Homework...

The last post was written in anger, it was.  In the class the instructor stepped over more than one ethical line, another line he crossed was setting as a homework assignment that the class was to duplicate his indiscretion with someone from their world and write a one page report on the “experience.”  What follows is what I’ll be turning in, for any who might be curious it speaks rather deeply to my attitudes concerning many things. I’m going to be very interested in what comes back from this one, it will tell so much concerning the true state of the local academics.

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Zombie Skirmish in Academia...

It’s an old saying, and a wise one:  “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  Hard to argue with that one, it really is.  I’m not trying to argue with it, I agree with that idea whole heartedly.  What I’m wondering is how long it’s going to be before the kids full recognize the truth of it and start asking themselves what it is that needs preventing lest at some point in the future it need curing.

The kids joke about it, in a nervous sort of way, the coming zombie apocalypse when the undead rise up and attack the living.  Right, sure thing, zombies.  How did zombies get in the game?  Zombies got in the game because many a true word is spoken in jest, and many a true concept finds its’ way into the common culture riding on and expressed in terms from some legend of antiquity or work of fiction.  The connection isn’t that hard to see, once you take a good look at a zombie followed by a good look at what is being proselytized into the collective culture of mankind as a replacement for the rational (or the other way around, it works going both ways).  

Zombies: the animated dead, the undead possessed of no thought, no memory, no will free or otherwise, no self; zombie, a creature reduced to a primal hunger for the brain of a living creature, that hunger a terrifying and pathetic final grasp at existence on the way into utterly ignoble oblivion hoping to reclaim life or at least a decent death, both of which are denied the once human zombie by some force of evil spreading inexorably through the population.  Zombies. 

A totally grim thing, when you think about it.  But is zombie all that different from the end result of what is being advertised from so many different angles as the enlightened understanding required for admittance into (if not actual survival within) modern society?  Ok, the eating someone’s brain thing is hopefully a bit left of drama compared to real life, but is the rest of it that far off?  Not really, not when all the facets and factors are overlaid to represent the true force vector impacting on the modern human.

Movies and Magic...

I be a smilin’ boy tonight.

The movie was a gift from Selene, Alex’s partner and producer.  For more than a few years it’s ridden the hard drive as a disc image file, for some reason it just hadn’t seemed the right time to connect up the final dots to play it.  Something always got in the way, some minor tech glitch.  And truth, I think I’d been saving it, like the last case of a truly great vintage, saving it against the time it might be really needed.  But the dots connected themselves, it wasn’t really my prime motive when I installed the new player on the new computer, I didn’t expect anything but “can’t play this file” when on a lark I clicked the title.  But apparently fate decided it was time… yea, I’m smiling.

It’s still there, her magic, it took all of three seconds of her smile to reawaken that indescribable feeling, that sense and sentiment only a master dreamweaver can impart, that heady optimism of wholesome love playing in the sunshine.  Lord knows it is such a pleasant thing, to feel that again.  The last couple of years have been pulling hard on the reserves, cynicism starting to creep in, and that’s never ever a good thing.  I suppose it should stand as a proof of love, really, a proof that after everything that’s gone down I can still feel love.  As long as you know you can it’s worth the risk and the effort to leave that door where it can be opened, and that is worth so much more than words can carry.  All I can really say is thanks girls, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. 

Is there a Feminist Theologian in the house?

I’m procrastinating, yes sir (or ma’am, as the case may be), I am.  I should be writing an essay concerning David Hume, to be specific being very specific as to why it wouldn’t be very likely he’d believe anyone is getting into heaven.  Eh, ok, if you insist.  In a little bit, ok?  Lemme get this out of the way first.  In a sorta sideways fashion it’s even related, being as how Hume’s AR (hint: reference old psychology) rants and atheistic rambles dancing around in me brain to some old Elvis music (about something that some, including myself,  have observed as an effect begging a  search for a cause, one that had Hume ever noticed during the excessively libertine entertainments history records of him, that he might entertain the question in the court of  his acutely logical mind, would have tilted his world most severely) is what most likely kicked my thoughts in this direction in the first place. 

Folks, I’m talking primarily to the prevailing belief structures of my native land and culture, those descended from the tent of Abraham.  It’s hard fact they are massively patriarchal, everything  is set masculine. Of course the pagan folk primarily revere a Goddess (so they’re off the hook, sort of, but not really, and I’m not even gonna tip off into the eastern religions, don’t know enough about ‘em to do justice to what they believe), so perhaps they’ve already dealt on this thought. 

Anyway, to the point of the issue: how come in formal religion references to a feminine  source of feminine evil are scarce as hens teeth?  Since our culture is quite obviously in the process of reorganizing itself gender balanced (in theory, actually it’s leaning matriarchal in point of fact, but hey, quarter-wave tuning is a fact in more modes of thought than just engineering) then by rights about now the fourth generation feminists should be campaigning to excavate some thought pertinent to explaining how setting the devil as a masculine presence could be anything but blatantly patronizing to the women folk of the world, surely Shirley in the fullness of her feminist empowered wisdom wouldn’t take a bite out of that apple, not twice, no way, just look what happened the last time… c’mon, someone step up to the plate and explain it like we’re all five years old: why should the devil (format that thought to suit your own beliefs, there’s a corollary in every religion) be an exclusively male presence? 

