Too bad, ya almost made it.

“Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes” ~Dante

Or, alternately “Welcome to America”.

I’m tired, I know, I know, so are you. But I’m tired for a different reason.

People need to wake up, but I fear the day that they do. The world is collapsing around us, and very few of my fellow ostensibly sentient bipedal hominids seem to have the slightest clue.

Good. Yup I said it, good. I hope with all honesty that they don’t wake up.

“But how can you be so cruel” is the hue and cry, “don’t you have any sympathy for your fellow man”.

Short answer? no. Long answer? Not on your life. I didn’t create their issues.

“Well neither did they”, well they may not have “created” the situation, but they sure as hell didn’t do much to make it better. All I read online, is “I’ve sent 100 resumes out without a single nibble or interview” hmmm…have you gone down during the middle of July and offered to clean the stalls of a local horse farm? Have you gone to the lettuce and strawberry fields and bent over them for 12 hours a day to the point you can’t walk just about, only to go back the next day and do it again? Of course the answer is “No”.

Then why pray tell, would you insist I have the single bit of sympathy, hell even the poor in America don’t know what poverty is. They think they do, but they would be considered kings in many parts of the developing world for simply having a single faucet that puts out somewhat clean water that hasn’t been contaminated with some parasite that makes you shit yourself to death.

Never mind the car (that runs no matter how crappily), the 56 in flat screen TV. you can find in almost every poverty stricken apartment in any ghetto in the united states (an no I’m not talking about people who voluntarily give up what passes for entertainment these days.) along with the fact that most everyone has at least one game system to keep the mini gang bangers busy between drive by shootings.

Well guess what buttercup, shits about to get a far site worse, and your fat pathetic candy ass aint gonna make it through the upcoming bottleneck, which bodes well for me, cause I get all your shit. All your plastic pumpkins you milked the welfare system to get are now MINE.

While you were out buying Xboxes, and large screen televisions I was out buying tools and seeds to make it through, while you were getting beer and smokes with your monthly allotment of other people’s money, I was investing in shovels, hoes, and rakes. While you were buying ding dongs and Twinkies with your food stamps, I was buying rice and beans in bulk, not the tastiest I’ll admit, but it’ll be enough calories to keep me going while you sit around and try to figure out where your next crack hit is going to come from.

Granted that is probably a wholly absurd notion above, however close to truth it may ultimately turn out to be. For the typical American their crack may turn out to be dancing with the has beens, or American idolatry, makes no difference.

To quote the late great George Carlin, “they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and do the paper work, but not smart enough to sit around the kitchen table at night and figure out just how badly they are being fucked”.

Critical thinking is not in their plans. Too bad it aint in yours either.

And in the event you are wondering about that quote at the beginning, it’s Latin. It translates “all hope abandon, ye who enter here”.

Now if you’ll kindly excuse me, I need to finish sorting my seeds, and sharpening my tools. I think I’ll make a junk run around the local yard sales to see what can be repurposed or saved out for trade when the shit really hits the fan.

No I'm Not Sorry...

“I’m sorry” ~ Modern colloquialism used when someone has done something society states they should feel remorse for.

And you are not going to hear it from me. I’m not sorry; above all else I seek the truth, no matter how inconvenient. I don’t deal well with feelings, in order for me to do so it would first require I have them, and being half Vulcan and all it’s kind of tough.

Fact is no one is coming to your rescue. Fact is if you have been unemployed for 2 or 3 years you really need to take a hard look in the mirror, because you obviously missed something when you showered.

Above all else you are solely responsible for you. No one else is, Mitt Romney is not going to save you, Barack Obama is not going to save you, and only person that can save you is you. The Federal Government can bloviate all it desires about the “little guy” fact is they don’t give two rat shits about you or the fact you’re going to lose your house, or that you lost your car, or that you lost your job. Really they don’t, they have much bigger fish to fry, and let’s face it you aren’t even bait to them. After all they just rushed to take care of all those Katrina victims…oh wait, yea that’s right they did too little too late.

When you realized you were going to be at the very least under employed for a longer period than you anticipated, first thing you should have done was sell the McMansion, even if you lost your precious deposit, after that you should have sold the other two cars you really don’t need and never drive, and found something you could afford, rather than try to hold onto the house you were in because “it was your dream home” well guess what buttercup your “dream” just turned into a nightmare.

After that it’s time to go through the garage and get rid of all that crap you don’t use anymore that’s been in a box or bin out there for the last 20 years.

Next you get rid of cable, dish network or whatever other idiot entertainment you have piped into your home. Then you sell the gaming systems you spent all you’re hard earned cash on for your overly spoiled offspring who have known nothing more than a much better life than the typical Ethiopian.

Ok now on day two, you get rid of all but one of the 14 cell phones you have for you and your progeny, cut that plan back to the bare minimum or get a prepaid plan and tell your phone carrier to kiss off, don’t worry about your credit, you don’t have that anymore, after all you stopped paying those the day you lost your job, sorry Charlie, but look at it this way, if you don’t have a phone the collection agencies can only send letters…and who actually gets their mail.

Fact is by severely slashing your outgo from the outset you stand a much better chance of a rapid recovery to something that resembles your old life; at least you’ll be able to afford a monthly trip to McDonald's and not have to order off the dollar menu.

You should reduce your outgo to rent, utilities, food. After that if there is enough to keep the car, insurance and gas then good on you, if not might I suggest you either find a place to work you can walk to or move somewhere they have public transportation to work.

Also start applying to those places you said “I’ll never work there”. Hey bunches of other people have, and they are still alive to tell you about it, your turn. Just keep the Ivy League education off your resume; actually don’t give a resume at all, it just makes you look desperate. And guess what, when you’re in that situation, there are jobs Americans WILL do, go get one of those, oh wait your probably overweight and no one wants to smell you sweaty fat carcass when they are working.

While I can have some variety of empathy for the genesis of your situation, I have no empathy or sympathy for its continuation at your own hand. Only one responsible for you is you.

Got news for you, the President of the United States can no more spur job growth than Madonna or lady gaga could be Mr. Rogers, it’s just not in their genetic makeup.

Darkness Falls

“ ”~Zen Quote

I’m that guy. You know the one down the street; my kids went to school with your kids, yeah that guy. The guy who you let your daughter babysit his kids when his wife and him went out for dinner every now and again, yeah him.

The guy who owned a nothing special American or Japanese car, the kind of car that just screamed mundane. I went to work every day, kids went to scouts and soccer, sometimes with yours, sometimes they played against each other, but always ended up eating pizza at the same place it seemed. You knew my name, I knew yours, but neither of us really knew the other.

What you did not know however, that I had a hunch about but never said anything, was the world was about to collapse around us, and there was very little either you or I could do to prevent it. The housing bubble popped, jobs were lost in the name of “profit”, you felt ok, after all you were still employed, but you remained worried even if you didn’t say anything.

