Precision Review

Folks, I rode all the way down here to tell you something, and what I rode down here to tell you is I can't count how many folks I've known who get bullied by the name printed in big letters on a page of their calendar, how many poor fools turns white on January first of certain numbered years and don't resume their normal God given color until Hanukah of that same year, how many folks I've met in my wanderings what want to skip over the squares on that calendar where a certain number is printed. Them folks, they set aside entire years, months, days, to be worried people, and people, bein' worried like that just is not a happy way to spend your time, not when there is only just so much time what is given to you.

I mean, I mean ( get that Arlo Guthrie thing going here...)

A Grinch's Consolation...

There are those who have a great deal more reason to not like this holiday than you do... cheer up, and have a Merry Christmas. You don't have it half so hard.

Four Decade Down...

The Joke is Asimov in the corner going "what's this 'ficton' bullshit? I'm a scientist and I've never heard of a ficton..." You have to be a fan of Robert Heinlein to fully understand this one.

There is a lot I could say, and nothing that I will say beyond it has been a very, very long time since last I was in this frame of mind.

Just a minor observation...

Lady Luck is many things, but an exhibitionist is not one of them. If she's flashing boob she has a reason in mind, and it probably ain't gonna go well for someone...

Double nickel... No. 55

I never post a picture to the internet I didn't find on the internet. 

The days drag on, the nights drag over, and yea... this is about as succinct as I can be. The last few months have been a deep recon on several topics, several of which have produced some very, very interesting thoughts. I'll be sitting to write on them in the near future, but for now my attention is still on the gathering, I'm not quite to the point of putting the thoughts out for public consumption. But no, I'm not dead or in some lock up somewhere, just working at range. In the meanwhile, poem and a photomanip, just by way of touching base.

Clean copy of the image, as it came complete... sized 1920x1080 for wallpaper

Blasphemy…

==originally published September of 2011===

Now that the Covert Cultural Warfare is approaching a crescendo around the election of Donald the Trump bringing the very people mentioned in this post to the forefront perhaps now is a good time to look at it again...

==========================

I was watching television last night. I don't do it often, I don't find it all that entertaining. Oh sure, there's a few box office movies seen before, or a torrid little skin flick based around dysfunctional lovers, perhaps a bit of anime with an attempt at a real plot, these things sandwiched in among the totally inane offerings, the sitcoms and sports. Those things are all right I suppose, there are those who enjoy them.

Where the programming isn't that much of a much there are things seen I really do find quite disturbing, things that speak to how deeply degraded the world has become. I'm not talking about horror movies or crime drama or slasher flicks, those are the domain of the frightened and the juvenile. Those fears are sanctioned, prescribed, acceptable. No, the things that bother me are the ones you're not really supposed to be paying much attention to, the things crafted to sneak into your head like a retro-virus intended to lay dormant until your life tries to evolve before they become active and work their wickedness. In short, it is the foundation assumptions of the commercials I take exception to, the sort of things I'd like to see terminated. To borrow a line from Apocolypse Now, things I'd like to see terminated... with great prejudice.

Tonight I saw such a prime example I feel compelled to comment on it, it was truly an archetype of the form. I'm not going to present it exactly, but if you've ever seen their commercial I'm sure you'll recognize the one I'm talking about. The product offered was a dating service, lots of those, but this one targeted one specific demographic... those who call themselves Christian. Ok, I suppose that's fair enough. The Christians are a critter unto themselves, if anyone on planet Earth truly needs help, from Jesus or someone, they would be prime candidates to be first in line. And the reason they'd be towards the front of the line? Things like that commercial, where  there is this voice over in a silky smooth voice both paternal and seductive saying (and I'm paraphrasing now) "...find the love God intended for you..."  while the text on the screen reads OurDatingService.com.

Think about that. What God intended for you, coming to you courtesy of something with a dot com designation. Right. Not dot org, organization, but dot com. Commercial.

In my book that is blasphemy. That needs to be terminated. Someone needs to wake up a wing of B-52 and stack on the ordinance till those BigUglyFuckers can only lift fifteen minutes worth of fuel breaking free of the runway, someone needs to make sure there's not one but two tankers for each BUF already airborne and waiting to suckle the BUF's as they're climbing out to altitude, fill their tanks airborne so they have lots of fuel to linger over their target and put the ordinance where it needs to be. Someone had better put an end to such blasphemy before the whole world dies whispering "…the horror... the horror… the…"

Like the old country song said...

“…if you’ll give me forty years I’ll turn this rig around…”

Great old song it was, and I only had to change one word to bring it totally up to date. Change yards to years, and then look at the world you’re living in. It’s right there in your face. Gentle reader, the endless run of reboot movies, the endless run of reboot propaganda, these things are not because those who craft the entertainments and the manipulations are out of ideas, not at all. There is a very skilled and subtle intention in play, and in all truth it’s one that I would (grudgingly) have to support until and unless some better idea comes along.

Their intentions are to most literally get the good old cold war going again and split the world neatly in half east to west, US/Nato vs. the Russian Republic in the role of The Soviet Union. They are frantically trying to dial the calendar back to 1980.

It sounds like lunacy, but there is a viable reason for such a campaign. That reason is a desperate attempt to curtail the exponentially rising power of the Corporate Neo-Fascist in their bid for domination. The CNF, who have allied themselves with the nation of China after failing to conquer the United States with their attempted coup by media-manipulation of the Bush administration, the CNF must be stopped if any nation is to survive. The Russians know this, the Americans know this, the remainder of the world knew it before they did.

