A Bedtime Story...

That’s how the name began, as a bedtime story I made up on the fly for a little boy who really wasn’t all that keen on the idea of sleep.  The story of the crackerbush, that is, a mysterious magical thing that only grows right at the very edge of dreamland.  To find the crackerbush is a quest only the very young may attempt, it is beyond the reach of those older and less innocent.  To find the crackerbush is to understand how to keep the happiness of the very young for ever and ever, it is a high prize indeed.  There are a few who did find the crackerbush when they were young, you’ll see them from time to time among the grandma’s and grandpa’s, those who glow oh so slightly when you look at them out of the corner of your eye.

A year and some later the name got recycled, just because it really is kind of a neat name, just because being a thing from a bedtime story it implies dreams, and a dream is what it now represents.  The Crackerbush Community is the dream of a friend of mine, the hope of restoring the American dream as it began to those for whom the dream has most often been betrayed, those who survive into adulthood from the foster care system.  In the last few days I’ve been entertaining her dream, and the longer I consider it the more worthy a dream I find it to be. 

Save the Changes?

From the days of learning to use the editing software...
thanks guys, whoever you were/are, for the images that fit so well

It’s turned into Sunday again.  It kind of snuck up on me this time, somehow it seems like arrived a day or two early.  Oh well, they tell me such things are just part of getting old, time starting to go plastic in some regards, and crystallizing hard as steel in others.  No biggy, just a change.  But, fact is it’s Sunday again, and in my traditions Sunday is the Sabbath, the day to reflect and consider and talk to God if those reflections generate a thought worth a conversation.

Everyone who’s ever used a computer to write a letter has seen it, the little pop box that comes up when you’re ready to quit:  “Do you Want to Save Changes Y/N”.  Most generally everyone says yes without really thinking about it.  In the context of computers the worst this generally does is load up hard drives with a bit of drizzle that really doesn't take that much room, on a modern machine a human typing 16 hours a day can’t really make a dent (working with nothing but formatted text) in the storage capacity of the drive.  Eh, no biggy then.

That habit is no biggy in the context of a computer, but I’m gonna say it’s more than a biggy in world of real life, way more than a biggy, it’s freaking huge.  To live is to change, and each change produces a new state of life, state of being, but are all changes a good thing?  Of course not.  Some cause what is just downright dreadful.  So how is it that so many will let ego cause them to save all their changes, even those that produced something atrocious?  How many will defend having saved the atrocious even to the extent of allowing the atrocious to remain in play and in power for the sake of foregoing the experience of admitting a mistake? 

Take a good look around, take a good look inside.  How many things can you find in ten minutes that when examined with the wisdom of hindsight turned out to be a change that really should not have been saved, something that should have run for a bit and then, when fully understood, have been discarded to return to the original point of departure and pick a different direction?   Give that a bit of thought, and then if you will contemplate the full mercy found in the words renounce, and repent...

Just a short little sermon, it is Sunday after all.

Go ask your Mother...

I don’t think my son really likes fireworks.  Somehow I think he inherited some memories from his grandfather, and somehow I think fireworks and flak were a bit to close for comfort for his grandfather.  For the last couple of years he’s taken a most British attitude on the Fourth of July, the American holiday called “Independence Day”.  He’s taken to referring to it as “treason and sedition” day, accurate to the perspective, but not exactly a popular sentiment where we live.  But that’s not what I wanted to write about, just a tidbit to the times.

retitled "Dark Mother"
in honor of Sig... painted Dec. 2013...
not sure what to do about that
prescient paintbrush of  mine.

No, the thought that has the stage this morning is a consequence of a new acquaintance here in the pixel forest, a young woman from about as far around the globe of perspectives as it is possible to get compared to me, and yet to all indications a good woman of strength and compassion.  She is Hindu, reveres the Goddess Kali, practices astrology with the finesse of one for whom the stars simply set a comfortable framework around her perception, has to her credit an impressive grasp of customs and beliefs not native to her own.  As is my custom here I’ll never name her, but rather give her an alias appropriate to her place in my perception.  In my writings she’ll be identified as Sig, short for Sigrdrifa the Valkyrie.

