I am a human being who respects all other human beings until they stop respecting ALL other human beings.
I am a teacher of children. I work long hours (most without pay) and I will protect my charges against any and all threats to their well-being.
I believe in people to do the right thing when confronted with religion. I worship no gods, nor money, nor power. I drive a car, but that is a contradiction I have to live with because the place I live has no mass transit.
I have NO loyalty to any corporation and believe that those who do lack self awareness.
I believe that the money I make should be spent for the greater good and those who feel different are part of the problem because they do not understand that without infrastructure their world becomes the fucked-up mess they see before them. This saddens me because it could be different.
I believe guns kill.
I have no heroes, because that would involve worship.
If there is one constant in the whole universe I believe it to be CHANGE. Nostalgia is trivia in search of Never Never Land. I get it that our memories may or may not be in tune with reality, but this is a universal rule and I will not argue the merits of going back to a better day.
There is no nice way to be hateful against anything. If you are in touch with your feelings than you must love/hate. Were we taught to hate? Did hate come from personal experience? Is our hate justified? Would you like me to hate you? I don't play that game because I have learned to hate ideas rather than people.
I believe in diversity and if you don't like it then you should probably avoid it. Demanding to be treated exceptional because of your birthright is not a good reason to hate.
5/21/16
3/3/16
Terror
Out of an abundance of caution,
I watched and waited.
Out of an abundance of zeal,
I acted and hated.
Criminal minds make deals with the devil,
While the rest of us wonder,
and wander,
away from truth to belief.
It is our way.
Taught to be exceptional,
an over-welcome to a stay.
History...
In Fourteen Ninety-Two,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Their past was resolute,
The future an adventure.
The cross and the sword destroyed a world,
To create a world.
The future can only be destroyed by our past,
If it is our way at last.
To learn to forget...
We are fighting against things we cannot see, as blank and powerful as the great wall of slurry that came pouring down into the Emery River and beyond. (Pierce, 2016)
1/16/16
Happy New Fucking Year
I have noticed that I haven't really paid attention to this place. The shingles are getting worn and who knows what the hell is growing out of the carpet. To show how much I endeavor to please I am now on my new year footing. Cindee and I are as well as we can be and the future looks as bright as it ever has be.
David Bowie is gone and I have no words, yet. Maybe I can give him a retrospective on some other media. I will leave you with SOUND.
And WORDS.
David Bowie is gone and I have no words, yet. Maybe I can give him a retrospective on some other media. I will leave you with SOUND.
And WORDS.
12/30/15
Smoking and Drinking
I leave this year with as many thoughts as I have left every year.
I have two exceptions and one (or both) will kill me.
As I grew from pod to man I loved two comics above all. The first was Groucho Marx and his incisive wit and sarcasm fueled the pod-boy to become the man-boy. "Duck Soup" is one of my favorite movies and I can still watch it today with the exhuberance I displayed as a youth. A lot of Groucho's humor was lost upon me, but I loved his mannerisms and his foils. My love for him was cemented when he appeared on Dick Cavett's show. I finally, truly got him.
The second was W.C. Fields (Bill) and my fondness for him was established from his relationship with Edgar Bergen (I love dummies). He had a grace that I appreciated and a wit that was razor like. I love most of his movies, but I especially love the biographies about him (he died eleven years before I was born). He was part of the Hollywood crowd at its heyday and I have a fondness for this because during vacations my dad used to take me to work and he would show me the old Hollywood/Culver City lots and I would dream. While he worked (he was a meat vendor) he thought I was asleep in his work truck. I instead would walk down Hollywood Blvd./Sunset Blvd. In the early hours of a summer morning I would think of all the old stars and it made me happy.
I honor these two men...
I honor dreams.
The past is a reflection.
Happy New Year!
I have two exceptions and one (or both) will kill me.
As I grew from pod to man I loved two comics above all. The first was Groucho Marx and his incisive wit and sarcasm fueled the pod-boy to become the man-boy. "Duck Soup" is one of my favorite movies and I can still watch it today with the exhuberance I displayed as a youth. A lot of Groucho's humor was lost upon me, but I loved his mannerisms and his foils. My love for him was cemented when he appeared on Dick Cavett's show. I finally, truly got him.
The second was W.C. Fields (Bill) and my fondness for him was established from his relationship with Edgar Bergen (I love dummies). He had a grace that I appreciated and a wit that was razor like. I love most of his movies, but I especially love the biographies about him (he died eleven years before I was born). He was part of the Hollywood crowd at its heyday and I have a fondness for this because during vacations my dad used to take me to work and he would show me the old Hollywood/Culver City lots and I would dream. While he worked (he was a meat vendor) he thought I was asleep in his work truck. I instead would walk down Hollywood Blvd./Sunset Blvd. In the early hours of a summer morning I would think of all the old stars and it made me happy.
I honor these two men...
I honor dreams.
The past is a reflection.
Happy New Year!
12/28/15
Self (Denial)
Take a second and breathe deep. Why do you hate or love with the passion you do? It may be because of what we are told. Do you know that most of the the crap (news and other such information givers) you see on your teevee, and increasingly your internet, are pure lies. You know this. In the heart that beats, in the lungs that breathe, you know this. Our courts have ruled that news is entertainment and because of this there is no bond between the "news givers" and us to actually tell us the truth. They will continue to tell us to trust them; but really? They are the media and they are beholden to nothing except their profits.
Who, what, where, when and how:
WHO?