With the world once again divided along the old lines the CNF will no longer be able to operate on a global scale with utter impunity. Do business east, or do business west, but no longer will they be able to run with the sun around the globe. With the old cold war mentality back in place China is once again returned to the status of enemy to both sides… yes, the Soviet Union had a 65 division army, and 45 of those divisions were parked on the Chinese border assuming they’d have to give a thousand kilometers to stabilize a line against a Chinese attack on their nation.

It is the old, old truism of divide and conquer played on a global scale against a global enemy.  Unless by some miracle the United Nations should step up and establish a global code of law to govern the CNF I don’t see a better strategy on the horizon. And that… is a terribly sad thing.

We really need to make ourselves a note that the next time we try for global peace we’d better make sure there are no monsters lurking under the bed waiting for the old warriors to hang up their swords before making their bid for world domination. We need to remind ourselves not to make the same mistake twice.

Life is Boring... Television is worse...

...and why in the slam fucking hell when the first hints of a spider big enough to spin a world wide web were heard didn't the military unleash every tactical strike fighter at their disposal and hunt the beast into extinction? 

There is no gravity.  Just the universe trying like all hell to outrun the wave front of human stupidity, currently propagating at 32 ft per second per second in all directions.

reality.sys not found.
universe halted.

*bwaaayuank!*  ...of course you are my bright little star, I've miles of files, pretty files, of your aforefarted fruits, and now to suit our great computes?  You're... magnetic.. *swqueeeeeeeaaach* CALL NOW and for just FOUR easy payments of 19.95 you can own this magnificent mansion, but wait, there's more!  Order with your major credit card and we'll include this beautiful blonde trophy wife genetically altered to give only the most tender loving of care to your absolutely perfect Harvard bound children, guaranteed to fuck you into a state of total mindless abandon every seventeen minu*tunktunktunk *  AMEN BROTHERS AND SISTERS, I SAY AMEN AND DOWN WITH SIN, SAY IT WITH ME, DOWN *Wikibrubabrubabruba*  Jesus loves you my brothers, he died for YOUR SINS and he died for MY SINS and *shreeeeashereashhhhh* we'll be right back to Elvis Presly starring in Viva Las Vegas after a short word from our *issssssisssssissssisssss*

Ladies and Gentlemen, The President of the...

Some days I really think I should take up drinking cheap whiskey for a living.

(with only a slight apology to the Moody Blues, they did mean well...)
(five years later, and so little has changed... so little. Originally published 2011)

Denial... is not a river in Africa

I am not a poet,

     don't frame me for the crime

even if my bastard words

     sometimes try to rhyme…

I am not a poet,

far from that my friend

even if the story told

runs back to front again

like politician promises

when voting time begins.

I am not a poet,

more gearhead gunner freak

who has a heart of empathy

for what is on the street…

I am not a poet,

oh no, that's not I

just a rebel's heart to arms

when told to pass it by

leave the helpless on their own

to suffer slow and die

chained off to a sinking oar

by those who lives will buy.

I am not a poet,

such rank will ne'er be mine

commissioned by the graduates

of walls held square by vine…

I am not a poet,

there simply isn't time

to try and teach my soul to march

in even metered rhymes

I am just the partisan

who fights behind the lines.

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and the Great Door Buzzer Scandal...

Just eye candy and a bit of wishful thinking...

Farcebook wanted to know what was on my mind. The answer? How the secret tendrils of politics crawls into so many places to complicate and sometimes just plain fuck up things that politics has no business being involved with.

Take cars for an example. I do cars, have for years. Being born a poor boy it was learn how to mechanic or walk. I'm not so poor now, but I still work on my own for the most part, hey, paying someone else to fix something minor on your truck is kind of like paying someone else to give the old lady a minor orgasm, you know? Just not very satisfying no matter how loud or long she yodels.

Over the years automobiles have gotten a lot more technically sophisticated. Cuss as I do I'll admit that a great deal of these things are improvements, the metallurgy and the engine control systems. Yea, you have to know what you're looking at and yea, you do need test gear to really troubleshoot the systems, but... on the other hand you can go from the bottom of death valley to the top of Pikes Peak and not have to change running jets (and if you know what that means you might be *gasp* a geezer).

On the other hand I save some of my very favorite cuss words for when I get involved with something where there's a fucking fifty dollar module doing the exact same job that can be done with a bit of a cam and a chunk of heavy wire, you know... the bells and whistles on the inside of the car for those who think Honda is buying up all the American Virgins to keep the volcano god of Technology living at their house. Somewhere in the last few days it finally dawned on me how that happened, and folks... it is suck the dog POLITICAL.

The oriental countries have come into their own making electronic things. They, like every other industry in the modern world, have a problem. If they build them to last as long as they could they won't sell enough to stay in business. If they don't stay in business, well, THEIR political parasites will be all over the map and OH MY GOD the residuals of the totalitarian communist regimes might start creeping back in. So, of course they engineer for a predictable failure rate just to keep sales up. Just common sense.

But what is not common sense is allowing these same FOREIGN companies to put money into the AMERICAN political scene to influence trade agreements (aka laws that usually remain hidden from the public) in order to assure themselves that the American politicians will lean on their industrial buddies to use lots of what the Asian companies are making trying to make sure the geyodamcommies don't have another chance at taking over southern bangkok where the door buzzer widgets come from.

Now that's a bit of a mulligan stew of an exaggeration, but then again, not really. Next time a politician supports something that looks just totally dumb on the surface think it through again from the perspective of the global perspective of the Corporate Neo-Fascists, they who want to finish what Marx and Lennin started. It might just make a bit more sense to you.

Stay sane and starve a shrink... pass this around if it makes sense to ya. Enjoy your day.

High Amperage Plum Jerky...