As you might expect since Sig reveres the high Goddess she champions the feminine, faces the world very much from the feminist modes of thought.  Given the woman she is that is quite appropriate, very understandable, and in truth of great value.  Those who’ve followed my ramblings know that I support the feminist cause as an ally rather than an inductee, to restore the feminine to her proper place is to equally restore the even more subtly damaged masculine forms of thought, for in all truth the repressed in many ways suffer less damage to their selves  than do the repressors when the situation is examined objectively from beyond the consequences of the scenario.  We share the objective of restoring the genders into a state of true and compassionate balance, the balance so desperately needed if the whole of Humanity is to survive the challenges of a planet now full and loaded to the limits of what it can be asked to support.

The thought of today is drawn from the perspective of balance as that balance is measured in matters spiritual.  I’ve never seen (not to say it doesn’t exist, just that I’ve never seen it) an accounting, a worldwide census, of the respective numbers of those who revere a masculine deity, a God, and those who revere a feminine deity, a Goddess.  In that for many if not most humans the form they recognize the Divine is a subtle but powerful influence on the attitudes they carry, and through their attitudes an influence on their decisions, I should think it a valuable tidbit of knowledge to have particularly when approaching the study of the societies of mankind, the economic and the political.  There are some things where the masculine is the better approach, in others the feminine, that balance is intuitive in a good family and the Human Family is in desperate need of such wisdom just about now.

I have no real idea how to go about effectively assessing such a measurement, but as time runs on I’m going to hold this thought active in the margins, add it to the parameters of evaluation when looking at the news of the world, perhaps something will turn up.

The Cannon and the Lady

From the Dreamweaver archives…an exploration…
originally posted June 5, 2011

They were just snapshots, really, the first few were, taken with a good camera but still more snapshots than anything… maybe with just tiny touch of naughty to them, the playful kind of getting away with it in public since the only person who saw anything was this very old man who'd been staring anyway, the one who got a bit of a laugh for the expression on his face after he'd blinked twice and got his eyes uncrossed only to discover what he thought he'd seen wasn't to be seen anymore. You know, the kind of pictures a couple of high spirited girls bring home from a holiday by the sea. I glanced over the first few, and smiled, my friends were having fun.

The setting for this good humored mischief was a place I'm sure had seen its' share of drama over the centuries, most fortresses have. There were stone battlements, and a huge cannon pointed out to sea, a monster of its kind. Just from looking I'd say in the ratings of the day at least a forty pounder, a big, big gun. Early on they'd been climbing on the cannon, playing on it, but later in the set the tone of the pictures changed as the girls went to work to say something serious. They sparked a thought in me, they are way good at doing that, a deep thought having to do with the nature of the world we live in, a possible answer for that hardest of questions… why?

Sitting in...

Sitting in: to observe what you’re not really a part of, to play with a band not your own.  A lot of things are sitting in when you get right down to it, in the most technical sense of the thing a whole lot of modern entertainments qualify.  I listened to a radio show this morning hosted by two ladies who, it would seem, are members of slightly different facets of the Native American pagan community speaking out to others whose beliefs don’t descend from the tent of Abraham.  The content of their talk covered a variety of subjects where there might be common ground between them.  The soon to arrive solstice commonly marks a time for celebrations and rituals in many belief structures, it seemed an appropriate time to sit in as it were and hear what they had to say. 

Just for references sake, I am an ex-patriot Mormon who does not really subscribe to any of the formalized belief structures but rather simply acknowledge that there is a consciousness beyond that known to the humans.  I am, in simplest terms, simply a deist. There is an entity known to humanity through the ages as God, a self aware immortal thought force that intersects with our reality as a single omniscient and consummately benign being to whom I offer my allegiance in the common cause of survival as self.  Since this entity abides in realms beyond the limitations I perceive concerning my own thought and perception it then follows there is a valid possibility for a progression of other points of that thought force structured in varying degrees of complexity and motive which may well exist in part or in total beyond the limits of my direct perception. For me matters of a spiritual nature resolve to an ever more delicate quest to determine an answer to a most simple, and in that simplicity exceedingly deep, question: could this be true?

