Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter. ~Seen recently on a bumper sticker.
I won’t regale you with the contents of the other bumper stickers on the back of that particular car, since most of them defiled my basic conservative view point’s anyway, I’m still wondering how that whole hopey-changy thing is working for everyone.
Nevertheless, it got me to thinking, so I suppose we can ignore the proclivities of the occupant to think that the government is going to come to their rescue, just like they did during Katrina a few years back, oops never mind.
I however started to ponder the ideation, what does matter? Ultimately what matters to one may not matter to another, coincidently does that infer that everyone’s lives begin to end on different days because we all certainly do not stop caring at the same moment? Or perhaps we all stopped caring too long ago to account.
I read constantly how people are getting out of debt by doing things like cut out the 5 dollar coffee, now I don’t drink coffee, never appealed to me, so maybe am not equipped to understand how anyone can spend that much money every day on a coffee, especially when a coffee maker at the local department store runs what? 20 bucks or so? Seems to me that for Monday through Thursdays coffee expenses you could acquire one of those and find a brew you like (hell even the expensive ones will turn out cheaper than 5 bucks a cup).
I attempt to have as little debt as possible anyway, some is unavoidable, i.e. the house payment, tax payments are a form of debt that come around once a year, that sort of thing. Having 4 children who are my responsibility takes a good chunk of my venerable pay, but I don’t mind that, one it’s not forever, and two they are mine and by that extension I have an obligation to take care of them until they turn 18. Or can successfully take care of themselves on a day to day basis.
I don’t turn on lights or the TV (very often anyway), I light the house with what the universe saw fit to put into place, the sun, during the winter I use candles I purchase at the dollar store, I spend about 10 dollars a month during the winter, and even less in the summer. House stays cool enough most nights that the AC is a luxury I rarely use. Heat can be made with wood or small space heater in one room etc.
Yes I have a cell phone, no its not one of the latest and greatest, it texts and makes calls, that’s all I need it for anyway. My car is 10 years old and slowly but surely falling apart, until it does so completely I’ll keep it on the road. Yes I work on it myself.
It’s not that I have some grandiose idea that anything I do is going to save us from what’s coming at us at breakneck speed, the fact that the main stream media seems to finally be figuring out, we are headed for doom be it financial, or from Elenin, from some rogue nation setting off an EMP weapon, or the sun itself deciding that it needs to belch and we just happen to be in the way.
I guess the one thing that matters right now, is survival, without that you won’t have anything to worry about anyway. So work on that, if a few bills get missed, it’s not the end of the world, after all mankind spent the first 5000 or so years of his existence without the luxury of electric lights, cell phones, television, game systems, cars, gasoline, JIT delivery of his food (well that could be argued), or anything else we take for granted now, including permanent housing.
26 June 2011
05 June 2011
Oooh Shiny...
“Oooh shiny” ~Homer Simpson (or at least he’s the most attributable to it)
Welcome to the OOOH Shiny generation, those whose lives are so enamored of technology that should they lose the ability to purchase their triple half soy mocha mint latte no whip with a wave of their android phone would simply have a nervous breakdown right there in the middle of Starbucks.
I have taken notice that everyone has some variety of “smart” phone permanently tattooed to their ear (give them time and they’ll be actual tattoos, if the world lasts that long). They all have a million friends on Facebook, but none in real life, they text incessantly, talk on chat programs that would make our parents blush with the utter risqueness of dress that the avatars are allowed to have. Never mind the fact the person on the other end of that never ending sexy avatar most likely needs a hover round to do their grocery shopping for no other reason than they fell victim to what grand daddy used to call “elbers bends” disease, every time your elber (elbow) bends your mouth opens.
Now I understand that some people (but I would be willing to wager not the majority) of those have some actual medical condition that requires the use of such a device, but too often I see them in the store with a basket full of Twinkies.
They also have the attention span of a gnat, the planning capabilities of an artichoke, and wouldn’t know a real book if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. All of this of course courtesy of our technological march toward the grandiose Olduvai Gorge that is coming toward us at a pace heretofore unseen before in human history.
Teachers are now required to “teach to the test” that George W. Bush put into place in an effort to make teachers more accountable, and elevate the worst performing schools to meet the rest of the nation, this has had the net effect of a bunch of small hominids who do nothing but regurgitate rote memorization of the basic facts needed to pass the standards of learning so their teacher doesn’t get fired at the end of the school year.
