Meatloaf, with no ketchup….

Ffolkes,

    One wouldn’t think so, but, the quote from Jefferson, above, is perfectly appropriate for the picture…. which is shot of the flower I picked, and brought to leave at the grave side of my friend Carol, when two other classmates of mine went with me to visit her, at her final resting place, at the Templeton town cemetery (Templeton is the small farming town in Central CA where we all grew up….)…. and, I should have know better than to try to start the day with a reminiscence….. Now, I am leaking copious amounts of salty fluids out of my eyes, making it difficult to see what I’ve typed; damn this frigging PTSD!….

I suppose there is nothing actually wrong about crying; under the proper circumstances, it can be quite cathartic, and may even release tension and/or built up feelings of guilt, or loss, or whatever emotion assails us, when we get to the point where we must cry, or burst…. But, this is different…. Any time I feel ANY damn strong emotion, whether happy, or sad, or in any way poignant, my tears begin to flow, almost as if I were a child of two or three, with no emotional control over my feelings at all. For a man of my age, and capabilities, it is not merely embarrassing to have it strike as it does, willy-nilly, with no warning or pattern I can find, it is demeaning, as well…..

How we got into this emotional morass is simple, and my mistake…. I should know better than to start of talking of Carol; it brings out my strong emotion every time, as she is sorely missed. Carol was the kind of person we all know some time in our lives; she’s the one who always had a smile for you, no matter how she felt herself; one of those people whose presence makes others feel happy. She baked, and, I am positive, though I was not there, that her house was the one all her children’s friends hung out at, because there were always cookies, or a cupcake, and a warm smile from Mom… I envy her husband, for all the years he was allowed to have with her; we grew close in the last couple of years before she died, and I am glad, for she was one of the BEST people I have ever known…. and I say that, even though I never even ate one of her cookies…

It is fortunate, for me especially, that writing a blog is not a form of performance art, at least not in the sense of having a camera on us, recording us as we pound away at the keyboard…. though, in my case, it would be, if nothing else, NOT boring, as I never sit still for very long; I am up and down from the chair every few minutes to ease some painful bone or another, with these movements interspersed with periods of absolute stillness, as I compose in my head, then mad, desperate typing, as I try to get it down before it fades away, into that limbo we authors fear the most, where our best ideas get lost, never to be seen again….

Okay, well, that was something…. I’m not really certain just how to view the above…. it’s done, so, it stays, naturally. But, I am pretty sure I’ve never done anything quite like it…. In addition, I must say, I’m glad for that, and I hope never to go through this particular opening process again, as it hurt, in a lot of different ways, not all physical…. I’m STILL trying to clear out my sinuses from the crying jag I’ve already gone through, THRICE…. I’s okay, though; it got us this far down the page, so, silver lining, I guess…. Whatever the method, we’re here, so….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“I leapt headlong into the sea,and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly song, and took tea and comfortable advice.” — John Keats

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Having fulfilled my promise to pre-screen any more video movies, I can honestly say, this show, a long running BBC series, is NOT one of the reasons I stopped watching TV…. This, in spite of being on TV, and, no doubt, chopped to pieces by commercial interruptions, is excellent…. Fortunately, in this format, on You Tube, one need no longer put up with those ads, so, the story unfolds seamlessly, without the jolting stops and starts…. Moreover, it is one of the best of the Holmes stories, well adapted to the screen, with a wonderful cast of very strong actors…. Enjoy!….

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Governor Tarkin’s words from Star Wars, Episode 5, The Empire Strikes Back, assume an eerie precognitive accuracy in today’s world. Our country, which began, perhaps, as the world’s first truly democratic republic, has been so completely taken over by corporate interests, who hold private, dangerously delusional ambitions, which, over time, has prompted them to establish and maintain a world order according to their own avaricious agenda, one which has effectively altered the way the government operates, to the point we can no longer call it anything other than what it is in reality, an oligarchy…. government by, and for, the rich….

Absolute control of virtually all the monetary and physical resources of the nation (and, really, the whole planet…) is, and has been for some time, firmly under the control of a very small number of very rich assholes. (Well, the last word isn’t part of the actual definition, but, is most certainly my own opinion…). That control now extends to define every domestic and foreign policy carried out…. by ANY administration…. Even the makeup of those government administrations is controlled by those with money; they’ve paid the courts enough to ensure the laws will favor anything they wish to do to maintain that control, by putting their own stooges in a position to make the laws they need, and to judge those laws the way they wish….

For example….

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/22/torture-obama-cover-up-cia

“At this point, it’s becoming hard to believe anything Obama says about torture. The New York Times’ Charlie Savage reported Sunday that this administration is considering reinstating the Bush administration’s absurd interpretation of the United Nations treaty against torture, signed by the US decades ago, so that the US can claim the UN actually meant that any torture happening outside one’s own country essentially, you know, doesn’t count. Military and intelligence lawyers “say they need more time to study whether it would have operational impacts.” Really? I thought we stopped torturing people five years ago.”

“If Obama were to adopt this radical interpretation, sure, it would contradict all of his promises as he came into office, but as legal professor David Lubon describes, it would also directly violate US law.”