To you I seemed aloof, not caring one way or the other, secretly you wondered what was hidden behind it all, the fact I never seemed phased by what was going on around me, even as neighbor after neighbor lost their jobs, and subsequently their homes to foreclosure. Signs now dot the street you live on, I live a block over in the “older” homes that predated your cracker box development of McMansions, “but I had a good job” you cry as the repo man comes to take your toys away for nonpayment.

Hard as you tried you were unable to fathom why, why I seemed so content, why you were being punished for simply doing what you were told, following that dream that everyone had. As you sit remembering the life you used to enjoy, comparing it to mine for some reason you still cannot elucidate correctly, that guy, yeah that guy, always seems to have food, and lights, and heat, try as you might you can’t keep but one on at a time, let’s face it rapidly diminishing unemployment checks are killing you as you try to salvage what’s left of your dream, even the food bank is tired of you, or so you think.

Here’s what you don’t know. I survived, some things are best left un-discussed at length, but suffice it to say that at one point in my life I was put into situations that most people until now would have no idea about. I lived all of this once before, not here, not on this soil but this, what’s happening now to us, here, at home. And while I cannot “un-see” what I witnessed, it did teach me a valuable lesson, one you did not learn, even though during our conversations I tried to tell you about it, about what was coming you thought “aah, he’s just a kook”, or one of those “survivalist” types you hear about on the news just looking to prostilyze to whoever will listen. But since you haven’t heard anything in your normal circle of prayer group friends, I must be some kook.

Now you just wonder, your wife has left and taken the kids, moved in with her mother, or so you were told, you honestly don’t know at this point. Some thugs just came and stole your 88 ford, the only car you had that was paid for and the repo man couldn’t lay a hand on. Your food ran out three days ago and while the mail still gets delivered to both of us, as we are the only ones left in the neighborhood, all they seem to bring you is notices of default, foreclosure notices and other sundry bad news.

You sit in an empty house, the majority of your possessions were sold long ago to try to keep the house from going back to the bank, powers been off for almost a week, gas has not been on for a couple months, you’re not quite sure, cable TV was the first to go, then your cell phone, then the house phone, and now the house.
The food bank has long since closed, you now wander the neighborhood looking for left behind food stuff, and you don’t even care if it may be spoiled or out of date. You’ve long since ransacked all the remaining homes looking for so much as a left behind can of tuna, eyeballing my place, but not certain you want to try to take anything from the kook, no telling what’s behind the fence you think to yourself.

You will however come take fruit that hangs over the fence on my trees, it’s on the outside of the fence you think to yourself, and if that guy wanted it he’d have trimmed the trees, at least that’s how you rationalize a behavior that eight months ago you would never have engaged in. Truth is, I left those there just for you, and those like you who failed to listen to those like me when they tried to tell you.

Pretty soon the fruit hanging over the fence runs out, and lacking another food source you decide to peer over the fence, when you do you almost pass out, there are all sorts of vegetables growing almost wild around the yard, no dog, at least not one you can see, you whistle, and wait, after what seems like an eternity you decide to see if the gate is open, it is, aah, your luck has turned, if only for today.

You never hear the shot as the bullet passes without effort through your pectoral muscle piercing your heart, as you lay there the last thought going through your mind is “he don’t live that way” the bullet came from the wrong direction.

That kook you ignored learned many a valuable lesson, the only defensible position is the one aren’t yet occupying, while you were out in the other part of the neighborhood in a desperate search for even the tiniest morsel of food, I took up residence 650 yards in the opposite direction, that dog you remembered came with me, the balcony on the master suite made a good vantage point to keep an eye on my place without being obvious, another lesson I learned, I made an educated guess as to how long you would last before you came to steal what I had planted. Had you attempted to knock on the door first, I’d have come out of hiding long enough to give you whatever you needed, I might have even asked you to come stay with me for a while.

I’ll bury you properly of course, since there hasn’t been law enforcement in this area since about 2 months after the crash “not enough people to worry about” they claimed, what they didn’t say was the guy who lived two doors down was a cop, who lost his job, then ate a round of his own accord…

Why must the jonses make it so damned complicated

The cacophony of everyday life is no more blatantly evident than when the power has gone out and we are left with only silence. ~Me

This past weekend I was a unfortunate (as some would put it) or fortunate (as I would state it) “victim” (isn’t everyone a victim?) of hurricane Irene who seems to have done more damage to inland areas of my location than to the coastal areas, of course not all damage reports are in yet so…

The old adage is true, silence is indeed deafening. And had the silence not been broken by the one fool in the hood that has a generator, it could have also been a small taste of nirvana. You see in no uncertain terms I hate modern civilization, which is sort of a dichotomy when you understand what I do to make it in the world, at least for now.

The finest time I think I have ever had is right now. No power, no noise save the fool neighbor and his generator, living the way our ancestors did as few as 80 years ago. Save the modern convenience of running water, it’s not been all that bad, fact of the matter is it’s been quite enjoyable.

The largest conundrum I have had to overcome in all of this is the odd look or questioning from someone when I mention that it either don’t bother me, or I wish it would stay off forever. There appears to be a normalcy bias in most people’s minds, that states unequivocally “electricity is a must” that it is some variety of “God given right” for people to have power piped directly to their homes to run all of the appliances and especially the idiot box because God forbid we miss American idol or dancing with the has-beens yet again this week due to no power.

I’ve come to the conclusion that while very nice to have its not absolutely necessary at the micro level, the personal level, I understand and whole heartedly agree with the necessity of power at a macro level, to keep the gas pumps on, the stores working etc. but at my level, down here where the peons live, it’s not a necessity. I don’t watch a lot of television anyway, and while my mode of earning an income is dependent on the power being on at the office; it certainly does not need to be on at home. “But what about the refrigerator and freezer” is the hue and cry?

Here is an idea; how about we relearn how to do things the really old school way. Mankind lived for tens of thousands of years without electricity, in fact in the grand scheme of things electricity is relatively new technology. Until just recently in historic terms we lived without power coming out of every wall socket, we canned our food, harvested when we could and put up for the winter, not unlike the ant in the in the parable of the ant and the grasshopper who toiled away to put up sufficient supplies for himself while the grasshopper did nothing.

I know this is getting posted well after Irene, and well after the lights “magically” came back on, in retrospect, they really weren’t necessary. I and those who where her e with me did just fine thank you, although I will admit to the need to mind whatever time piece was handy and still functional so that things could get done while the natural light was still about to be had. Normally I don’t recognize time itself except for the normal social things of arriving at an appointment at some pre-described moment during the day that has been mutually agreed to.

I am daily attempting to voluntarily simplify my life, mini disasters like Irene are just reminders of what stuff we really don’t need.

What does matter anyway...

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.

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.

Why oh Why did he have to say That

“You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.” ~ Deepak Chopra

I know I know, two posts in a row with a quote by the same guy, but I’ll tell ya Chopra got it goin on in the philosophy department.