==originally published October 2014==

Say what?  Plum jerky?  High Amperage?  What in the whale does that mean?  How do those words even end up in the same sentence?  The sixties produced a lot of strange word friends, did they not?  Of course the translation is “Electric Prunes” and of course “The Electric Prunes” were a proto art-rock band remembered for one fine effort in the genre, to be specific the 1966 track I Had To Much to Dream (Last Night) dealing with the consequences of exactly what the title says: allowing yourself to indulge to excess in the realms of fantasy.

My name is Cyranos, and I’m a recovering dreamaholic.  I’m here to tell you that yes, it is possible to wake up with a hang-over from having to much to dream.  The symptoms are not as severe as say to much alcohol, and yet in some ways they’re more detrimental to your day.  Things tend to go surrealistic on you, reality doesn’t feel real at all, what should be simple bears the burden of hidden complexity that teases just beyond the grasp of comprehension.  The myths start creeping in, the legends and the superstitions start making sense and the more sense they make the less traction the day really has, it starts sliding on you as the sun gets low in the west and if you’re not careful you’ll do it again, and again, and soon enough you’ll be a dreamaholic like me who sees Gaia’s face in the clouds and wonders why so often it happens that when you let your focus go soft you see the devil reaching out of a beautiful woman’s eyes wanting a little piece of your soul... take my word for it, it is entirely possible to have to much to dream.

IF I knew what I was doing THEN...

This one from The Promise, the first story in the book...

This one, and the next, from Daughters, the second story.

This one revised a bit into the last image...

I've never even brushed over the thought of building an ad. Just not something that ever broke the horizon. I kind of talked myself into publishing Jurati Amos in the first place, rationalized it under a what a what the hell why not mode of thought. I really thought advertising was something the publisher did to make their nickel. Apparently not when you're just starting out. So, the question becomes what kind of things will light a curiosity in a perfect stranger? I really don't have a clue, I am stone cold at square one. But... on a second look... I think I'm gonna get back in the Photopaint on the second image with Bev, the dark one... and narrow her eyes a bit. Just enough to show her very, very justified anger. The idea is curiosity, if they noticed the first image I want the second just enough different to ping against the check sum functions of memory... is that the same picture? Cost? Thirty minutes. Value? Who knows. I damn sure don't. Later gang.

Thirty minutes post-post: better? Or not different enough to notice?

All the Beautiful Boys.. or, Down on the Farm Part 2

For the ladies sake I hope
he loves more than just his horse. 

I’ve been an amateur artist for a long time. I’ll paint surrealisms, figure nudes, landscapes, occasionally take a swing at comic book style graphics. Of course artists need models, and one of the larger problems for me has been finding good male models from which to paint/draw.

You wouldn’t think that would be a problem in this day and age, accept of course it bumps square into an ongoing and only slightly private investigation of mine I’ve had going on for some time now: using myself as deliberate bait to analyze how the chum-chum stuffers and head fuckers of the internet advertising/government spy folk are using and misusing the abilities of the internet to further their most questionable causes.

As I’ve mentioned in the last couple of weeks I’ve now got a paw down on Zuckerberg’s farm and equally now have a presence among the Bird bunch who only sing a few words at a time, aka, the Tw*tter crew (insert vowel of preference, I usually use an “a”). Where the farm has turned out to be more or less what I expected the bird bunch have shown out as far more predatory than I expected, far more so than anything on the farm. Predatory, and invasive. When I haven’t clicked the “upload” button on a three meg image I created and yet they have an instant copy of that image? My connection is not that fast, they had to be snooping the system indexing functions looking for the last image created in that format to have snagged it in advance. Sloppy work, guys. Hell, it didn’t take Neo, I saw it. Anyway.

The Bird bunch are brain strainers, there’s no doubt of that. Since I’ve been very slow to add any content beyond snippets of poetry as advertisers for the book or this blog their chum-chum stuffers have been throwing the rainbow at me trying to get a handle on what kind of a person I am. I’m not being at all helpful to them, hell no, I heard about the “on hover” event as a trigger for a function call a long, long time ago. Yea, that’s how it works. Hover your mouse pointer over an add and advertise that you’re looking at it. Believe me, they’ll know. Which brings me back to the subject of the beautiful boys from a different tangent.

The Bird bunch tossed a three day run of LGTQ adds at me a few days in, which in my world is to offer an insult demanding a blood apology if that insult is accepted. Just because I’ll write in verse is no reason to make such an assumption, it TOTALLY pissed me off. If (huge little word that one is!) I could connect worl with the parties responsible I’d call it fair justice to saddle up a good quarter horse and run them all about twice around the block with a weed eater in one hand and a big bore magnum in the other. Which is why downloading images of the boys from which to paint is now even more taboo than before. If they’re snooping the index functions then they’ll be trying their dead level best to snoop the download registers that live down in that part of the hard drive Windows tells you to stay out of. No need to add fuel to the fire that’s burning the restraints on my temper. If those should burn through I’ll be saying goodbye and canceling all internet connections.

Beware the Bird bunch. I’m becoming ever more certain they are in their essence quite dishonorable. Gonna be interesting to see if anything changes after posting this. As usual, catch ya’ll later, if I don’t get shot first.

Prologue to a Lady

Coming soon to an eReader near you...
this first volume six stories from
the first forty years of a life without a name.

Sundown Quiet St. Marie is not her given name, of course. None know her true identity. The ladies birth name is not only her greatest secret, it is virtually her only secret, and yet the inner nature of the woman is as great a mystery as any on earth. It is rumored she is high born, daughter of a foreign family of status and impressive means. No one knows what motivates her, what she takes for herself. Many with wealth offer great sums for her services and are denied while others pass through her life and depart ignorant of the value received. She moves through all levels of humanity searching for those she will bring into her sphere for a day or a week or a month, as equally at ease in the world of the simple and sincere as those who proclaim themselves from pinnacles of fame.

