Working in from the outer edge…..

Ffolkes,
“You tell Bupkes, either he’s there at six o’clock, in full clown regalia, nose and bicycle horn included, or I’m calling the guild, and he’ll never work another Mardi Gras in this town!” Everard Cross, who consistently won the neighborhood grouch award because he believed in living up to his name, growled his threat to the wife of Bupkes the Clown into the phone, then slammed it down hard enough to bounce.

At the top of his voice, he yelled out, “Honey, get me the Guildmaster on the phone; I need to roast a clown.” Picking up his well-chewed cigar from the ashtray, he chomped down on it and chewed. while he gazed with naturally beady eyes across the desk at his next victim, er, client…. “I hate clowns…” he thought, as he gazed at yet another smiling face surrounded by red curls, and the biggest red nose he’d ever seen….

Hmm…. Not too shabby for pre-coffee. It’s always a risk, trying to be coherent before that first sip or two of morning’s blood; I never know if my head will cooperate. It seems this morning, I caught it in a decent mood for once, and was able to finesse that out while the coffee was brewing. SIGH….. It is always a conundrum, though, to figure out if such smoothness so early is a good omen, or bad. It could turn either way, given the natural tendency around here toward unpredictability, so it’s a good idea to not commit oneself too early, lest one get shat upon…… not my favorite morning activity, you can bet…..

In fact, I have yet to find ANY activity in the morning that can be fully trusted to offer itself as omen for the day. Everything that happens seems to be fraught with potential for good or evil, and the final decision as to which isn’t apparent until the very last moment…. This can make the choice to continue, or to abort, anything I begin somewhat of a challenge, as you might guess.

It has gotten to the point that, lest Murphy completely take over my life, I refuse to make a decision about stuff like this, and sink into frozen inactivity. There is little else I can do some days, and if both of us are in a pissy mood, well, it can get ugly…… There have been days of late where not a damn thing moves or gets done until noon, or until one of us blinks. Fortunately, Murphy is bipolar, and can’t concentrate long enough to win at least half the time, so it evens out pretty well…. but, it’s a big pain having to go through that on a daily basis…

Ah well, I could lament the daily battles with the forces of nature for a long time, but, we DO have other stuff to accomplish today. I myself must go shopping for food, before there is no money left to do so, so it would no doubt serve me well to get started on today’s Pearl. Not that I want to be a toadie, and just cave in whenever someone tells me what I should be doing, even if it is logical. I’ll just stall around a moment here, and fill in with some extraneous verbiage that has nothing to do with anything at all, before I give in to the power of suggestion. If nothing else, that will fill in the rest of THIS paragraph, and make this a visually symmetrical intro…. one of our corollary goals…. Shall we Pearl?…..
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“The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly deceived.” — Oscar Wilde

Oscar’s speech, and his grasp of the art of conversation, were legendary for showing wit along with intelligent insight. Often, with aphorisms like this one, that depth of insight became quite shiny….. It doesn’t seem like much, at first glance, but is actually quite good advice, though given with tongue firmly planted in cheek. In one simple sentence, he condemns modern society for its lack of integrity, and offers to mankind the only true way to be content with our lot…..

In this society, we, the people, are deceived on what is essentially an hourly basis, by our leaders, by our priests, by businesses, by the police, by each other for the sake of expedience; almost every minute of our lives we are being lied to by someone, especially if one watches a lot of TV. We have, culturally, become so inured to being lied to that we have come to assume it is not just okay, but is the only way to get ahead in life…. Sadly, this may be true…. The presence of honesty in human interaction has become so rare that most people just expect the lies, and learn to live with them per Oscar’s suggestion.

In its simplicity, and in its Zen-like attitude, what Oscar shared is very much Eastern in its outlook. It isn’t a common idea in Western culture to “go with the flow”, but rather to “fight on”; the concept of acceptance to deal with challenge is foreign to most of us raised under Christian standards. But, regardless of where one is raised, the lies are still out there, being used by those in power to confuse, distract, and manipulate the voting public, and I think we can count on them to continue in that vein for as long as it continues to work for them….

So, maybe it is time to look at what Oscar said as a challenge, rather than advice. Perhaps, if the public began to NOT accept the lies, but began to question those in authority, to demand that the truth be told, then maybe there is a chance for us to survive the coming collapse….. Maybe…. it may already be too late….

I read an interesting article the other day, and I use the word ‘interesting’ in its most dangerous sense, as is common in Eastern culture, where being wished an “interesting life” is a curse…. The article made this statement, to wit: the climate is not changing. It has changed…… In other words, the moment that the environmentalists have been fearing for years has arrived, and we have reached a point of no return.

The millions of tons of particulate matter (“pollution”) we have been pumping into the air for the last 100 years has reached a point where irreversible changes in the balance of the planetary ecosystem have been made, and the climate, which has just begun to alter its centuries-old patterns, will now continue to grow more unpredictable, and more violently destructive than has ever been seen before in history. These changes are not going to stop, and in fact, will worsen over time…. and, I am unhappy to report, this is not fear-mongering, this is not speculation, this is not a lie…. this is demonstrable fact.  See for yourself, here:

http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/worldclock/

I am so pissed off about this that I am going to have to stop this pearl right here; I’m already trembling from the jolt of adrenaline the anger stimulated in me. Those in power over society have ignored the warnings that scientists and environmentalists have issued for decades, and their intransigence is now going to kill all of us, slowly and with great pain for many, as life on this planet becomes more and more of a challenge, to live, nay,  just to survive.

There is only one reason this is happening, and that is the FACT that the Beloved Ruling Class has, for centuries, lied and cheated the rest of humanity, and have arranged matters so that they are the only ones who are truly comfortable… most of humanity has to struggle to obtain just enough of the resources being hoarded to live in hunger, barely able to survive.

