal, you made yourself the handheld dried oatmeal cake you’ve always dreamed of eating on the commute to work for years, didn’t you?”

Despite the boring moments between eventful events, while setting up the next scenario to snag the snaggle-toothed snagosaurus, life is, indeed, beautiful.

Surprising, no?

Strange Daze

Today, I let my eyes wander over to websites I rarely find interesting only to find them interesting, including this “poster” at rare.us:

salon-white-as-virgin-snow-1

Which pushed my thoughts on to other mass media outlets and their statistical anomalies, including the Saturday Night Live “Five Timers Club“:

SNL-Five-timers-club

Is there a pattern here worth analysing or simply pointing out and laughing toward?

If George W. Bush’s image can be rehabilitated, then anything is possible, n’est pas?

Redacted, retracted, redux

I don’t know what it is that puts me in a mood like this, this feeling of smugness, this desire not to believe in myself, to always be wrong, always chasing the perfect 100 on a test score as if I’ll never get it, running from my mistakes, fleeing into the cosmos.

Why?

Because of both my faith in AND my fear of our species’ imperfections.

I do not want to be successful.

Instead, always vigilant, looking for the crack in the veneer, analysing the pinhole leak in the dam, contemplating the lack of understanding everything going on in a cubic centimeter of dirt.

Why?

Because we can make films about our mistakes, films which contain their own mistakes, and we learn from neither, or the lessons we learn and the solutions we apply solve a different set of problems because time is irrelevant, only relative.

That is why we seek perfection in our theosophical beliefs.

Otherwise, tarnish, rust and decay should be taken as normal aspects of our impermanence.

I am chasing my tail in an M.C. Escher print.

Freedom to think without an assigned theme or classroom score

Being here, with me, an Internet radio station and the sun-fed trees outside my window, I’m free to expand my thought patterns upon this blank canvas of an electronic writing pad.

Mixing metaphors if I choose.

If still waters run deep, why do oceans have waves?

Mixing media of varying density and thickness.

My father…a year ago, we were working with medical professionals to seek a path of better health for Dad, “better” being a term we wished for and hoped for more than knew was an illusive condition.

My typical reaction to “serious” situations, the result of turning nervous worry into positive joking action, constantly kept me on the edge of making comments my father, should he have been in a better mood/thought set, would not have approved.

Our senses of humour were not aligned.

I can ask myself why at this point, without tears or sadness seeping into my wonderment, why Dad did not understand or chose not to encourage my funny side.

He implied more than said that the man of laughter has a harder way to tread to the pinnacle of success than a man who treats everyone with seriousness and respect for their emotions/life conditions (i.e., the burdens they bear that are eased with sympathy and empathy).

That is, of course, my interpretation.

But I have heard others tell me that laughing at the wrong time or not taking adult responsibilities is not what my physical presence inspires others to encourage.

I have had plenty enough of what others expect.

Splitting into nearly schizophrenic thought sets to accommodate others and myself at the same time is not the set of states of energy I want to maintain and nourish.

After all, the self is a self-delusional illusion, a trick of chemical reactions that has brought nature to this point, with black pixels outlined on a white-light background, to examine itself, without reproductive needs being met, to spin in place while setting conditions for the next outburst of creativity that knows no ethical/moral boundaries, no positive or negative thought patterns, simply taking the sets of states of energy as is and moving on into the next imaginary moment/time period.

While our species holds public discussions about the subcultural struggles of how to treat the non-heterosexual members, how do other species behave?

I, for one, have seven billion friends to spend time with, some I have been conditioned to treat as equals and some I have been conditioned to hold at arm’s length for at least a brief period of time because our differences are sufficient to keep me from immediately understanding what makes us members of the same species.

We invoke the ancient writings of our ancestors to protect us from having to question or having to accept that subcultures rise and fall in popularity.

We rarely see that talking about our “enemies,” whether with good or bad word patterns, gives them validity.