One hardly need say she is a consummate actress, wearing personas as other's wear clothing. Some see her a stunning beauty, a goddess come to earth. To others she will appear almost homely, a shy woman home to an inner fire that if ever released consumes all falsehood in its path. Fools will pursue her as the ultimate conquest only to discover she has been naught but the bait in a trap of their own building; gentler, wiser souls will remember her as an angel of the earth or an agent of God's love. Each guise is tailored to the moment, to be retired when unneeded and never worn for another.

To know her is not without risk, hers is a dangerous medicine. Not all survive the inner landscapes of the soul she delights most in traversing. There is no predicting who will be the focus of her strange calling, man or woman, rich or poor, villain or victim. Only one thing can be said of her with certainty. Each and every life she chooses to touch is changed. Many are healed, others brought to justice from within or without. But none are left unchanged. These are but a few of the stories that might be told of her.

Mirror Mirror on the Ball who's the Meanest of them All...

Shnarflephucks. It snuck up on me. It’s f’ing football season again. Drat and dangnations, the first game of the season is here. And it’s here in town. Have no idea who the local boys are playing, usually it’s arranged for the first game or two to be against lesser powers of the gridiron, just a chance for those who play for the major schools to shake out the bugs and get in a good warm up before the first serious challenge shows up.

The funny thing is I really don’t mind the game, not a bad game as such things go. Come the end of the season, when everyone is beat to splinters and it’s heroes and dead men out on the field I’ll even watch a game or two to see the rookies who step up to fill the cleats of the fallen, and pull it off… see the teamwork and the dedication to defending momma’s honor and glory to the triumphant… or bitter… end. Those “on any given Saturday” kind of games where the bookies don’t make any more money than those placing the bets.

I’ll watch a few of those. But what I won’t do is try and live on reflected glory like the idiotic fans. I’ve never done that, never have never will. The days of mandatory pep rallies while incarcerated in the halls of indoctrination (aka, High School) pretty well showed that up for what it’s worth, which is nada. Sorry Mr. Establishment mirror man, no sale.

Lock of Ages

Every now and then I realize just how delicately balanced our world is across the boundaries between this convention or its' opposite other: the pious balance the profane, the prudish balance the libertine, the liberals the conservatives, the cruel balance the kind. Any one of those elements will point at the other as the opposition, the enemy, the prey, and yet by the endurance of the competition it may be deduced each must be protecting the other, must be: it is so easy to see how many different ways any of them might utterly destroy the other, common sense demands the conclusion they secretly safeguard each others well being. After all, without the excesses of the debauched what point of comparison to show up the purity of the pious? Clearly, one defines the other, they are equally dependent on each other for their very existence. It is uncanny how closely the behavior of these collective entities mimics the behavior of the young teenagers just discovering the nuances of gossip and plot. Perhaps in some manner they are of comparable age?

Down on the Farm... Part 1

Being as how I’m contra-social, and equally being possessed of a deep desire to live an ethical life I often find myself in the position of bouncing off things other folks take for granted. For example, the now common “Friend Request” there on Zuckerberg’s farm.

I didn’t put a paw down on the farm to my own intentions, it was the publisher and publicist who thought, demanded actually, that I should have a footprint in the “social media” machine. The entire point of my presence there is to advertise my writings. And that, odd as it might sound to you, is why “friend requests” are a bit of an issue to me.

Ok, you don’t need to watch out for the heat, you don’t need to buy condoms by the case and KY in five gallon buckets to load in the painted pink dildo-tipped grease gun you zip tied to a cordless drill motor turning an off center lead banana for a flywheel ( to use on the really tough cases), but still… when your motive is advertising is it ethical to accept a “friend request” from people you actually know world of real life? The folks who really are your friends? The idea itches, not tickles, and not in good places. Feels a bit to close to prostituting the very idea of friendship to me. But then again, I’m a geezer who has been contra-social longer than most of these good folks have been alive.

Somehow I’m seeing ghost images from a nightmare: a classroom, large display in the front of a room where shows a complex geometric grid representing some N^th dimensional matrix of associations, accompanied of course by several dauntingly simple equations from perhaps advanced calculus, and that droning voice of damnation which is the professor… perhaps marketing, perhaps mathematics or statistics, saying… “The first through third order interstices represent a friend, which is NOT to be confused with any state of emotional bonding between corporeal individuals capable of transmitting burden of life…”

Yea, nightmare. I’m right there with you Leonard (Cohen)… “I’ve seen the future brother, it is murder…” Or worse. Oh, well. There’s always gasoline, gunpowder and whiskey for a safety net.

Of Bottoms… Line, or ripe round and ready…

*gulp* Starting a new job is always a bit nerve wracking. But, that’s where I find myself, starting a second career as a writer. For years and years now I’ve written for a hobby, but if I’m to bring to reality any of several dreams I’ve indulged for that same number of years, things off on the technical rather than artistic side of this all consuming imagination of mine (solar powered air conditioning, residential micro-power grids to make a house run dang near free, all those good old yellow pad – middle of the night coffee shop things banging heads with the guys), well, that’s going to need more coin that what can be scratched from the retirement. The crash of ’08 really did hurt. So… back to work. Believe it or not I’m thinking about finding an old time clock, just so I have something to punch… and cuss. Later gang.

Rough Air Ahead...

Ladies and Gentlemen: Please fasten your seatbelts and secure your tray tables in an upright position… because there’s no way around this particular storm and it is going to get very bumpy before we get clear of it.

Yet another consequence of the Donald appearing on the political scene is a threat to democracy not really seen before. That risk? The consequences, coming and going, of situation specific incompetence in a candidate who is a potential leader of the nation.