Bah! I am incensed, and can hardly contain my rage…. It makes me want to go out and start….. well, I started to say “killing”,  referring to the members of the BRC, but, on second thought, killing is too good for them. I think I’d rather keep them alive, but make them suffer, just as much as they have made others suffer their entire lives….. It’s time, ffolkes, for humanity to step up, and boot the assholes out…. They are killing us, and I think it is about time we did something to return the favor, don’t you?….. Think about, but don’t take long, because it’s already too late…..

“If I had a Q-TIP, I could prevent th’collapse of NEGOTIATIONS!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

“Rare gift! but oh what gift to fools avails!” — Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — The Odyssey of Homer, Book x, Line 29
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Conversations Among The Ruins

Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.

Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;
While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit
Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,
Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:
Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,

What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?

~~ Sylvia Plath
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“The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.” — Samuel Johnson

I have to agree with Sam on this one; this is a very nice way to look at writing, and a fair and complete description as well. If I can do either one of these things for, or to, my readers, I would consider what I wrote to be a success, no matter how many ‘Likes’ it got…. In that same vein, I’d like to take a moment today to shout out a big THANK YOU to all the ffolkes who have stopped in to read what I write, and especially to those who have commented, hit the ‘Like’ button, or otherwise let me know they were there…. or even if not, Thanks!

Two days ago, I posted my 600th blog, and, in a serendipitous occurrence, had my 200th and 201st followers come on board the same day. I was rather jazzed, as you may imagine….. Even though I what I write, I write for myself, as a form of therapy, it is nice to hear that other ffolkes, and folks, are enjoying what I’ve written enough to either comment, Like, or Follow.

I write to get all the crap out of my head, that, if left there, would fester until it spilled out on some unsuspecting citizen, and that is uncomfortable for both of us.  Rather than have to struggle internally all day to keep from biting people, I write, and get most of the angst and bitterness, that dealing with the world creates, out… I am a firm believer in “Better out than in….”  Hopefully, what I am writing will be enjoyed by somebody, whether for the humor, the attempted insight, the truth, or the bozoid tendencies, I don’t much care, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings….

Well, wait, that isn’t true…. If a reader happens to be a priest/preacher, a politician, or another of those I consider to be part of the BRC and those shadowy corporate icons who run the world from behind the scenes, well, then I hope what I write makes you very nervous. If it hurts your feelings, well, I would consider that a good thing, if only because you still have feelings that can be hurt….. As the first of today’s pearls indicated, I’m rather perturbed at the actions of that group of people, and couldn’t give a shit about how my thoughts affect them, as long as it is negatively… The worse the better, as far as I’m concerned….

As for everyone else who comes by, just be aware that, ultimately, everything I say here is truth. I won’t say I’m not human, and that I don’t occasionally lie…. I do, just like everyone else alive.  Sometimes it can be for expedience, to save myself trouble, such as telling someone I don’t have a cigarette, when I do… More importantly, I will sometimes lie to spare someone’s feelings, and if that upsets the gods of karma, well, so be it… I don’t like to hurt people…. and to me, that can justify a small lie, at least on a temporary basis… Maybe that’s morally weak, but, hey, I’m just a romantic bozo, and can’t help the way I feel…. I can change it, and I do, but, the initial feelings are pretty well spontaneous combustion, and not subject to that sort of control…. But, that is all out in the Big Blue Room…. everything I put down here is the truth, as I know it, so you can count on that…..

So, while I’m doing drone work here, I’ll explain the word ‘ffolkes’…. I use that word, with that spelling, to indicate the people who read this blog, or receive the daily email of the blog, or know me, or know of me…. ‘folks’ is everybody else…… This is an easy way to keep track of the whom to which I may be referring…. and isn’t that a grammatical and syntactical gem?  What I mean is, it makes it more intimate, as to me, ffolkes are my friends, while folks are strangers…. ffolkes possess a brain, and aren’t afraid to use it, while folks tend to sit on theirs….. ffolkes can use logic as a scalpel, folks use it as a hammer. I think that will give you the drift…. I spell it that way for two reasons… one, because I can, and two, because I like it…. 

There is probably a legal limit to the number of paragraphs one is allowed to use to just fuck around and say nothing much, but, I don’t ever seem to reach it, no matter how much I ramble and prattle on… Here we have now seven of them, all with very little to confer that could be construed as real  information. Hopefully, y’all will know now what I mean by “ffolkes”, and I hope it gives you the same warm feeling it does me, to know that you are in a friendly environment, where you may find acceptance, respect, love, and compassion, right alongside the viciously sarcastic curmudgeonry I aim at the BRC and their myrmidons…..

Since I’m uncertain as to whether I have enough left to fill in one more past this one, to make a cosmically balanced nine paragraphs, I will settle for eight, and the solid foundation it implies…. For some strange reason, whenever I think of eight, I get a visual image of Pont Neuf potatoes, nicely golden brown… What does that mean?…. Ah well, there are some mysteries we are destined never to solve, I guess….. Housekeeping done, and remember ffolkes, I love you all, and hope your life proceeds according to your dreams…..

Were I so tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul:
The mind ‘s the standard of the man.

– Isaac Watts (1674-1748) — Horae Lyricae, Book ii, False Greatness
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I’ll take it…. I performed the best type of proofing, by walking away for ten minutes, then reading it from scratch…. A tiny bit of polish, a stray thought or two added in, and it’s well-nigh perfect, as such things go (Remember that phrase, please; it could be important if this ever becomes a legal issue…) …. It is, therefore, officially done…. I’ve got a lot to do today, so, I’ll wish you a productive diurnal activity period, sometimes known as a g’day, and get on with it….  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..