I hate more than a couple choices, even when faced with a slew of them I’ll try to narrow it down by dismissing those things that flat out don’t fit into whatever it is I’m trying to make my choice about.

We have (at the place of my ostensible employ) been attempting to hire a junior version of us. Things started out bad, and essentially fell off the edge of the table. None of the 11 candidates we deigned to interview (which is what it was in all reality as none were qualified and we knew it) could get the rudimentary questions right, we did however settle on one likable chap who at least had 40% of what we were seeking (the remaining 10 were to say the least not very useful).

Now I am not sure I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I’m Buddhist. Western Zen variety for the most part, however I have been known to partake in sazen from time to time even though it’s not really a necessity to comprehend the universe as I do.

My boss is aware of my “religious” affiliation, and the fact that I do not deign to discuss religious differences with anyone, simply because I do not feel that it would be productive in any way shape or form, I get paid to write code not play “my Gods better than your God” games at the office.

Well one person decided it would be in his best interest to mention that he brings a “Christian” centered perspective to his work, now that’s all well and good, but like the Christ said, let your actions speak since your words say nothing. Anyone who has to TELL me that; one is no Christian and two has no place in MY shop.

Mind you the other people who work in my department are both very Christian in deed and belief, and neither of them would EVER think to bring it up in casual conversation (the boss occasionally will but only in the context of going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car).

Why oh Why did he have to bring THAT up, which by the way after he did my boss damn near slapped me out of my chair in an attempt to keep me from opening my mouth, but I as the consummate professional did not say anything, much as I really really wanted to.

All of this leads back to choices, this individual could have chosen to answer the final question any number of ways, most of which would not have affected the final outcome, but never the less, they chose to utterly alienate themselves from the prime mover of the group’s decision making process.

Bit of advice for ya’ll, next time you find yourself in a job interview, leave the religious proclivities at home where they belong, you’ll no more convince me of the existence of your God than I will convince you I’m a car.

No Accident, Move Along Nothing to See Here

"There are no accidents... there is only some purpose that we haven't yet understood."  -Deepak Chopra

I could turn this into a rant against that last bastion of “My God is better than your God”, or welfare mama’s and their Lexus cars and gold hoop earrings, or about my Buddhist leanings and learning’s; I won’t however do any of those things as much as I could have fit the quote to all of them.

The question then becomes what is our purpose? That is the interminable question that has haunted mankind since the beginning of time immemorial.  Well I suppose not base man, not the man who’s only ideations revolved around food and procreation, but from the time man figured out he could draw on the walls with a burnt stick, and then discovered that some natural things around him could add some color to the drawings, I’m relatively certain that we have thought about something other than food and procreation.

Man is the only animal on the planet (and yes believe it or not boys and girls we are mammals) that forces his surroundings to fit his desires, rather than simply finding his place in the natural order of things.

Of course as previously mentioned, the discovery of oil in a Pennsylvania field in the 1800’s changed the face of mankind’s machinations forever.  At first it was considered a nuisance more than anything else, wrecking fields and poisoning animals.  It was not long however before us hairless monkeys figured out how to make fuel out of this black substance that flowed so readily out of the ground.

Plastics followed shortly thereafter, creating the detritus world in which we now find ourselves.  The plastic pumpkin universe here on earth, where large swaths of ocean are covered in floating plastic debris that will never degrade in the oxygen depleted environment that it finds itself, the salt water acting as an insulator of sorts against the UV radiation that is required to break it down.

For all of our “advancements” (ostensible at best) there is evidence that the human race (or something resembling it) has “been there done that” in the past. All one has to do is search for “out of place parts” (aka oop parts) for some interesting data on the true age of man.  It is possible that some catastrophic event wiped out a much more advanced civilization than we first thought our ancestors to be.  Christians will call this the flood of Noah, other say that the most advanced civilization predated even him and his family.

The legends of the Vedic in India, the legends of Atlantis and LeMuria in ancient Greek texts, these lost to time civilizations that supposedly existed prior to us arriving, could there be a modicum of truth to those legends?

We may never know, however we do know that the current “civilization” apparently is reaching the point in time when the other ones bit the dust.  The question is, will this version of man even have an ark to run to? Or are we it.

Pot, Meet Kettle

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” Jesus of Nazareth as quoted in Matthew 7:3 KJV

OMFG to quote the teenagers and pre teens that seem to have invaded my house here just recently in an attempt to drive the old coot up the wall I’m sure, but that’s a blog for a different time.  Just when I thought I had heard and or seen the pinnacle of absolute debauchery and asshattery along this story comes, first seen on Matt Drudge’s site so hat tip there.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/03/31/35407.htm

Now normally I do not comment on news of the day, as the news itself seems to me to be specifically designed with SOMEONE’s agenda in mind, you have the “rabid right radio” and the “rabid left everything else” otherwise known as the main stream media (MSM) who, let’s face it, do a dismal job of reporting the actual news, of course there are “alternative” new sites out there, none of which are free from their own bias’s and prejudices to begin with, and who make no bones about it. Unlike the MSM who continue to insist that there are no tanks in town as they go rolling by behind them on camera.

The gist of the linked story is that the State of Georgia has allowed Fulton County to “create” out of thin air cities that are, get this, “TOO WHITE”.  Where’s Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Barak Obama, the ACLU and a whole litany of other players who would be all over this like (pardon the expression) white on rice should the roles of the players find themselves reversed.

Does this mean I can sue the City of New York because the Bronx is too Italian, or Queens is too Puerto Rican, or the City of San Francisco because there are areas that are too Chinese? The largest problem I see with the whole thing is that it’s not just a black and white issue, can I sue my HOA for my neighborhood being “not white enough”, of course should I do that calls of racism would echo throughout city hall so fast as to make ones head swim, there would be accusations of membership in the KKK, however membership in the black panthers in Philadelphia is almost a requirement just to go to the 7-11 there without a police escort should one find themselves guilty of being born white, you don’t wish to know how I know that.

America was built on everyone getting along, people as a whole have always self segregated, which is how we end up with predominantly black, white, Hispanic, Cuban, Chinese, Vietnamese et al. neighborhoods in cities that are otherwise “progressive”.  I’m not saying that in the past we did not forcibly keep those who were different from us out of the areas we were, we most certainly did, and while I personally don’t condone that behavior, I was not there, I was born after the civil rights act in the 60’s, I’ve only ever known mixed neighborhoods, some good, some not so good.

So someone in government allowed a city to get a charter, for tax base purposes, and that city or neighborhood happened to be predominantly white, so what, why is this even a consideration when we have children of all colors and creeds starving on the streets of the most prosperous country on the planet. Hunger and poverty do not know socioeconomic boundaries, those who were once “middle class” are now poor, homeless and hungry. Perhaps the Georgia black caucus should concern themselves with righting that wrong, rather than pursue the perceived ills of a city that is “too white”.