I can’t speak to the overt consequences of such incompetence, of course not, I no more than you no more than they have any way to know just what the subject or focus of the incompetence might turn out to be in some real world - live to the world situation where a temper tantrum might unleash the terror of modern warfare.

But what all of us need to cast a thought across is this: no matter how gross it gets it is an  IMMENSE danger to democracy to even think about trying to establish some formal structure to certify political competence as a condition of candidacy. That job MUST remain the sole domain of the voters at the polls.

Gentle reader, such a certifying process as that would be one of the quickest ways possible to finish off the job of gooking out America, totally destroying real democracy and allowing the puppet masters and the Corporate Neo-Fascist to claim the victory over freedom. The last thing in the world we as American’s need is have the already massively suspect loyalties of the education establishment in conjunction with some grouping of the existing political status-quo empowered to play Central Committee (yes, think good old Marxist-Leninist COMMUNISM on that one) in regards as to who is and who is not competent enough to be allowed to run for office. That translates as instant oligarchy and deadly choke point on the democratic process identical to what destroyed the Soviet Union in a matter of only sixty some years.

Don’t do it, America. Don’t even think it. Just vote against what you know CAN’T do the job, and reform and rework your primary processes to pick better candidates in the future.

Observations and Field Work …

I haven’t posted anything here of late, but no, I’m not dead and I’m not in a coma. Just busy, and working at (emotional) load limit in several directions. Bouncing deep into the overloads on intellect and perception as well, but for the first time in a quarter century it’s the emotional that hit limit first.

This fine work of womanhood
is totally how I envision
Ms. Catherine Omega Winterwalk
in the story "The Care and Feeding
of Unicorns"

The redhead on the left is of course Ms. CC Donahue
from the tale "Rules of Engagement", and the brunette
lass on the right does full justice to Ms. Lisa Ranik,
a crossover character between the two stories. 

Been writing a lot on what started out as a story that rapidly turned into a book, ‘The Care and Feeding of Unicorns’, the synthesis of the emotional content of the Omega affair of a few years back. To full tell that tale has put me into places I had yet to go in my quest to know myself well enough that no one can take advantage of me by knowing me better than I know myself. Seen some deep introspection these past weeks, I’ve got several contract crews working in Escherville. Some of ‘em are using dynamite, and Blackwater Security got nothing on my battalion of mercenaries protecting them while they work.  

With that underway I’ve also been watching the current political circus as the momentum of the last fifty years is in the process of running headlong into the walls of reality. The dis-quality of the major players is shredding the camouflage and covers of so many low level collective entities it’s really not funny. It’s like seeing Wall Street and Madison Avenue stripped nude to naked and not knowing their clothes went away, watching them walk around buck nekid still doing business like the tailor who sewed the Emperor’s new clothes had taken them on for customers. Yea, there’s a few who aren’t that bad to look at, but damn… denim and sackcloth would do wonders for the rest of ‘em.

Side note: I’m planning to vote Libertarian this cycle. A third party president couldn’t be any more of a threat to the national welfare than what’s top of the ticket on the other two. The same constitutional checks and balances are in play, and a third party potus would of necessity have to be a consummate negotiator to get anything done, to negotiate from a position solid enough to make anything happen would require recruiting the people themselves to the cause, ergo, that potus’ best option would be to be as transparent an administration as possible and recruit the best of the other two sides into their cabinet.

The other two parties, divided and all but disgraced by what split them, would be unable to hide their partisan bullshit and old boy/girl corporate commitments in the face of a potus not part of their machine who could and should reprise the old FDR fireside chats of years gone by to give the American People his side of the story set in a political soap opera waaaay to steamy hot for Brazilian TV. All they show is sex while the perversions where the political meets the corporate make a thirty head Viagra saturated pansexual orgy on an indoor kindergarten playground look totally tame by comparison. All that might require by way of clean up would be soap and a garden hose running warm water, maybe a supply of ice packs and some anesthetic hemorrhoid medicines for those the victim of bad aim or overly enthusiastic.

Sheeesh… sorry about that. Didn’t really mean to load you up quite that heavy. Anyway, no reason potus can’t put a paw down on Zuckerberg’s farm* just like the rest of the world. *(aka facebook… seems I remember the farmer who owned the farm whence was set the cute little kids’ story about Charlotte’s Web shared a name with the facebook founder).

THINK about who you’re gonna vote for… this one may wind up in the history books like the fight between Augustus Caesar and Mark Antony did. All serious folks, this one will mark history even more than electing President Obama did. 

Other things are in the works as well, but for now they’re not ready for prime time, so… I share back to the internet universe a couple of pictures found there, and take it back to the other machine that does not get connected to the devil wire to go back to work.

Catch ya'll later...

That... would be me on the right...

The Honorable Woman...

Bumped forward from January 2012 

because where the Spitfire below 

was a pretty thing Leia was prettier...

***   ***   ***

I've mentioned her before, Leia, the dreamweaver who stepped up to take the throne when my muse Alex retired.  She's incredibly skilled at that art, when Leia dials it on the weathermen know it sight unseen, the jet stream changes directions.  One afternoon, well, afternoon for us, early morning for her, she did just that, she dialed it on and it was hot.  I mean hot.  I don't mean warm, or sultry, or provocative, it was that scorching melt things blue-white hot only the wholesome can fully achieve.  It was the kind of thing a woman offers her man when he's the one she'll trust when she knows she'll be beyond rational thought, utterly consumed by passion, or pain, the kind of thing to motivate a man to cut his way across hell and back to fetch her dill pickles and chocolate ice cream if that's what's needed.  It was just way hot.  Of course that wasn't the only time she'd done it, but that time sticks in my mind because of what she said when that segment of her show was over, something she obviously understood that I'm coming to understand that not all women do understand. 