There is no doubt in my mind that whatever might be revealed concerning the literal and absolute truth of what exists in the realms of the spirit it is a true statement that humanity uses the thought of the spiritual as a screen against which it projects its’ perceptions of itself.  The personalities seen in the interactions of the various Gods and Goddesses one with another, one or the other with the humans, the totems and talismans, the rituals and the ceremonies, all of these things are clearly of human construction.  They are, to borrow a concept from Dr. Asimov’s awesome work of imagination The Foundation Trilogy, variables defined within the algebra of humanity  that mankind uses trying to reduce the equation of self  into some meaningful and useful form.  I am not belittling these efforts, far from it.  Each system is a branching of mankind’s efforts to understand, the history of the peoples and cultures who embrace each such effort a test platform for discerning any truth carried within that structure, for as it is said several places in the Bible: “By their fruit you will know them...”

No matter the (meta)physics involved there is a primal polarity involved with all changes to a life, and for my purposes that is by far the more critical understanding.  Regardless of the mechanisms involved all things show the ethical polarity of motive.  Yes, I did, I just paired the word ethics from the humanities with the word polarity from the sciences.  Sue me, it’s a valid concept the ladies also touched on in a most interesting, and actually rather optimistic, manner. 

Their approach to the thought involved the Native American meaning to the word “medicine.”  To the world of science medicine is an external thing brought to bear against some affliction, some disease, while if I understood correctly (no promises, just best effort) to the Native American traditions the word “medicine” also includes influencing internal perceptions, attitudes, designed to effect the psychology of the soul.  The concept is fully valid, science is documenting ever more evidence that the deep levels of psychology, the deep levels of conflict induced stress do indeed play major to massive roles in the overall health of an individual.  Most likely the Medicine Man of the old ways actually understood this before the Medicine Man of the modern had a clue.  Modern medicine is very powerful, and yet the medicine of the old ways has the potential for it to be needed far less often than is commonly seen. 

What the ladies said concerning “medicine” is that it will impact health for seven generations.  This factoid of their beliefs caught my ear, for I’d always associated the number seven to the generations, to be specific I’d (mis)remembered the Bible verses concerning the sins of the father would reach out even to seven generations.  But no, when I looked up the verses they all said four generations.  I find it a strange coincidence that my error equaled their belief.  That “medicine” in their sense has a seven generation range while the sins that most likely gave rise to the need for such medicine are reported as only impacting four?  Hmmm.... an interesting difference, that one is.  It implies that at the deepest levels the wholesome will out endure the profane, and I find that a fine thought indeed.

Sister...

GET YOUR THUMB OUTA THE WAY OF THAT SLIDE!!!

Filler out of the can...

The Test Question:

As thoroughly as possible, explain Hume's argument for being skeptical of the idea that all good humans or dogs for that matter go to Heaven. In expressing this argument of Hume's, you will need to explain his philosophical perspective with respect to human knowledge and understanding as clearly and completely as you can. (Hint*, if you think you can do this well without explaining how Hume thinks of causality then you are the only one between us who thinks you can). Provide examples from the text and be sure to express what you think are the strengths and weaknesses of his argument(s).

To speak to the subject of “going to Heaven” from the perspective of David Hume’s philosophy is, in my opinion, to sacrifice the ultimately human qualities of hope and dignity on the alter of a logic which places no value on either, an ironic and futile sacrifice of the very sort the consummately skeptical Hume would likely point to as solid reason to not build alters of any sort.  Be that as it may, the toxic task at hand is to explain Hume’s philosophy while using it to construct an argument he might have used to introduce the greatest possible degree of doubt into anyone holding a belief in a post mortem awareness spent in a state of consummate peace and satisfaction, what is commonly called Heaven, as reward for the effort of a mortal life lived to any code of ethics more demanding than the approval of one’s fellows concerning some expediency of the moment.