A Tiger is a Tiger, No Matter How Small

What is the nature of a tiger?

"To talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a tree to catch a fish." - Ancient Chinese Proverb

To which I point you today to the link below.  This is latest entry into the realm of unbridled, inane asshattery that would cause the local haberdasher to blush brighter than a Maine lobster in a steam pot on a summer’s night. 

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Editorial-Board-Blog/2011/0330/The-inside-story-on-cats-and-songbirds

The gist of this entry into the annals of the Christian Science Monitor is that when house cats (you know, fluffy, Mr. Pickles, whatever cutesy name you gave that moribund killing machine) are let loose “out of doors, they (gasp, quick look surprised) KILL SONGBIRDS”, how dare they.  How dare Mr. Fluffles resort to the way GOD (this being the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR after all?) designed him.  Let us face the hard cold truth; a tiger is a tiger no matter how small.  Cats are predators, not omnivores; carnivores, their main diet in the wild would be other animals smaller than themselves, rodents, birds, insects etc. would make up the bulk of what they would normally consume, if left to their own devices, eventually disease and predation by larger animals (i.e. coyotes, dogs, and other carnivorous mammalian and reptiles) would bring their numbers into check.

 The problem is that too many of us feel poorly for little kitty and feed them when we should allow nature to do what nature does best, balance itself out.  For someone to suggest as they have in the article that small scale felines are not indigenous to America, and therefore are our responsibility is absurd, there are plenty of indigenous animals that without the intervention of mankind would probably have died out long ago due to the lack of suitable habitat.  Somehow what some fellow brought with him on a leaky boat 400 years ago is my fucking responsibility, err, hey fella’s guess again.  Instead we protect the feline population from predation, hell we even feed them and then expect that by some miracle of jayeeezus that they won’t do what animals do and procreate beyond the carrying capacity of the local ecosystem, well guess what Einstein, when you interfere with the natural cycle of things that’s what happens.

I am tired, I’m tired of the self righteous asshats telling me that I should give my money to them and be grateful because they are doing “GODS” work, hmm…I dunno about you, but why does God need a twenty? If god is omnipotent and omnipresent as the people at this particular publication are sure to tell you, then why do we not allow his designs to reign supreme? Are we so disenlightened as to think for one Pico second that we as lowly humans who god put here to do whatever it is they believe God put us here to do have a better idea than him?

Makes me glad I’m Buddhist.  Hat tip to Pamela at End of Empire News for the link to the asshattery today, without her all the doomers would never get any news at all.

Ignorance is Not Bliss

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. ~Bertrand Russell

Here’s a question I’ve been pondering.  Something along the lines of “if a man speaks in the forest and a woman is not there to hear him, is he still wrong” type of ideations.  Let’s face it, by and large, the majority of people (especially my fellow Americans, even though I am certain it applies to other countries as well) are stupid, or rather ignorant.

Stupid conjures up some Forest Gump level of intelligence wherein the individual afflicted with such ends up dutifully shooting themselves multiple times in the foot. Ignorant is a lack of training or lack of understanding borne of not being informed about a particular subject matter.  I personally use the term ignorant quite a bit, and I use it in its normal non derogatory manner simply meaning that the information has not been passed to the individual yet and given a length of time and a bit of attention span, ignorance is thusly curable. Stupid is almost always fatal.  And of course I will now admit to being ignorant myself in many areas, however, observation is not one of them.

Unfortunately for most, observation of one’s surroundings almost always falls to the level of importance of picking the strangers nose that happens to be standing next to you.  I recall reading at one point in my first college career in a psychological journal someone left lying about the science lab (me being the uber geek I was) that spoke about a psych student taking a nude statue from the art department, placing it in the schools trophy case for a week, the removing it.  Afterwards the student sent out a survey with all correct answers to be entered into a drawing for 3 free pizzas or some such nominal prize for returning the survey (this was pre computer ubiquity).  Some quantity in the 4 digit’s went out, roughly 50% of them were returned, NONE had the right answer, out of 2000 or so sent out, 1000 or so returned not one person noticed that there was a nude statue in the school’s athletic achievement cabinet.

This leads me to believe (and through 40+years of observation know, however anecdotally) that the majority of bi-pedal hairless fire monkeys don’t pay much mind to what goes on around them. Even less so now than say 30 years ago or longer when one’s life literally depended on a situational awareness level that is no longer necessary for day to day survival. To wit,” Weenie suburbanite consumer anti-depressant-addled television addicts beget weenie suburbanite consumer television addict offspring. There are exceptions to the rule, however what do you expect from these kids' whose parents are utterly incapacitated by fear of the unknown and risk of any kind?” as stated by Boris the Schnook on a board I belong to, kind of says it all right there.  Situational awareness is no longer needed; at least that’s what the majority of suburbanite America believes.  Plug into your IPod, put your head down and don’t even notice the pennies that are lying on the ground where you walk.

This led me to a stream of consciousness, epiphanal as it was, that if I were to plant 10 various fruit trees in my back yard, would anyone notice I had an orchard (however small)?  Since the trees would not be planted in a straight line one after the other for efficiency purposes, would the majority of people simply walk by? Even if they were hungry at the time they passed by it? Since everyone knows that orchards are all planted in a straight row right? Right? Bueller?   What about planting corn in triangles or some other such pattern that is not normally seen, what about scattering corn plantings (one or two plants maybe three if I’m feeling feisty) around the yard in such a way as to mimic some sort of native American themed landscaping? Would anyone notice there was food planted between the holly bush and the English boxwood. Would anyone other than the birds notice strawberries planted in a tiered planter on the porch cascading down like some piece of landscape art?

Since the inception of public schooling in America we have been consistently dumbed down to levels heretofore unseen in the world, not everyone mind you, but enough of us to have made a awful large impact in the world. If you look at the famous 8th grade exit exam from the late 1800’s I’ll tell you right now that I have a masters degree and would be hard pressed to make it out of the 8th grade if I were alive back then.

The ultimate result is a general inability to keep situational awareness, something that is about to become extremely important for everyone.  Because it’s in being able to take advantage of other peoples failures of situational awareness that those of us left who retain it to thrive in the post whatever is coming world. By mixing and mingling edible plants into the normal landscape most individuals will pass them by without a second thought since they do not come in a neat row being grown for obvious food, they probably will simply think they are ornamental and not edible anyway, because what they have learned tells them that are not how food is grown, unable to think outside that box will be their downfall, and possibly your saving grace.

Knocking on the Sky...Listening to the sound

Knock on the sky and listen to the sound ~Zen Proverb

I have been doing a bit of that lately, the sound that comes back however is never the sound one wants, it usually emanates from the deleterious wasteland that the internet has become.  Populated by the modern equivalence of reprehensible miscreants, whose sole purpose it would appear is to populate social networking and social games.