As the chorus of wows and oh-my-god's and sundry such exclamations of delight from her audience began to wind down I added my compliment to the roll, words to the effect of "sweetheart, that was awesome, but don't ever do that for a man live and in person unless you plan to keep him for a lifetime."  She smiled, her wise woman smile, the one that really is so very warm, and with a wink and a twinkle in her eye replied "nos, I'm not fifteen."

No beautiful woman, you're not fifteen.  But if you at the age of fifteen understood the unspoken thought you were indeed a prodigy of feminine wisdom, and judging by what I've seen in the world at large since then it is a wisdom apparently a great many of your sisters need to understand. 

Leia is full dreamweaver, it is her art to paint a dream using the psychology of her audience as her palette.  As such of course she understands the full power of the erotic persona, the power the feminine allure has in the life of a man.  Equally of course she'd have to understand the resentment a man will feel if that power is over used, she'd almost have to understand how deeply a man's life is actually diminished if he must defend himself against that power being mis-used beyond its' proper domain, how that power mis-used is actually the source of a great deal of the misogyny in our world. 

Leia understood that, I'd say pretty much all of her sisters-in-seduction worthy of mentioning in the same context with her gave evidence they understood it to one degree or another.  But apparently this is not a widely understood thing among all women.  The longer I look the more consequences I'm beginning to lay to the feet of that ignorance.  Interestingly, those who seem to actually understand it the least are those you'd think would be most likely to have a grip on that thought: the fashion industry, the feminists, the women's advocates of one form or another.  

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and work from the assumption it is ignorance, because to assume they behave as they do with that understanding in place would be to say they act with malice towards men, deliberately exploiting their own femininity to maintain a status quo of unhappiness and conflict for the sake of a profit motive, or worse, the motive of justifying a life based on bigotry and prejudice.  For their sake I'm going to assume it's ignorance and not evil.

YouTube Blues…

Yea, I’m gonna ramble tonight… got absolutely nothing better to do than listen to music and break in a new keyboard. 

Thinking about the Problem…

Back in the days when I did useful work for a living, aka, shift supervisor in a pocket size little chemical batch plant, there was a situation that took several days, the better part of a week, to resolve. One of our distillation systems was misbehaving in a most novel manner. Damn thing simply refused to run, and no one including yours truly could figure out why. It was a head scratching cuss and discuss kind of problem, way off the book and nowhere in the history or the horror stories.

After a couple of days, when all the conventional things had been tested and dismissed as the driving cause, the situation came to a standstill. As the production line emptied out downstream of the bottleneck we all just shook our heads and, each to our own best guess, started thinking outside the box. What MIGHT make the system behave like that? It had to be something, and the general consensus was we were not on the bad side of any witches powerful enough to tinker with the laws of physics.

After a twelve hour shift where the situation had not changed in the least the operator in charge of the system wrote in her logbook “thinking about the problem.” Everyone chuckled, and no one said anything formal, she’d told the absolute truth. That was the function of the operator logbooks, to pass those critical tidbits of information shift to shift so that even if things were not running smoothly the oncoming operator had a good handle on the system status, what had been tried and to what results. The logs eliminated a lot of duplicated effort and made it easier to know what remained to be tried to get things back on track. The operator logs were a most useful thing, an evolved system and convention that shy of gross neglect or mass calamity were off limits to management critique. They were the operator’s logs, we had our own.

That distillation system was not a simple thing, but it was nowhere near, not even close, to being as complex as any social system, which brings me to the point of this post.

The social system which is the United States of America is not running right, not at all, and as far as I can see no one has enough of a workable handle on the ultimate why to attempt a repair. Needless to say, I’ve been thinking about the problem. You can call this my log entry on the subject.

The Migration…

A small factoid crossed my path today, one I haven’t validated but have no reason to challenge. I heard that Oklahoma City now has a higher per capita concentration of gays and lesbians than San Francisco. That sounded pretty strange to me, didn’t make much sense at all. Why would that have happened? You’d think the LGBT folk would migrate to where they were more accepted. OKC and the local redneck regimes just really are not all that enlightened and tolerant. Why would the LGBT folk stay in, or migrate to, where they’re really, really not wanted?

 Took a bit, but only a bit, to figure out a plausible reason.  Now, the reason I came to could get me seriously flamed by the above mentioned segments of society, kind of doubt they’d want to admit to it, but still it does make sense. Let me dare the dragon here and set down the foundation of my thought.

The Cat Gas* Conundrum

Something dawned on me today, one of those “how in the HELL did I overlook this one for so long?” kind of things.

I’ve been suspicious running into convinced for quite a few years now that a high percentage of political “advertising” is actually going to the American people in the form of subliminal inserts within other programming. Subliminal advertising really isn’t all that good for influencing a matter of thought, a matter of intellect, but it is well proven as a magnificent technique to influence matters emotional.  Hang a binding emotional hook on ten percent of a population and you own that country by way of the ballot box.

But where, what medium would be the most effective place to put such “advertisement” as it would be called? Every major media outlet would present major problems to such a campaign.  It could be done, but with major risk of exposure and with exposure total backlash against the client.  Where could it be done with a good exposure rate and minimal chances of the campaign being revealed for what it was?

Hello America...

If you can’t support 

Bernie Sanders

for President...

And make one last ditch desperation

attempt to fix the problems...

then please support

Donald Trump...

So we can fire it up in the driveway,

throw a brick on the gas pedal

and walk away planning on 

starting in on the rebuild

after lunch.