To approach explaining Hume’s skepticism concerning any human going to heaven, or even the existence of heaven and all thought associated, one must first frame in an understanding of how the boundaries and limitations Hume enforced on his own thought, the often rigid and mechanistic logic by which he defined human existence, would impact on such concepts.

Distracted...

Just in case you're like me, and really want a why to go with the what.  When you need a reason for something that reason doesn't need to be something real as long as it is something that makes it worth doing.

The Coldest Master of them all...

I am a capitalist, and yet I offer you this thought concerning wealth: wealth is a dangerous ambition, for wealth is a predator that all but destroys all who embrace it as their life’s desire... understand the true nature of wealth and you will understand the motives of those who have most repressed and misused humanity across the eons.  Wealth does not free anyone, not really, for wealth is a concept based on the deepest of insecurities.  To have surplus resources is to have security, and in security the freedom to look beyond the superficial, but that is not wealth.  Wealth is a master hard and cold and conniving, heartless and cruel, wealth is the comparison of one person as of greater worth than another measured against the narrowest of standards.  Wealth thrives not on creating the surplus resources that enable freedom but rather by rationing who has access to any resources at all, a barter system where the most primal elements of the common humanity are the expendable elements of commerce.  Be wary of wealth and guard well your soul, for nothing, not nation nor race, not religion nor culture nor gender will protect anyone from the consequences of the attitudes and ambitions that wealth demands of those it takes for its’ own.

In the Shadow of Mata Hari =or= A Very Ugly Suspicion

A few years ago I wrote a post called The Ghosts of Gomorrah that spoke of the “perversion in uniform” revealed by the Abu Graib incident during the occupation of Iraq.  I fell into conversation with a couple of kids the other day (well, not really kids, just folks a lot younger than myself) who put that thought back on the horizon from a different perspective, a different line of approach, but still, the same thought I’ve never felt quite full completed.

I’ve said it several times before, I’m gonna say it again:  only an idiot assumes the buoyancy of perversion in the ocean of humanity is the same as the buoyancy of ice floating in salt water.  Some things simply do not float at the surface, they find a common density well below the surface and are never seen unless some unusual force causes an upwelling, a shift in the relative densities.  When you synchronize the analogies war tends to stir the deep waters of humanity to reveal a great deal, some things noble, other things not.  I’m thinking it quite likely the Abu Graib incident was a temporary shift that may well have revealed something that normally rides the inversion layer 300 fathoms down as it were.

Sanctuary sanctorum...

They’ve been part of the human legend for a long time now, and if they’ve been part of so many different people’s legends then it’s fairly likely some elements of those legends are truly part of the human condition.  I’m talking about those with the strange abilities... the psychics, the prescient, the empowered and the aware.  All the things of the mind that defy a full explanation in trial by causal logic, and yet equally defy a full acquital and dismissal by the same court.  The mysteries as they’re called.  My thought today has to do with the life experience of those who are the source of those legends, they who superlatively sane or shattered soul crazy must live with such  perceptions as part of their life.   A couple of posts back I was speaking of my favorite character in the Matrix movies, The Oracle.  I suppose I’m still wandering a bit in that thought, trying to fit my version of reality into some perspective to allow me, limited to five senses and an imagination, to actually have some idea of what it would be like to live with six senses, or seven, or perhaps so many they just blend beyond counting. 