It has ever so slowly dawned on me that not only are these games such as second life, IMVU, YoVille, and Mini Planet to name a few, grandiose time sinks, they lead some of the players down the road of solely existing inside the game.  It becomes much more than a simple past time of talking to friends and acquaintances to consuming their entire day and night schedule to the point of its all they do for all intents and purposes.

I have nothing against them, I’ve met some wonderful people on a couple of these games, but for the most part, they are occupied by the most egregious versions of vapid human detritus that one might muster a Stephen King quality nightmare to effectively fathom.  The somewhat sentient bi-pedal hominids that are the greatest users of these social platforms are the ones who themselves have a hard time fathoming why the rest of us with a life outside the game can have a life outside the game. After all they manage to exist almost solely in the game, why shouldn’t we?

At one point I would make an appearance nightly on one of these grandiose time sinks. After, however, my other stuff that had taken precedence that day had been accomplished.  So I viewed it much like going out on a Friday night, after working all week, putting up with the necessitated BS I got to go do something I enjoyed. Except, when one considers it in an intellectually honest manner, the vicariousness of the existence of the denizens that inhabit these areas is sufficient to give even the simplest among us pause in consideration of the utter waste in which they partake.

And it’s not just the games; it’s the whole social networking paradigm.  1984 and Brave New World were supposed to be warnings, not instruction manuals.  Americans will on the one hand rail against big brother, (or in the current case big sister) taking naked pictures of you to get on an airplane, however, will happily post digitally vapid overtly drunken pictures for the world to see on their Facebook page, along with the obligatory “I’m so stoned” status update.  What is worse is that invariably fifteen people who may or may not actually know this person will “like” their status.  Have we sunk that low as a society that we must find countenance with our peers via some piece of software?

It would seem so, that we as a society no longer want, need, or desire contact with our “friends” except through the likes of Facebook, MySpace, or the myriad of other places one might find someone.  It’s a shame that people know more about what’s happening in the lives of people they never met than they know about what’s happening in their own neighborhoods.  The shear amount of drama that occurs in these places rivals that of daytime television.  I’ll bet you any amount we can agree upon that you or someone you know knows the names of 5 people that are “friends” on some social networking site, but cannot tell you the names of the people that live on either side of them.

No wonder we have such a obesity epidemic in America now, we have become like the fat slobs in the movie surrogate, where you can be anyone you want to be, without leaving the house, where it was a shame that the protagonist had the same realization I have, I’d rather have one relationship in real life “meat space” than 10,000 on Facebook.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have real world things that need taken care of, I grow real plants, and fertilizer comes from the next county over, not some unknown individual whom I will never meet in real life.

Barter, so easy your kids do it...

Almost all of our relationships begin, and most of them continue, as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods. ~W.H. Auden

I noticed something today (as opposed to yesterday’s ostensible notice that the free drugs are the illegal ones).  Bartering must be something inbred into every human being.

Stop and think about it for a minute, children who have no siblings to trade with will still trade toys in what they feel is a mutually favorable trade. Even young children who have no concept of money the way adults do will trade with one another if they both feel it’s mutually beneficial.

I started thinking about this, all the way back as far as I could in my poor over taxed cranium, and found that barter (along with war) is as old as mankind itself. Stop and think about it for a minute, caveman A has extra pelts from last month’s hunt, caveman B has extra meat from this week’s hunt, caveman A hungry, approaches caveman B with an offer of pelts for meat, should caveman B be in need of pelts a trade is likely, if not then caveman A needs to learn to hunt better or go find another caveman with a surplus of food and no pelts.

What is money after all but a representative store of value (the actual value being the goods that the money purchases). Money in the form of gold and silver coins, rocks (artistically made), sticks( marked with the kings markings), and even sea shells have been over the years used as a means of exchange, they are all easily divisible, easily transported in large quantities, and have a given “value” per quantity. Whether through mutual agreement as to their value, or necessary direction from whatever government happened to be in place at the time.

All money really did was move from a direct barter model to a distributed barter model where a person took some “money” (for our argument we’ll assume it’s something that meets the above criteria) and spend it with a merchant for those pelts he needed. The person would then take the pelts home, and make say shoes out of them, and then sell the shoes to some other person for more money than he paid for the pelts.  By doing so the people involved did not have to worry about obtaining the animal themselves, or making the pelt usable for something.

They could keep their money in their pockets until it was needed to purchase whatever it was that was needed, as they traded goods and labor for more money they could keep the “money” for longer periods of time without worrying about it going bad or spoiling, spending only what they could in equivalent labor or products.

I would venture to guess that this was a natural evolution of civilization, as man became more agrarian he no longer needed to “fair trade” with his neighbors for things that he needed some approximation of his labors that he could keep without having to worry about it going bad.  He could also save his new money (read labor) for something that he (I use he to as a general reference to both genders) could not otherwise generate a sufficient amount of labor for at one shot, if he took his corn, beets, carrots, or whatever to market, and sold them to the various people who came around at one time he may not be able to afford that shiny new whatever he really wanted for his hovel, however if he saved a portion of the proceeds from his labors everyday at the market he would in time have enough for the shiny whatever he wanted for his hovel. Perhaps it was a new more efficient plow blade that allowed him to be more efficient in his labors, thus giving him more bang for the “buck” and allowing him to take more to market on a given day.

One thing is for certain however, and that is when money was a fixed supply of whatever it was, gold, silver, shells, artistic stones or sticks, there was no inflation.  A pelt was worth X number of whatever was in vogue, should a merchant want to make more than that he would either have to come up with better quality pelts, or more of them at a given time.  He would eventually spend whatever “money” he had anyway obtaining the things he needed on a day to day basis, so the money circulated and was said to have velocity, this velocity of money is what caused an economy. For those who could labor and bring more to market they received a larger portion of the economic pie.

All I know is somewhere along the line we lost sight of bartering, and it’s a skill even the youngest among us has, we should all take a lesson from the kids, trade for what you want, starve the beast of corprotacracy and regain a real value for what you need.

Hail Citiz...er Consumer

Take the so-called standard of living.  What do most people mean by "living"?  They don't mean living.  They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives.  ~E.E. Cummings, Introduction, Poems, 1954

It’s most unfortunate that without the internet I could not write this stuff and put it out for the singular person in the universe who actually takes the time to read it.  If I were to attempt to typeset all of this it’d never sell.

I have mentioned in the past my feelings about consumerism, well the holiday season is upon us now, and the interminable shopping begins, the lines to grab the latest plastic pumpkin from china mart have begun, I can’t even go get groceries without running into some lady (who by the looks of it is not poor at least, and who paid for her groceries with something other than an EBT card) huffing and puffing in front of me in line and asking for help with her groceries out to her car, now I understand some people need the help, and had she been 80 some odd years old I’d have helped, however this ladies only excuse (as far as I could tell) was that her basket was full of ding dongs , ho-ho’s,  and Twinkies; Along with Doritos (R) and a few other choice items of food.  Nowhere to be found was anything even remotely resembling food.  Now I like an occasional snack, some Reese’s, or a Butterfinger, but not all the time and those items do not solely make up my diet.