Isn’t an oversight of such scale nothing more than just a most convenient hypocrisy allowing that same old gender bias you contest everywhere else to remain in place to serve the needs of your emotional comfort?  Or is it even more than that?  Why don’t we ask Jolene, that quintessential American Woman for her thoughts on the matter?  Why must we all remain Dazed and Confused on the subject, as often as not leaving the liberated women folk (you know, Hume’s libertine playmates) to take some pretty heavy long term damage to their lives as a consequence of temptation misrepresenting itself as of exclusively masculine motive?  Could this perhaps be to allow the feminine forms free to operate unchecked?  Could it be this oversight serves yet another master, the cause of masculine sexual hypocrisy?  After all, when Miss Molly’s house of fine repute burned to the ground it was the Reverend himself seen leading the charge out the back door… in his underwear.  Oh well.  Enough social sarcasm for one day, it’s time I got back to work.  Later folks.

Dyno time, or, Are we there yet?

Anyone who has ever hauled children cross country has heard that one, or some variation of it, it’s just the nature of the operation.  C’mon, tell us we’re almost there.  We’ve been incarcerated in the back seat for eight whole hours now and looking out the window is getting boring.  C’mon, how much longer to Grandma’s house and all the yummie things she bakes for us?  Are we there yet?

I haven’t posted anything for a few days now, been a trifle busy with a couple of things, a few from things from the second (public) reality, the remainder from the first (inner) reality of the self.

The first and most critical thing was restoring the functionality of my desk.  Blow a bugle sad and low, smooth and slow, fire off a salute into the setting sun: the old desktop system my son built for me over a decade ago finally surrendered to the years.   I got up to see the obituary pop up before the cursor: WIN32/CONFIG SYS missing or corrupt... my digital companion of the last dozen years passed in his sleep.  Twelve years of computer time is ancient indeed, the event was not unexpected, just unscheduled.  The hardware held, just the system finally gave up to the ten bazillion and one to many modifications and mutations from to many updates.  The hard drive accepted being set slave in another machine of like kind so the future allows for the possibility of a resurrection into the family reserves, nothing was lost other than a tear or two for the nobility of me old friend. 

Soooo… I’ve been a bit distracted getting the backups reassembled on a new(er) machine  I bought this past December from a fellow who got carried away at the pawn shop and needed some cash back to buy Christmas, it was basically a low dollar raski that has come home to me fairly quickly.  He needed cash, I needed something for the son to do to earn the burger runs when he gets roped into pulling a double shift, it all worked out.  My son had it waiting for me in the closet with a fresh system installed on a reformatted drive, cleaned and overhauled sporting new fans ready to step into the job.  The king is dead, long live the king. 

Yea, right.  That’s been the major player of the past week or so, the one visible in the second reality.  But perhaps as a consequence of the other player in me life, the class bought from the local academics giving a tour of the thoughts set down by those now considered classic philosophers I’ve also been busy at matters pertaining to the first reality, the inner reality of me.

I was sitting in the classroom the other day with the other folks waiting for the instructor to arrive when one of the lads, frustrated at the confusion of dealing at depth with thoughts several centuries older than any he’d ever encountered before piped up at a goodly volume with the question “what’s this stuff good for, anyway?”  producing one of those totally pregnant pauses in half a dozen conversations concerning video games and the engineered to idiot child type campus activities.  Being the eldest of the group by a factor of at least two I felt compelled to answer him, saying “Dude, if you want to run with the big dogs you gotta tune your head like you tune your Honda, this stuff is just a dynamometer of the mind lets you test and tune under working load.”  He understood my meaning, so did several others, for more than a moment the room was a good bit more sober than it had been.  Sorry kids, just the truth of the matter.

True for them, and true for me as well.  I’ve got rangers in the field, the scouts and elite recon units, but the main body of my invasion has yet to be committed into battle, those functions are still in the final stages of training.  The thoughts of the SoulMarine and the secretly faithful ChildofGod, the thoughts of the Skeptic and the NewAgeMan are serving as drill masters for me as well, and considered at the depth they deserve they’re not easy masters to please.  By the contrast made possible by the light of their thoughts I’ve seen several things in me that I wouldn’t trust to run to the grocery store, much less run an armored column up the enemies ass, those things are in the process of going away.  I’ve walked Escherville a time or three, nodded to the monsters on the street corners who now just sit and look sad knowing better than to raise a tentacle in my direction, I’ve revisited several particular places in that town to evict what hid from me in my first passages of that place, those things that hid hoping to restore the monsters to power should they ever succeed in luring me into an environment fit to nurture more of their kind.  Sorry, but no. 

So no kids, we’re not their yet.  But it won’t be long now, look, we’re already past Escherville, it won’t be long now...