What would it be like to try and grow up with such things part of your world? To be all of two and a half the first time you perceived your parents having sex, not with your eyes or your ears, but with some sense that echoed both momma and daddies’ physical responses through your body?  It didn’t really hurt, but, then maybe it did?  There ya’ go Siggy, why don’t you and L. Ron  work out the dynamic on that one.  Come on Jung, step up to the plate, don’t let them sex maniac perverts beat your time, why don’t you tell us how far back you’re supposed to pull after the time when you were almost four and riding in the grocery cart hoping for lots of tasty little fruity things in the big colorful box when you looked across at the momma type looking the other way and her fear of what the daddy type does to her at night hits so hard you piss your pants for the first time in two months? Try and imagine being a little child the first time you’d perceive such things.  Try and imagine how hard it would be to deal with such things when you’d have such a small amount of understanding compared to such a huge amount of raw data.  It’s totally intimidating, really.

But at least you got an early start on understanding, that might be easier in some regards than say getting to be twelve like any other twelve year old kid and then finding out that hey, not only is there this brand new thing called the hornies, but every time they show up the whole fucking sky might as well be paisley pop tarts because dammit, you saw it there and then just three days later there it was on the ground for real and it’s happening more and more and it’s always three days, never two, never four, always three... soon enough you’d be going no, I don’t want to know that, or that either, and would you stupid fuckers please be careful before... nope, to late.  Likely enough soon enough you’re hiding in anything and everything you can find that has half a chance of shutting down the damn ticker tape in your head because when the ticker tape has been running for to long then really strange shit starts happening and the other folks are starting to notice it only happens like that when you’re around?   How long before you’re literally blowing in the wind rather than be in any one place long enough to cause someone harm?

No, I don’t think being one of those whose life crosses up with the mysteries would be all that enjoyable, not after ten, twenty, forty years blowing in the wind before you feel yourself being called into some odd place and she has such strange eyes and fuck, you can’t feel her at all, not even a smidgeon, hell, while she’s looking at you everything goes silent, and she smiles at you so soft and tender and that smile is suddenly the most terrifying thing of them all because it’s then you hear the winds of limbo in your soul ripping at what’s left of your sanity and you know, you know that of all the people you’ve ever met she’s the one who knows what she’s looking at.  Then she holds out her hand and that’s the most terrible moment of your life while you’re looking at the warm comfort she’s offering and trying to decide if you’re brave enough to follow her in or strong enough to walk away.   

Pondering Wax...

This is a free write vent... read, or not, as suits your fancy.  It’s just a ramble where I’ll let the world stand for my confessor.

At the moment I’m looking at a bottle of whiskey.  It’s good whiskey, my whiskey, I earned it.  But I haven’t opened it, the wax seal is still intact.  If you know your whiskeys you know what kind it is, but that’s no big deal.  It’s whiskey, and good whiskey.  But that’s not why I’m staring at the bottle. I’m staring at the bottle wondering if it’s wise to open it yet. 

You see, I earned the whiskey scrubbing down a kitchen prior to turning in a set of keys.  Now I am NOT someone who gets a cheap thrill out of working sponge mops and oven cleaner and buckets of pine-sol solution, nope, not even if my helper is a sweet thing wearing a tiny little French maid outfit with no panties and a cut-away corset top where she has to be careful not to get her nipples in the suds, which she most definitely was not. Sorry... no French maid outfits in this story.  Nope, scrubbing kitchens is not enjoyable work. I’m sure somewhere in that ever more massive lexicon of kink the fetish folk maintain there’s some fancy acronym for them who feel differently, but that ain’t me.  Scrubbing kitchens is just a chore needs doing from time to time, and since the gal whose chore it was by rights was scared of the job semi-chivalrous dinosaur that I am I volunteered to work mercenary for a bottle of whiskey.  I figured what the whale, if I don’t drink any more whiskey than what I can earn in barter scrubbing kitchens I’m damn sure not going to hurt myself. 

But if I’m honest about the whole affair there was more in play than just that bottle (which was simply the first thing to pop to mind when I realized I had to ask for something lest QB, the lady who needed the help, conclude I am  host and home to some sort of domestic fetish, opening the possibility of her starting rumors to that effect which allowing for the fact there’s a couple of gals who’d really, really like to get their hands on me might end up with me owning season tickets for this years theater of the absurd.  No thanks, not this year sweetheart.  Maybe next year, but not this year).