– excerpted from the above article

“Extreme avarice is always mistaken; there is no passion which is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present has so much power to the prejudice of the future.” — La Rochefoucauld

It has become obvious, at least, to me, the unseen, shadowy masters of society no longer particularly care so much about keeping their agenda hidden…. The future La Rochefoucauld predicted is NOW…. The current collection of Obamadrones, who inhabit the White House, originally promised, as part of the pre-election set of lies the public wished to hear, ( Specifically designed, very effectively, as it turns out, to convince voters to put them in office….), to be the “most transparent administration ever”, along with murmurs about closing Guantanamo, and getting us out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East wars….

But, what has actually happened? Guantanamo is still operative, and, as the article shows, isn’t going anywhere soon, in spite of all the controversy; the torture continues, too, despite the insistence it does not…. just another lie, as it turns out. This administration is responsible for continuing the illegal spying done by the NSA, as well, having never even bothered to deny anything…. They just keep taking journalists and potential whistle blowers to court, for having given away their secrets, with charges based solely on provisions of that most evil document, the Homeland Security Act, a poorly disguised euphemism for Big Brother’s Mandate, a document that abrogates virtually every one of the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution…..

Yet, we still have troops on the ground all over the world, and, we are STILL bombing a number of foreign countries in our search to kill “terrorists”, with planes, AND with robot drones…. It’s said we spend $75 million/day for that bombing; I wonder who’s getting that money? Arms dealers, ya think?….

In order to distract critics, a fair amount of reform has been accomplished in the healthcare field; but, a close look at the resulting structural changes shows that, in essence, once again, the major winners are not the people, but, rather, the insurance companies, the HMO’s, the pharmaceutical companies, and all those other nice folks who charge the little people up the ass for their medical care, which, when one thinks about it, should be the right of every citizen, regardless of their position, or financial status….

What is society for, if not to share common knowledge (i.e., medical expertise and accumulated knowledge which is the legacy of the species, not the doctors, or the government…), to provide a clearing house for such skills so that all members of that society have access to them, to obtain the benefits of living in the group? If not for this, what is it for?

Perhaps I am not the most qualified judge, but, I know for certain, the legacy of the species does NOT belong exclusively to those who possess them, or to those who control them… They belong to us all, and it is only human avarice, and the predatory nature of man, with its unfortunate tendency to fall into evil, that precludes such a boon… As long as the corporate masters have their way, somebody will have to pay them to get what is actually theirs by right….

On that subject, here is a good article, with some excellent points of reason, which, by contrast, sound out cleanly and clearly amongst all the crap one generally finds in the mainstream media….

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/oct/21/-sp-the-truth-about-evil-john-gray

Given what is in this article, I am not certain of how to continue; to my mind, there is little hope of changing human nature, especially at this late hour…. In spite of all the technological advances and civilization we have built up over the last millennia, we are STILL just a weak, frightened hairless ape, with the same set of emotional and reasoning patterns and responses we carried with us when we still were huddling in caves, cold, naked, and afraid of the dark…. Seriously, I am often amazed at how our species STILL acts according to the same primitive emotions, and even more primitive attitudes, of aggression, theft, and violence that characterized those creatures, living in the wild, struggling to make sense of the mass of perceptions their too-massive brains took in…

We are still just hairless apes, no more civilized than those poor, ignorant savages; we just dress better, and have learned a few tricks since our cave days…. Our emotions, and the cult of ignorance adopted by society, haven’t changed a whit….

This is long enough, and I don’t have any viable solutions to offer…. so, we’ll call this a rant, and be on our way to the poetry section, where we MAY find a small piece of what DOES make us different from the other creatures with whom we share this globe, and, one of the FEW characteristics about mankind that I find to be of any redeeming value….. poetry…..

“Give them an opposable thumb, and they think they’re special.” — Smart Bee

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In my opinion, Charles is cool…. I say that, knowing full well the use of that word will date me…. I still think he’s cool….

Powerful stuff, eh?….

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Here is an old school pearl of vintage variety; moreover, I let Smart Bee pick out most of it, only intervening to format each quote’s position in the pearl at large…. Let’s see how it came out….

“Never promise more than you can perform.” — Publius Syrus (42 BC) — Maxim 528

“Remember:  Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.” — Dave Butler

“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are?” — Smart Bee**

“Life is the sum of all your choices.’ — Albert Camus

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.” — Mark Twain

** (According to Dean Hannotte, a collector of quotes, with a web site here: http://www.hannotte.com/Quotes.htm, this was as quoted on page 8 of Richard Kehl’s 1990 quotation anthology entitled Further Departures ….. but, he didn’t say with whom it originated…. Hence, SB gets the credit for today…..)

There you go, ffolkes; not too shabby for one with so little direction provided at the outset…. sort of a series of comments on Reality, and our place in it, so to speak…. It’ll do to finish, quite nicely….

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Due to circumstances completely within my control, I’m very late getting up to finish and post this mess… but, it’s done, so I’m not going to either belabor the circumstances, of bemoan my choice to not assume the necessary control of events…. In short, I don’t care, it’s done…. Moreover, I’m outta here, having done all the damage I can do…. so to speak…. See y’all tomorrow, ffolkes…..

À bientôt, mon cherí….