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.