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.