Couple that with the fact that she was buying undergarments for the man in her life (whose size I could not help but notice was roughly 50), now why do you think she needed help to the car? Because she’s a lazy CONSUMER, we have stopped being citizens and become consumers.  We live to feed the corprotacracy that is now my America. We are too fat and lazy to do anything, now I know the only place this blog is linked those people don’t fit this mold.

Our entire economy is based on consuming, not making anything mind you, after all we are too high priced to keep stuff made here, no one will buy it because well, we don’t make enough money for that so we export our manufacturing capability to China, Taiwan, Mexico and South America. And what do we have here? Not a damn thing.  Used to be you could get American made products everywhere, you can’t anymore, why? Because we don’t make one damn thing here in the U.S. anymore, we simply can’t afford it.

What’s worse is that we now have how many people out of work, and at the time of this writing CONgress has failed to pass yet another extension to the jobless benefits, so right around a week or so (maybe two depends on who you talk to) before the Christmas holiday roughly (again depending) 2 million people a week will start to lose their jobless benefits, welcome to Christmas except this time Ebenezer’s name is really Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geitner.   Between those two fools all the money gone to the banks and not into the pockets of those who could really stimulate the economy is it any wonder we now have QE2 and will end up with QE nth at some point? Let’s keep feeding the beast that ate the economy, this is a good plan, right up there with sacrificing virgins in the volcano to appease the lava god.

Look, I’m just a computer programmer in an insane asylum, I don’t know a whole hell of a lot, I do know however that if you’ve dug yourself a hole too deep to get out of the first thing you do is quit fricken digging.  I feel sorry for those who are losing the only lifeline they have in the coming weeks, no Christmas goose, and just some 10 year old fruit cake in their futures.

It Just Dont Make Sense

It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy.  ~Chinese Proverb

I do not partake in this particular lifestyle by the way, so this is written strictly from an intellectual honesty academic exercise view point.

I noticed something today…well, not noticed per se, but I connected some dots that have been there in the blatantly obvious positions for years I’m certain, I just never noticed it till today.  It dawned on me while having a conversation with someone that all of the illicit, illegal, and warred upon drugs all share one thing in common.

With the exception of methamphetamine they all occur in nature.  Opium (heroin), cocaine/crack (the latter being a derivative of the former), peyote, magic mushrooms,  and marijuana all grow naturally in our environment, and with the exception of the first one don’t cause houses with little children to blow up.  What’s worse is anyone wanting the first on the list drug just needs to doctor shop their high fructose laden child around for a bunch of Ritalin prescriptions; it’s the same damn substance. So for the sake of argument we’ll concentrate on the latter, all natural products.

Now this makes no sense to me in an intellectual capacity.  I cannot legally partake in the bounty of nature, but let me go to 5 different doctors for an oxycodone prescription and I could probably get it. Just ask Rush.

Could this just be a case of “follow the money” since there is no money in growing products such as these (they are more intensive to grow than corn in a single row mono agriculture that we are so flipping fond of in the U.S.) and if they were legalized I suppose the CIA, NSA and any number of alphabet soup agencies would pretty much be out of a job, after all how sexy is it to chase some doctor shopper in Florida when you can get the guy with the Uzi.

We actually have no idea what the potential medicinal qualities of any of these plants are since our wonderful we know what’s best for you government won’t allow the research to take place, could it be that our Native American (both north and south variety) knew something we didn’t? After all they managed to survive, some in pretty harsh conditions, for centuries prior to Leif Ericson landing on our shores and trading pelts with them with this stuff literally growing wild around them.

Allopathic medicine it seems has made us a bunch of junkies, I personally wont drink the tap water just due to the fact there’s no telling what the hell is in there as far as pharmaceuticals go.  I take my vitamins that the body cannot make on its own or does not store in quantity, C and D (I don’t spend enough time out of doors), the rest I get from what used to be a pretty good diet, I’ve slipped recently however (I know shame on me) due to other obligations.  And yes I filter my filtered water, and then distill it.

It seems to me if we wanted, truly wanted to solve the drug problem, we would legalize something nature provides, and make the crap being shoved down our throats by the likes of Pfizer on the illegal list.

Too bad its not sustainable...

"Simplicity is the last thing a person considers as he is madly searching for the secret to life" ~Marlena De Blasi

I’m a simple guy, I don’t ask for much, expect much less and very rarely end up disappointed.  It’s not that I live a life of Riley, nor do I live like Ebenezer Scrooge, my existence is comfortable enough.

I spent the recent American holiday with family, many of whom are very comfortable in life, some of whom had no food to speak of in their houses.  It is this latter group that I wish to discuss.  I’ll leave it at the fact that they are relatives of the spouse of one of my relatives and leave it at that, lest they learn to read and come after me for liable.

This particular family lives off of the work you and I do every day, that’s right they subsist solely on TANF (welfare for those of us old enough to remember the stigma that went with that), food stamps, and a monthly check they receive for their two children, both of whom suffer from genetic defects directly related to their fathers drug use.  They also cannot stay in any one place more than a couple of months it seems, for failure to pay their rent generally, nor can they seem to keep the utilities on for the same reason.

After the grand holiday feast the conversation turned to “black Friday” and the deals that could be had on plastic pumpkins in the local china marts.  This particular person of whom we are speaking was going on and on about the fact that they were going to go get a 37 inch flat panel 1080p LCD television for the living room because by god they needed it.

Did I mention that they had no food in the house, and no “money” to go buy more because the couple hundred bucks he had in his pocket was earmarked for the T.V.?  Yes you read that right; the money he had could not be used to purchase food because it was for the T.V.  He then proceeded to beg borrow and plead the remainder of the money necessary (another two hundred) off of family members who could ill afford to loan it to him (those on that side of the family who could have paid it out of their lunch money were ill inclined to do so).

No wonder I feel that we are all about to circle the drain as a society.  It never dawned on him that the brand spanking new shiny idiot box (and in fair disclosure I own two, paid over a grand a piece for them, but then again I paid cash, my own cash and only purchased them when I had the cash to spend, my children never have nor will they ever want for food to eat or warm blankets on the beds) would not continue to function after he failed to pay the power bill this month because he owes everyone in the family money (which they will probably never see again) and his rent is due, and after a short discussion about how much money was coming in versus what was being spent he could not see that his sustainability for the month of December was about, zero.

What about food I inquired, “well you see we get food stamps on the first”, ok, it’s the freaking 25th of November, far as I can tell you have 6 days or so before the first of December and you have nothing, I guess I know where all the leftovers went to, at least the kids will have something to eat, until today or so, and well going hungry for a day or so is good for the soul, or so thinks this individual.  Never mind the fact he’ll probably spend thirty percent of the money he gets at the local bar before the money ever sees the inside of his house, or with the local herb dealer if you catch my drift.