Memes…

Symbols…

From the 10,000 year/mile distance, the memes and symbols merge into bigger patterns.

Tempests in the teapot of a planet, barely making waves in a solar system, practically invisible in a galaxy, hardly discernible in a supercluster.

Entertaining, nonetheless.

Because I am comfortable in the meaninglessness of my insignificance, the self a temporary confluence of states of energy, I have found the longer view a driving force in my writing, in my [non]existence, seeing 13528 days, rotations of Earth upon its tilted axis, into an imaginary future while having fun laughing about the tragedies of the moment, including my own.

It is, at the same time, a self-examination of one as a member of a species.

Is it not statistically normal to want to reproduce and provide shelter for one’s mammalian offspring, the majority of whom are right-handed, heterosexual, male, dark-haired and dark-eyed non-alpha primates?

I am left-handed, heterosexual, male, red/white-haired, green-eyed and non-alpha, without children.

Thus, statistically, not normal.  Abnormal.

Why, then, am I here recording my presence for the majority to, perhaps, read?

Why, indeed.

The confluence of states of energy, this “me” that “I” say does not exist, is the answer.

Avoiding the messy, daily adult responsibilities of an almost 51-year old man, that’s who and what.

Long ago mentally prepared to die at any time, having successfully achieved the goals of my childhood desire to be a published author.

The rest is an endless buffet of desserts filled with laughter and inappropriate humorous thoughts, thankful that the rest of the species is here to support me with characters and scenes to write during the remainder of my life.

More about Dava Newman’s BioSuit

History is historic.

To put it in perspective, the goal is to combine a viable space suit and prosthetics to reduce the need for a fully biological human to participate in space exploration missions.

Thus, the bombs at the end of the Boston Marathon are part of the greater mission.

Putting the blame on some person or persons is a secondary function required to give Earthlings a feeling of justice served.

Anything else — fertilizer factory fires, earthquakes, etc — is a diversion to feed the various subpopulations their needs and wants — emotional attachment, hero worship, and so on.

Human nature being what it is

Watching the mob hatred build for the [what at this point we still call the alleged] Chechen men who were identified as suspects and then appear to have decided to flee Boston starting at a point not far from the original crime scene…

Well, it has my attention, the inconsistencies, that is.

As a storyteller and former jury foreman, facts never lie but people do.

In fact, people never remember the facts exactly as they were in full detail.

Our prejudices and other social filters focus us on details that we consider relevant to our personality traits.

At this point, no one has produced a purchase receipt that shows who acquired any of the following: pressure cooker(s), explosives and projectiles (nails, pellets, etc.), alleged to have been used in the attack on the Boston Marathon.

We have video that purports to connect two men to backpacks most probably containing IEDs.

We don’t have public evidence that ties the two men to the IEDs.

We have, instead, a massive rush to judgement, a lynch mob mentality that hasn’t changed in thousands of years.

I trust that the majority of people involved in the local Boston police, the FBI and other security forces are doing their jobs as honestly and lawfully as possible.

At the same time, I know that many people want justice, even vigilante justice, and there will be those who will facilitate that, providing means to justify the quick end to this terrible story, including the talking heads, the paid “experts” on the television screen and Internet popup windows.

Sigh…back to the larger story…the tale of our exploration of the solar system as we spread out into the galaxy.

I know today’s headlines will repeat themselves ad infinitum/ad nauseum, which should make me happy knowing I can write the same story over and over again without having to invent new emotions or mental states for readers to familiarise themselves therewith.

Some days the writing is easy.  Some days, I wish my robotic writing machine wrote smoother sentences and fun-to-read stories.

As far as this current story goes, I, for the sake of a plot twist, will take this in the direction of a vast coverup and conspiracy to feed one group of my readers who will believe the two men who came here as asylum seekers with their family were easy-to-use pawns with websites and online profiles set up in advance for a convincing crime drama.

Gone are the days of a smoking gun and a tattered copy of the Anarchist Cookbook found in the trunk of a car.