Crazy Clown Politics OR Dive Six over the top…

Oh yea, I hear the scream of the Dauntless dive bombers flying off the Big E standing on the dive brakes avenging their brothers from Torpedo Eight to win the Battle of Midway… I hear the pounding hooves of the Rohirim and the horns of Rohan echoing against the walls of Minas Tirith at the break of day, the terrible music of their battle fury unleashed against the orcs of Sauron… I hear, ah, what the hell. You get the picture.

What got leaked this time just may turn the tide against the Corporate Neo-Fascist. Go boys go, and if there's anything I can do to help just give a shout. Be an honor and a privilege to ride in your company.  

There is no road walked...

...that doesn't leave it's mark on us, body and soul.  It is easy to fall into if, and if only. If only I had, or if only they hadn't I'd be so much happier now. Beware such thoughts indulged for more than a passing glance, for they can only invite bitterness and regret into a life.  No one can reconstruct their life as a simulation to know such things with certainty.  Such simulations are beyond the scope of mortals, and where God could most likely take a real good guess even he would still be guessing to a degree so long as his children have the free will to choose the roads they'll travel.  If and if only are dangerous, they have a backbite and leave an aftertaste.

Gypsy Locket...

I met her in a locket an old crone gave to me

for helping get her little cat safely down a tree.

It must have been near six weeks before I looked to see

just what was in the bauble I earned by skinning knees.

I tripped the catch, drew a gasp, my heart lit like a flair

I knew I'd seen her somewhere, but tell me lord, just where? 

You wouldn’t think a man could lose a face like that to air.

It came the wonder owned my days, by night it was my care,

the image changed with every glance, simply quite unfair

the way she'd hold me with her eyes, pin me with that stare

demanding I should find her home and take her locket there.

It drove me mad, I swear it did, I drank and schemed and hid

yet every hour on the hour I had to flip that lid.

Soon enough I figured out it had to be a curse,

maybe she’s a voodoo queen,

or maybe something worse,

there simply is no telling what’s to find

hid in an old maid’s purse.

So back across the road I went a bit the worse for wear,

looking like a hobo child who’d never combed his hair

and sure enough there she was waiting in her chair.

I handed her the locket, said ma’am just what is this?

Ever since I opened it my life's gone all amiss.

She took it up by the chain, her eyes went very soft

as if she was about to cry for something she had lost.

"Lad," she said "now seven times I've give this to a man

and every one has brought it back to set it in my hand.

Every one has said the same, said it took his head,

said it clouded all his thoughts, put trouble in his bed.

"I do not know how or why this locket has been cursed

always coming back to me the man turned for the worse

unless it was the gypsy man who crafted it for me

way back in the great world war of nineteen forty three.

"You see my love was shipping out, off for France he said

and I was total terrified that he’d come home quite dead.

The gypsy seemed to understand, said he'd use his best

spell of love to strengthen hearts then leave to God the rest

of what was to become of us to meet the mortal test.

"But fate conspired against me, they left by dark of night,

I didn't get to give my man love's token trinket bright

and now it seems I can't be free of gypsy magic's might

a kindly man installed in this to calm a poor girls' fright."

Twas just single moment, a flickering blink I'm sure

I saw her as she'd been back then, a sparkle of a girl

fertile as the fruited grove, a heart so hot and pure

to burn beneath a locket's lid these many years of world.

I took the locket from her hand, kissed a wrinkled brow

and all the years whirling blew into the mist somehow,

when the world leveled out she is as she is now.

And so I say to you my friend don't trust what's to be seen,

date her by appearance, proud breasted panther lean

moving like a dancing breeze across a rainbow sheen

She's ninety years of life and love…

                                    … inside those skin tight jeans.

*
*
*
For Charlie

It is a custom of my clan…

I don’t have a clan, not really, but if I did it would be a custom of that clan to be clean shaven in the springtime and only cut your hair in mourning.  Since my clan is imaginary I suppose I’m not really lying to anyone if I tell them that, right? 

Not like I really give a damn, it can’t be of much importance to anyone but me.  But I’ve found it a useful thing for myself to make it a point to greet the new spring with a naked face.  Somehow it feels like shedding all the hibernation dreams of winter and returning to reality.  At least for a little while, you have to do it for a little while, at least until you’ve used up last year’s razor blades.

Not that I’m all that fond of reality, I’m really not.  All an excessive focus on reality  generally does is make life boring if not depressing.  Reality is really all the justification needed for the time spent in fantasy, were it not for fantasy reality would be such a terribly mundane prison.  

If I had a clan it would most definitely be a custom of that clan for the men folk and the women folk to maintain a very deliberate separation and distance between each other on some subjects, enough of a veil between the genders that each might portray a focus of fascination to the other, a bridge and a portal between reality and fantasy as it were so that neither state ever achieve such dominance as to damage a life.  For that to work there simply has to be a bit of mystery in the mix.  Thank you for that understanding Ms. Alex, wise sweet woman thank you so very much. 

If I had a clan it would be a custom of that clan to every evening tell each other the most outrageously unbelievable lies possible to concoct from the deeds of the day so that entertainment would never become the domain of some isolated oligarchy of the unreal. Hollywood can’t begin to compete with the comedy value found in ordinary people trying to concoct a bullshit lie outrageous enough to compel their fellows to grin and call it for what it is. Egalitarian entertainment don’t you know, entertainment of the people by the people and for the people.   

If I had a clan… but I don’t.  But if I did somehow I suspect I’d find out Sam Clemens was a senior member of that clan and knew what he was talking about with the whole magnificent source thing.  It has to begin somewhere, and anyway

Sam and I are kindred souls

We see the world the same

And I like he am known to call

“GO SLOW, IT IS MARK TWAIN!”

The Palantir Gambit...