I personally have nothing against either, if you have the money to burn either place more power to you. But for the love of Pete make sure its money you can burn, not money you should be spending on food for your children, and I can hear it now, who made me arbiter of how they spend their money, no one. I just felt the need to put it out there, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had this experience that just makes you shake your head.

Death Comes For Us All

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive.  It is as though they were traveling abroad.  ~Marcel Proust

I have been studying the 5 stages of grief, now there are some adherents to grief theory that state there are 7 possibly more, but I have yet to run across less.  As a child I recall reading the book “on death and dying”, pretty macabre stuff for an eight year old I’ll admit, but mom was a nurse, and she had purchased the book while in pursuit of her master’s degree as one of the required reading materials, of course me being me I read everything, including that.

For better or worse, it let me in on something all must deal with at some point, whether for themselves or someone they knew and loved. The ideation that perhaps the non denominational church I was required to attend as a kid was all wet.  Now I’m not going to go on yet another rant regarding the church and its faults and foibles, I’ve done enough of that below, however the book and the examination of church and its doctrines led me to the belief that God (whoever that truly is) does indeed recycle.

So if death is the event horizon of the physicality that is the human experience, does the quantum entanglement of two souls, much like the quantum entanglement of two particles, continue even if one of the subjects in question crosses the event horizon?  I would have to believe they do, once entangled they remain entangled forever, after all if Einstein were right, there is no time, there is no space.  All points in space-time exist alongside every other point in space-time at once.  What we humans call time is simply an excuse for one to be late to work on a day to day basis.

Yes, the 1800’s exist right next to the 2010’s which exist right next to every other moment in time, all played out at once over and over and over, if something causes the timeline of events to go another direction, a new thread is created with that new event, thus every event that possibly could have happened has happened, and will continue to happen and spawn new threads.

This leads me back to our physicality, our existence here where we are reading this, has already occurred. We simply have not caught up to it in our current configuration; however our souls are entangled with the event just like two particles that were in close proximity to one another are forever entangled.  Since matter can never be created nor can it be destroyed, only transformed, even the transformed matter maintains its entanglement with the thing it was entangled with.

I personally believe this explains the paranormal phenomena of ghosts, now poltergeists and evil spirits do exist, and sometimes find it in their interest to bother us poor sods here on planet terra, but I think most ghosts and haunting are due to a quantum entanglement with something physical here on earth that for whatever reason the ghost or spirit being has had a difficult time parting with.  Perhaps however this is their reincarnation, or they are waiting for their next incarnation.

I have studied bushido, and after having talked with many wise men, medicine men, and the occasional kick from the universe itself am not afraid of death, I don’t necessarily want to experience it right now, but accept that it comes for all of us, it’s the one thing every single one of us shares in common, regardless of our status or stature in life.  In 130 years every single person alive right now, including those who are incarnate but not yet born will be gone. Sobering fact that, so it’s best to deal with our own mortality while we are alive and able to. Cause one day we aren’t going to be.

Ponderings

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.  ~James Thurber

This is me waxing philosophical with no destination in mind. I’m going to let my mind and fingers wander (yes I know, they are too young to be out alone at night, sheesh even the jokes are old around here).

I have spent the last few weeks pondering many things, life, the universe, our reason for existence, so yesterday, I decided to go find some good quotes to put in a text file, hoping it would give me the inspiration to write, normally I write about things that are deathly important at the time I write them, matters of grave concern and potential grievous bodily harm that may (or may not) befall some poor sod whose has but by happenstance found himself (or herself) in a quandary, predicament, or otherwise sullied state of affairs.

Normally that person is me, more often than not, every great once in a while it’s someone I happen to know, albeit not very well mostly, and sometimes its someone close to me who comes and seeks my counsel (although I am remiss to figure out why, but I do assure you it is on my list).

One of the things that have kept my poor sorely overtaxed grey matter busy is the concept that everything is a business model.  This is a postulate of a gentleman by the name of George Ure, who runs the urban survival site http://www. Urbansurvival.com/week.htm (you can copy and paste if the whole parsing of links doesn’t work.) and while I may not always agree with George regarding some of his flights of fancy his postulate of EBM is one I can find no fault with, which is in and of itself strange, because I’m usually the guy that finds the logical fault in damn near everything that is not a law of nature (sorry, I’m not sure we can enforce those laws, and I’d really hate to be a judge on that case).

As much as I hate to admit it, George is right, everything IS a business model, we all trade something of value for something of equivalent value, whether it’s time for money, free range eggs for beef or wheat, computer skills for sex, well maybe not that, but you get the picture, people tried to argue the point of marriage, relations, etc. to which George responded with tacit pointed arguments, that if taken to their intellectual conclusion, made sense. Not all transactions are of money, could be time for time, I help you with the fence, you help me with the porch repair that sort of thing.

I’ve also pondered being poor, now I’m not rich by any stretch, in fact I’m probably just above poverty in many cities across the country, and I have discovered that it’s going to be much easier to enter into the coming singularity if your used to making do or doing without, or making it yourself.  Those who have never had to pull up their own bootstraps aren’t going to fair too well in my estimation.  It’s hard though to imagine myself without some of the material trappings that I have grown so used to over the years, like heat, light, electricity, cable, and trash pickup.  However those things may return on the other side, what shape they will take is yet to be seen.

I have also pondered the upcoming singularity, which depending on which doomsday prophet you wish to listen to is anywhere from 15 minutes ago to 50 years in the future.  I think we have the possibility of the singularity arriving sometime relatively soon, the American elections are coming up in a few weeks time, and there is a distinct possibility that roughly half the house and a third the senate will be replaced, by whom I have no clue, but replaced none the less. The American electorate is duly pissed off about the profligate spending our banal government has found itself enamored in.  Whether this will make a difference has yet to be seen, but shortly thereafter I am relatively certain we will see something none of us expected, nor should we have accepted, after all a lame duck is the most dangerous kind, especially when they are of the political stripe.

Yes I have been pondering, the world, the big peace, and just how much peace is coming our way.  I distinctly remember that silence is deafening, that you don’t realize how much noise is around you day to day until someone takes that noise away from your surroundings.  On September 12 2001 it was deathly silent around campus where I was attending school for the umpteenth time in my life, although it was with no particular degree or whatever in mind, it was more a way to keep myself occupied during a extended stint on unemployment, and as long as I went I got my check, but could not help but notice the deafening silence that accompanied the lack of aircraft on that day, the day when the sun still came up, we still went to class, people still went to work, and 3000 of my fellow Americans were dead because some nut job used a 737 as a weapon.

