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.