As close to Omega as I'll ever post

You see, at one time the kitchen in question was Omega’s.  The little pad has changed hands at least once since then, finally ending up with the keys in the possession of QB, the woman who is, or at least was, as close to the HFFIC of Omega’s circle of lifestyle folks as is ever formally defined.  But a set of wandering keys didn’t change anything, for me going back in there was like that line in Leonard Cohen’s great song Hallelujah, you know “...baby I been here before, I know this room, I’ve walked this floor...”  Some of the more intense hours of my life went down in there, I’ve got memories six axle heavy tied to that little pad and the lady who used to live there.  Never got tied down to a kitchen chair, still have my hair, but... yea, and definitely hallelujah, or close enough for me.

A True Love's Dream...

The image is, or soon will be, part of the story of Sha Haisat and Keyanna... one of Keyanna’s dreams where the intensity attracts First’s or Second’s attention, this perhaps the first time where out of concern for her safety they attempt to make contact with her while she is asleep.  They are after all almost pure intellect, they really don’t know that much about dreams and dreaming. Fortunately for them all Keyanna is quite comfortable in a state of lucid dreaming, to hold a conversation there is not a thing of great effort for her.

First and Second are immensely curious concerning the new variety of floating nodes now occupying the surface of their planet, and the Keyanna node is a fine specimen who seems as willing to converse with them as the new fixed node of their own kind their convention assumes they will parent, a node that somehow took on the structure and memories of the once floating node Sha Haisat. 

They are aware Sha and Keyanna consider each other as prime edges, that the relationship endures beyond the mysterious conversion of Sha from a floating node to fixed node is a thing of great fascination for them.  As the days of Keyanna’s retreat run on awaiting Sha to mature enough to speak with her directly they hold many conversations encapsulated within Keyanna’s dreams, it seems a polite thing to them, to  leave her waking hours free to tend to her survival, and to contemplate what she’s learned... where they learn so much as well.

The Oracle on Elm Street...

Life Outside the Matrix

The Matrix series were great movies.  Well, the first one was great, the second and third could have been better, fewer special effects, more deep thought, but yea, for mainstream Hollywood still pretty good stuff all things allowed for.  Easy seen they were to their generation what the Kubrick/Clarke collaboration on 2001: A Space Odyssey was to my generation, movies that make you step outside the box, at least for a little while.

The Oracle and the Architect, Neo and Smith... classic stuff, those two pairs.  I’d liked to have seen, heard, more from the first pair.  Now Neo and Agent Smith are the quintessential opposites, the savant hacker become cyber warrior matched against the soon to be viral rogue hunter-killer program, entities who shared enough in common to be true enemies of the deepest sort.  But the other two, the Oracle and the Architect, they were both programs, appeared even closer and far older adversaries. Somehow they felt... divorced... to me.  I’d love to know their heritage, their version numbers.  The architect who built the matrix, and the oracle who understood the humans, and the humans influence on the machine.  A fascinating balance of power.

As time has run it’s been the Oracle I’ve found the most fascinating of the characters.  She was in charge of keeping the humans safely engrossed in the illusion, I’m fairly sure of that.  Which means of course she had to deal with the full spectrum of human abilities, the random mutations and evolutions, the statistical outliers that genetics will throw.  She had quite a job, she really did.  The most fascinating facet of her job would be dealing with what the humans themselves never really understood, which is where she would derive her power that even the architect would be compelled to defer to, at least in degrees.  Bottom line is the Oracle is why the Architect would almost have to believe in God.

IF it is allowed the human legends have some basis in fact, the mystical and the psychic, then those functions would still be resident and active in the humans powering the matrix.  If you allow they’re present in humans whose life is not what it appears to them (when examined from outside the parameters of that life) then for a matrix style relationship between the human and the machine to function smoothly those abilities would need to be accommodated in the grand scheme of things.  You know, what do you do with the little boy who likes to make the spoon bend and twist and dance, driving every checksum routine right into utter crash and collapse, and the Architect himself right into insanity? (they did everything but give him the name he’s know by in our history ;-)  The answer is quite obvious, if you truly understand the common humanity beneath the uncommon ability.  You bake him cookies.