It however is a very poor method to teach our children to “think” past the end of the test, given a problem to solve (which they should be acquiring the skills to do so) if it falls outside of the parameters of the exam, then they simply cannot fathom how to accomplish this. I have seen it firsthand.
Take all of this and couple it with Facebook, Twitter, and a plethora of other distractions, and it’s no wonder our children cannot do simple things without either immediate gratification, or stick to something long enough to see it through to the end without someone there acting as a drill instructor to get it done.
I work until the sun goes down, how do I know it’s time to stop working? It’s dark outside. I’m not saying that everyone should take this approach, and often times I’ll take a break in the hottest part of the day (on my days off) so as to not kill myself, however as it cools in the evening I return to the task in order to attempt to finish whatever it was I was doing when I stopped earlier in the day.
I’m not going to complain about it, it does no good to do that. At the very least I will acknowledge it, and simply shake my head, what else can I do really. The world is as we have wrought it, nothing more, and nothing less. It is as it should be, only human beings would dare to think otherwise, after all we made it this way, and unless we as a whole (that is the entire of the human race) collectively do something to reverse the trend, I’m afraid we are headed toward the cliffs edge at a blistering pace, Oooh shiny…..
When people inquire of me where I see the modern age going, I just reply, you truly do not want to know what I see, history does not repeat, but it certainly rhymes.
Welcome to the OOOH Shiny generation, those whose lives are so enamored of technology that should they lose the ability to purchase their triple half soy mocha mint latte no whip with a wave of their android phone would simply have a nervous breakdown right there in the middle of Starbucks.
I have taken notice that everyone has some variety of “smart” phone permanently tattooed to their ear (give them time and they’ll be actual tattoos, if the world lasts that long). They all have a million friends on Facebook, but none in real life, they text incessantly, talk on chat programs that would make our parents blush with the utter risqueness of dress that the avatars are allowed to have. Never mind the fact the person on the other end of that never ending sexy avatar most likely needs a hover round to do their grocery shopping for no other reason than they fell victim to what grand daddy used to call “elbers bends” disease, every time your elber (elbow) bends your mouth opens.
Now I understand that some people (but I would be willing to wager not the majority) of those have some actual medical condition that requires the use of such a device, but too often I see them in the store with a basket full of Twinkies.
They also have the attention span of a gnat, the planning capabilities of an artichoke, and wouldn’t know a real book if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. All of this of course courtesy of our technological march toward the grandiose Olduvai Gorge that is coming toward us at a pace heretofore unseen before in human history.
Teachers are now required to “teach to the test” that George W. Bush put into place in an effort to make teachers more accountable, and elevate the worst performing schools to meet the rest of the nation, this has had the net effect of a bunch of small hominids who do nothing but regurgitate rote memorization of the basic facts needed to pass the standards of learning so their teacher doesn’t get fired at the end of the school year.
It however is a very poor method to teach our children to “think” past the end of the test, given a problem to solve (which they should be acquiring the skills to do so) if it falls outside of the parameters of the exam, then they simply cannot fathom how to accomplish this. I have seen it firsthand.
Take all of this and couple it with Facebook, Twitter, and a plethora of other distractions, and it’s no wonder our children cannot do simple things without either immediate gratification, or stick to something long enough to see it through to the end without someone there acting as a drill instructor to get it done.
I work until the sun goes down, how do I know it’s time to stop working? It’s dark outside. I’m not saying that everyone should take this approach, and often times I’ll take a break in the hottest part of the day (on my days off) so as to not kill myself, however as it cools in the evening I return to the task in order to attempt to finish whatever it was I was doing when I stopped earlier in the day.
I’m not going to complain about it, it does no good to do that. At the very least I will acknowledge it, and simply shake my head, what else can I do really. The world is as we have wrought it, nothing more, and nothing less. It is as it should be, only human beings would dare to think otherwise, after all we made it this way, and unless we as a whole (that is the entire of the human race) collectively do something to reverse the trend, I’m afraid we are headed toward the cliffs edge at a blistering pace, Oooh shiny…..
When people inquire of me where I see the modern age going, I just reply, you truly do not want to know what I see, history does not repeat, but it certainly rhymes.
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