Majority investors in corporations, bankers and their government lapdogs. The media is now almost completely owned by people who are not your friends and will tell you lies to support their lies.
WHAT?
Control of the money.
WHERE?
Started in the UK (one could argue that Spain and Portugal began this trend, but the English understood commerce, as well as the Dutch; the Netherlands was but a small country). England's navy dominated the seas for over 3 centuries. Today, the US military is unsurpassed in expansion of corporate goals; they have had success on our planet for over one hundred years.
WHEN?
From 1492 until now.
HOW?
A strong navy and control of the oceans and ports is vital. Today it is control of the air (force, satellites and media). Information is critical today as it was in the days of plunderers like Columbus, Cortez and Pizzaro.
Why do we accept plundering?
We accept the evils of our world because of a hope that will never come (I tend to blame religion on this, but it may be because of our tribal instincts). I may not be perfect in my thoughts, nor am I an idiot, but I believe our worse fears, nightmares and horrors come from our self and the self preservation we attempt to achieve comes through our wisdom. Instead of blaming people who are victims themselves we should focus on the real problem; WEALTH.
12/4/15
The New World Order
Revolution Number Nine
Now, let's see if I (the american) can reach into my cultural steam trunk and fish around for an example of American Exceptionalism. Ah, here it is... Alright, who's been shitting on The Constitution again. Why, the Preamble has a most putrid smell emanating from the brownish smudges that I believe were words at one time.
Is it me? I can no longer tolerate the level of discourse that passes for wisdom in this willfully ignorant nation. WE THE PEOPLE have little or no conception of the reasons we allow governments to be established in the first place. (hint hint: it is not to protect corporations and confuse it with foreign policy.) The stain of complacency, greed and fear has reduced US THE PEOPLE to the role of spectator and a number to be taxed because, face it folks, we are delusional; content in our false belief of greatness and virtue.
Scratched into the drying excrement that covers the first paragraph of The Constitution is:
"New Preamble"
We, the corporate overlords and our lackeys and psychophants, in order to form a more orderly society for our continuing benefit hold that governments must be created to legitimize our plutocratic authority, establish pay as you go, we'll make it up as we go Justice, insure domestic Tranquility by surveillance, random searching, expanding police powers and private security, provide that the commoners in the armed forces will Defend american corporate global interests until they too are privatized, promote the general Welfare by relabeling it special Welfare and using it to enable american corporate global interests, and secure for ourselves the Blessings of Tyranny by mortgaging our posterity and leaving the bill for the people's children and grandchildren and they can secure their own liberties after taxes. We also ordain and establish the right to make shit up and call it defending the Constitution for the USA.
There really are not many options left to us at this late juncture. A "storming the Bastille" moment is needed, yet highly unlikely. Our government has forsaken its people and any pretense of our "noble and just" position in the world is pure crap. The source of our greatness is raw, naked and brutal power. This is compounded by a ruling class that is devoid of originality and a host of lackeys who are quite frankly incompetent. We are definitely in for some interesting times. The elephant, bear, bull and donkey will leave quite a mess before they are through. My hope is that there will be something left. I believe we are at an evolutionary branch where our species' survival will rest on the degree of damage our desperate masters leave in the wake of their demise. The "Resources War" phase of the "Great World War" has begun and I don't believe anyone has noticed.
"You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world."
Now, let's see if I (the american) can reach into my cultural steam trunk and fish around for an example of American Exceptionalism. Ah, here it is... Alright, who's been shitting on The Constitution again. Why, the Preamble has a most putrid smell emanating from the brownish smudges that I believe were words at one time.
Is it me? I can no longer tolerate the level of discourse that passes for wisdom in this willfully ignorant nation. WE THE PEOPLE have little or no conception of the reasons we allow governments to be established in the first place. (hint hint: it is not to protect corporations and confuse it with foreign policy.) The stain of complacency, greed and fear has reduced US THE PEOPLE to the role of spectator and a number to be taxed because, face it folks, we are delusional; content in our false belief of greatness and virtue.
Scratched into the drying excrement that covers the first paragraph of The Constitution is:
"New Preamble"
We, the corporate overlords and our lackeys and psychophants, in order to form a more orderly society for our continuing benefit hold that governments must be created to legitimize our plutocratic authority, establish pay as you go, we'll make it up as we go Justice, insure domestic Tranquility by surveillance, random searching, expanding police powers and private security, provide that the commoners in the armed forces will Defend american corporate global interests until they too are privatized, promote the general Welfare by relabeling it special Welfare and using it to enable american corporate global interests, and secure for ourselves the Blessings of Tyranny by mortgaging our posterity and leaving the bill for the people's children and grandchildren and they can secure their own liberties after taxes. We also ordain and establish the right to make shit up and call it defending the Constitution for the USA.
There really are not many options left to us at this late juncture. A "storming the Bastille" moment is needed, yet highly unlikely. Our government has forsaken its people and any pretense of our "noble and just" position in the world is pure crap. The source of our greatness is raw, naked and brutal power. This is compounded by a ruling class that is devoid of originality and a host of lackeys who are quite frankly incompetent. We are definitely in for some interesting times. The elephant, bear, bull and donkey will leave quite a mess before they are through. My hope is that there will be something left. I believe we are at an evolutionary branch where our species' survival will rest on the degree of damage our desperate masters leave in the wake of their demise. The "Resources War" phase of the "Great World War" has begun and I don't believe anyone has noticed.
"You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world."
11/25/15
Amerika
"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45" by Milton Mayer:
..It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair...
..It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair...
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