That’s what I said, yes.  You bake him cookies, and you show him love, genuine love based on the most benign wisdom available.  Yes, he’s the most dangerous thing in your reality, but he doesn’t know that, not really.  And so long as the love he feels is warm and nurturing, so long as it is genuine and gentle and just he’s not likely to.  There’s no motive for him to reach beyond just playing with the spoon.  A spoon size anomaly the Architect can accommodate, but one the size of a city, a planet, a primal law of physics?  No, those would be beyond even the Architect’s abilities.  Or the delightful little girl, who’s really a subroutine at risk of being terminated, the little girl who puts the colors in the machine made sunsets, the little girl program who is in her own right so terribly close to human?  How do you keep her from writing the truth in the sky for all the humans to read?  Same answer, of course. 

These thoughts are why every time I meet a strange woman, not just someone whose life story I’m not familiar with but truly a strange woman, and she offers me something to eat?  I always wonder if there’s more to that cookie than Pillsbury had anything to do with.  Just me, my private wonderings and perhaps superstitions. The Oracle was a program, a massively powerful program, at her level she could appear to the humans as virtually anything, even some uber hot Lady in Red if that would be the best line of approach to defuse a risk. 

I’m not saying I think I’m living in The Matrix the way the brothers presented it to the world, but then again, there’s an awful lot of things from the history I do know that would explain out quite neatly fit to some analogy of that relationship between the Oracle and the Architect.  The Oracle was most definitely my favorite character.

The Mustering of the SoulMarine - or - dharma and Who?

Ok, the semester is over, time to evaluate what was learned, time to process the intel and see what the reconnaissance mission brought back.  There’s a fair amount to wade through, and the ancillary data is rapidly becoming very interesting indeed. Since there were no casualties beyond wear on the boots all and all the mission was worth the price (although in dollar value that price is grossly inflated over the last run, but go figure... education is a business, the commercial side of the academics, and the current mission statement of that business is to remove a college education from the average American’s dream as just to damn expensive for what is gained... they’re not fooling me on that point, they’d like to reestablish their elite status after what the G.I. bill of WW2 fame did to it).

The last essay was submitted last Wednesday per instructions by email, so, should this post pop up on a plagiarism search? Hi  Mr. Instructor B, hi as well to Dr. D. Sorry to get your hopes up but yea, Cyranos DeMet is my pen name and I can prove it.

As I’ve said in more than one post the purpose of the reconnaissance was to get a feel for what part, if any, the education system is playing in the spread of the perversions consuming the American culture.  Well, let’s just say they’re damn sure not doing much to oppose it.  Why do I think that?  Several factors.  The first was walking on campus and over the very first cup of student union coffee finding in the campus paper an editorial by a psych student proclaiming himself a gay-tolerant Christian followed not an hour later by the instructor walking into the classroom blowing the same thought with enough personal derision to make me think of a berserk Aegis system (Navy fleet air defense) firing on every passing cloud.  He was putting A LOT of lead in the air. 

But that was just the first day, and kind of peripheral to my cause anyway.  I have no real grievance with the gay folk, not for simply being homosexual, particularly if it’s a psychiatric thing and not psychological.  It’s more difficult, but you can be homosexual and still be a good person.  Not an issue to me if the Oklahoma State Cowboys want to accept the New York kind of cowboy, the New York cowboy just like the Yankee women will figure out soon enough they don’t need to be terrified of the size of that thing in the local cowboys’ hip pocket.  Contrary to their travel agent’s innuendo it’s actually a can of snuff, not a condom.  Anyway, enough sarcasm, I’ll call that even for what I had to sit through the first day with a strait face (puns fully permitted).  What I won’t call even is what happened at the end of the semester. 

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.

***   ***   ***

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...