We are all painfully aware of the damage done to Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan by the measly little 13 kiloton bombs we dropped to end the war against us in the 40’s, given that we have weapons now that are measures of magnitude greater in their destructive power mutually assured destruction has kept that genie in the bottle.  What most people don’t realize, and something I have always had in the back of my brain, is that a single warhead of the current configuration and size detonated just inside the edge of the atmosphere directly above the geographic center of the north American continent would cause a power outage that would pretty much last forever, it could and would drive us straight back to the 18th century, your wonderful iPhone would be nothing more than a 600 dollar plastic brick, your televisions, 1000 dollar plastic doorstops, and your refrigerator a really nice casket for a loved one given you were willing to dig a hole that size with a shovel and not try to rely on a backhoe.   Credit card machines would not work, and your local grocer would accept only cash and then have to train all of the teenage checkout peeps how to use an abacus, or (gasp dare I say) do math.  Just a pondering mind you, but what better way to get the government they want than to send one up and light it off after the elections.

I saw a tee shirt once that read something along the lines of, I’ll keep my food, my silver, my weapons, and you can keep your change.  Too bad those at the top don’t know what those at the bottom have already realized to a great degree, we are going to get change, and it’s not the kind of change we want.

Livin on the edge

There's somethin' wrong with the world today; I don't know what it is; Something's wrong with our eyes
We're seeing things in a different way;  And God knows it ain't His; It sure ain't no surprise
We're livin' on the edge   ~Aerosmith “Living on the edge”

“Your preparing for something aren’t you?”
“Yes I am”
“What do you think it is?”
“Honestly, I don’t know”

That’s the gist of a conversation I had with a friend recently (well earlier this afternoon anyway) after I sent them an e-mail regarding the fact I was once again compulsively making a list of things I needed to get from the dollar store, the local hardware and that store everyone loves to hate, Wally world (you know the place where you USED to be able to get whatever you needed all in one trip?).  Some of the items are mundane, I need more candles, and a few more lighters from the dollar store, and a couple of other items, from Wally world include propane for my candle stove downstairs, maybe some nice hurricane lamps from the candle section (I like them, they make for good usable decoration).  From the local hardware store I need some three quarter tubing, some flat stock, a couple of new saw blades (mine are getting dull).  Nothing big there; nothing out of the ordinary if you were to think about it.

However what is out of the ordinary is the urgency with which I felt I must make the list. Confessions are tough, especially when you don’t know how people will react to them; I’m a bit of an empath, I have friends that are freaky good at it to, but the one thing that ties us all together is we cannot see ourselves or our situations. I wish I could because then I could know and understand why I felt the sudden urgency to write all that stuff down on a piece of paper, and why I sat there for over an hour hyperventilating over the whole thing. I don’t hyperventilate; I’m the guy whose patience quotient puts JOB to shame. I don’t get excited over stuff, never have, I can dead pan a car wreck with no problem. I pride myself on being unflappable in most circumstance, yet today for some unknown reason, I just had to grab a pad of paper, my trusty pen, and start writing a list of odd things I need.

The seriously odd thing is they are all “holes” in my stuff, consumable items that I need to stock up on (foods covered as long as the ammo holds out, and even then it’s not a problem to obtain, there’s always the cross bow, those rounds are reusable), as well as enough fish hooks, bobbers, line etc. to keep Roland Martin busy for a few years. Plus I have non-GMO seeds available, and stored so veggies would take a season to get going, but could happen relatively quickly.  It’s down to the holes now, and those are the holes I now know need filling.

But it still beggars the question, why now, why the sudden rush, what’s coming down the pike that I’m not aware off (at least not consciously) that makes me feel like I need this stuff right now?  Is the world not going to be here on Monday? Dunno the answer to that one, is the dollar going to all the sudden become toilet paper? It might, but if it does I’ll be glad I don’t live in Canada where they have dollar coins and not bills LOL. (You know who you are).

I’ve known something was going down for a while now, and every time I think, this is it, I turn out to be wrong, and certainly above all else hope that I am wrong now, however I have also learned to listen to that voice in my head that tells me to do certain things (no not that voice, the other voice that’s actually reasonable)

EBT And The Downfall Of Man

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. ~Chinese Proverb

I like to eat, don’t get me wrong, but what really, really cheeses me off is that some people eat better than I do.  Are these people better off than me? No, not by any stretch of one’s imagination. Have they done something righteous with their lives that allow them the luxury of buying the $20 roast and the $25 dollar bucket ‘o crab legs? Again, nope. What they have done however is suckle at the government teat.

Allow me to explain.  This year my federal income tax return AGI will probably be in the 5 digit range (since the government don’t do the whole cents thing anyway) and will most likely start with an 8 or a 9, not sure just yet.  I don’t live beyond my means either, I drive a 10 year old minivan that is in desperate need of a new engine, live in a house that was about 25% of what the bank said I could spend (PITI is $660 ish just  to give you an idea). I have cable TV of course, the minimum you need to get high speed internet and my cell phone, I have the cheapest plan I could find that was unlimited text and talk since I have family across the country.  Of course I pay for electric, sewer/water, trash service, and fuel and insurance for the van (again my insurance bill is like 20 bucks a month).  I eat relatively cheap, mostly vegetarian with my meat supply coming at the business end of a box of 270 Winchester ammo I buy for $20 at the local Wally world, coupled with an eighteen dollar license from the state.

So why am I cheesed at those people, cause they not only get the food stamps (of which there are now something like 43 million people using them) which roughly equates to 1.5 percent of the entire population of the country, this does not include the chronically hungry who probably don’t qualify cause they “make too much”.  Now I’ve been on food stamps, and let me tell you they make it next to impossible to get off of food stamps, but that story is for another day, even if I laugh myself to tears every time I tell it. What bothers me is that after they are done spending more on groceries for the month than I will probably be able to afford in six, they break out the WIC checks to pay for a couple boxes of cereal, some OJ, some milk, and cheese (mind you they could have gotten all of that on their EBT card).  I don’t begrudge those that need these things the help, as I stated I’ve been there done that, burned the t-shirt.  But it never fails that they are dressed nicer than I could ever afford, have cell phones that make mine look paltry, and drive new cars (after all what are they gonna spend their welfare checks on, odds are they live in publicly subsidized housing that costs little to nothing). More often than not they are also wearing high dollar jewelry that I would not ever deign to look at the price tag of no matter how I felt it might look on me.

Have we fallen that far as a nation that those of us who are responsible adults, pay their taxes (however begrudgingly), pay for their own way have to stand in line behind the EBT crowd watching them spend my hard won tax dollars?  I worked hard for that money, I got up every morning and sacrificed my time and energy to earn it, only to render unto caesers that which is caesers, and watch helplessly while it gets squandered on cheez doodles and ice cream for the multiple screaming brats in the cart that exists to the fore. And mind you mommy looks like she’s barely 20 and the kids are both between 3 and 5 years old, you do the math.

One day all of that is going to come crashing down on them, the government checks and help are going to stop coming in on the first, and people are going to wake up. May the universe help us all when that happens. But i also must question, at what point do we hand out poles instead of fish.