“… fed the despair of his heart until it overthrew his mind.”* 

So spoke Gandalf the White concerning the death of Denethor, Steward of Gondor. Desperate for tactical intelligence on the actions of Sauron the great enemy Denethor  had dared the palantir of Minis Anor, one of the seven seeing-stones of the King, and exposed himself to the thought of the dark lord who had possession of the palantir taken with the fall of Minis Ithil. 

Finding Denethor to great to be subdued immediately the dark lord more than allowed him he aided him in seeing the armies of Mordor mustering against his realm, allowed him the tactical advantage of this knowing that in time his strategy would prevail. Sauron’s dark perception proved accurate, in the most critical hour the deceptions of understanding Sauron had seeded bore foul fruit.  The ruler and defacto king of Sauron’s greatest enemy was stricken to suicidal madness by the sight of the very fleet bearing the rightful King returning to his aid leading not one but two armies to the defense of the city: one living and one dead.

The suicide of Denethor at the height of the battle is just one of many, many scenes of high drama found in *JRR Tolkien’s masterwork “The Lord of the Rings” involving the wizard Gandalf.  Gandalf Istari revealed in the appendixes as the Mia of Yavanna, a spirit from the same order of creation as Sauron and most likely Sauron’s elder.  Gandalf the Gray resurrected into Gandalf the White, Tolkien’s faith made flesh.

More than simply high drama the tale of Denethor’s fate is as fine an example as I could find of one of the most critical dangers facing the modern world.  The palantir were  plot creations of a masterpiece of fiction but the functionality of the palantir are in this day and age of the sun all but ubiquitous.  You don’t have to be a King to own a smart phone that will show you the world as it is… or as it was... or as it might be. 

The question is of course are you, oh loyal sprinverizoatt subscriber and faithful pilgrim to the Temples of Google wise enough to understand that which you see?  Are you wise enough to understand that the forces of despair and corruption are in possession of just as many of those things as you are?  Are you perceptive enough to understand that the absolutely most effective lies are crafted from an absolutely accurate palette of facts?  Are you?

A prime example from this age of the sun of how such lies are worked concerns another wizard found in a masterwork of fiction, the modern wizard Albus Dumbledore who is headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seen in the tales of Harry Potter.  

In what would appear (to a totally trivial surface investigation) to have been simply a comment answering a simple question posed in casual conversation on the social media site twatter  Dumbledore’s creator JK Rowling said she’d always thought of Albus as gay.  Ok, you wrote him, if you say so then that’s how it is.  Gandalf is a Mia, Dumbledore is gay.   Matters of trivial fact quite unrelated to the tales as told.

What is equally a matter of fact but hardly trivial is how JK assigning to her magnificent and noble character Dumbledore the humanizing affliction of psychiatric sterility has allowed the modern forces of despair and corruption to mount a campaign of truly Sauron subtle lies: the lie that any life supporting emotional intimacy between two males, men, must of necessity have shit on a dick in its’ history; the lie that sterility is a consequence of nobility, or worse that such sterility is the initiating event of nobility; the lie that those aspiring to such nobility should adopt psychologically initiated sterility as a prerequisite to achieving their ambition.  Sauron, known in the second age of the sun as Sauron the Deceiver by reason of his corruption-to-destruction of the kingdom of Numenor would fully appreciate their campaign, it is a weapon of exactly the same sort he used with great skill to the detriment of all the free peoples on many more than one occasion.

Of course, stick your tongue in your cheek and squint your left eye and it isn’t hard to see how JK Rowling might..  right… might maybe coulda’ been… employing a bit of subtle thought in her own right to protect her kingdom.  By declaring Albus Dumbledore as gay she damn sure sealed off any possibility of her vision of Harry’s world getting diluted by fan fiction detailing the exploits of Dumbledore’s children in their efforts against the deatheaters and the Dark Lord of their realm, the consummately evil and patricidal black wizard Voldemort.

Operational Occupational Happiness…

with a tip 'o the lid to the Beagle on the roof...

“You don’t want it to look like you did it yourself,” is what the lady said, speaking on the subject of the cover art that will be a potential readers first impression of a work.  I understood her point before she made it, of course.  Amateur effort in a professional environment rarely fares well.  But still, what she said itched and in places that had nothing to do with formally publishing a story.  After a week or two of communing with the itch the truth behind the event oh so slowly made itself known.

“You don’t want it to look like you did it yourself.”  Like you did it yourself.  Why is that a bad thing?  What if I myself graduated cum laude from some prestigious university with a degree in the very subject at hand?  Is it ok for me to do it myself  then?  Or is this a more complicated issue than just a matter of competence?  I’m not sure, I’m really not.

What I have come to be very certain of though is this:  the only real satisfaction I’ve ever known has come from doing it myself.  It is such total bullshit to buy something and then try and feel it as your own.  You know you didn’t build it, paint it, write it, you know all you did was buy it like some horny sailor buying a piece of ass because a forty eight hour liberty in a strange city just isn’t enough time to actually find yourself a lover.  The self deception of trying to feel something you bought as being your own just sets a sour aftertaste on the whole subject.

Continuing on with the subject of Happiness Defined? If Happiness sailed as a fleet one of the battlewagons broadside to the foe is an unshakeable belief backed up by rational self assessment that what you did today was better than what you did yesterday and that tomorrow will be better still.  Doing it yourself, no matter what it is you’re doing,  is the only way you can have such a faith.  Of all things Happiness is a Do It Yourself operation.  No one else can do it for you, you can’t buy it out of the box and bolt it up and expect it to run.  In total contradiction of the damned by any decent God operatives of the advertising industry it just doesn’t work that way.  Sorry guys, the first pile of bullshit I’m not buying is that Happiness is a saleable commodity. It’s not.  You have to do it  yourself. 

Have I ever built myself a case of Happiness?  Almost but not quite, and getting closer everyday.  It’s the getting closer part that feels good.