The Same Things Repeat

There have been times in my life when I yielded to the pleading or push of others to make a choice that I thought was not so good. It usually involved something which falls in the foggy zone of my understanding, generally in the category of something social. Often I think that I must be weird and I guess x or y is what normal people do, so I acquiesce. It never works out. Or almost never, can't recall everything so I'll leave it at 1 time in 100 that it works out.

Certain situations seem to arise again and again which have similar characteristics. You do it over and over until you get it right. Or so I thought. if you aren't careful, it will sneak up on you again even though you thought that lesson had been learned.

I should know better than to let such trouble surface. I do know better, but it is easy to ignore it under some conditions. Wish I could be more explicit, but I can't. Anyway, I'm on top of it and not going to let it happen.

In other news, I guess in not much more than a month I'll be riding down that long lonesome highway once again. If all goes well I'll arrive in the sunny Keys in time for the Buena Noche party--I think that's what they call it even though I thought it was supposed to be bueno noche. Who knows. Cuban Spanish. I doubt they can understand one another. If I was in school I'd be expelled for saying that. But I mean it in the best possible sense.

I look forward to being in the Keys, not much to being in Miami, which is going to be part of the deal. That is one hyperactive place, especially on the roads. And Florida is a boring drive from north to south.

Yikes, now I'm talking myself into not wanting to do the drive. I'll find ways to make it interesting, I'm sure.

Dear Self Proclaimed 99%

If you are blocking traffic, or preventing an area from being used for its normal purpose -playground, sidewalk, etc-you are infringing on the rights and mobility of others. That is force. It is not peaceful.

I must be in the 1%. Who knew? Those claiming to be the 99% absolutely do not speak for me. Most couldn't relate to me anyway--they have too much money.

Fix is In, I Guess

In response to some complaints that the various media outlets are effectively enforcing a near blackout on certain candidates during debates, we get responses like this:

“We are in the business of kicking candidates out of the race,” CNN host Howard Kurtz responded.

They have decided it is up to them to decide who has a chance and who should be given voice. An already closed shop is being closed off even more. Some candidates are barely given time enough to introduce themselves in these kangaroo debates while others are encouraged to blather on and on.

The arrogance of news media is beyond the pale. They sincerely believe it is up to them to shape and narrow the choices of the unwashed masses. But many people believe in a class of ruling elites. Obviously I do not.

The whole thing is a bit questionable.

Random Compulsion to Think Out Loud

I call it thinking out loud if I write it here. It has a different feel than if I write it on paper or even in Word or Mac's version of that, Pages. Writing in the new post box has a different feel altogether.

One of the things I was thinking is that my favorite story from Mark Twain, of his work that I've read, is his short story, The Mysterious Stranger. It has to do with the variables in life which you can't see or predict.

Recently, I heard people discussing someone's suicide trying to think if they should have done something differently which might have changed the course of events. No one knew what he was up to, but in a morbid way some of those in the conversation seemed to think they could have changed it all. You don't know.

It may have been a chance event in his youth that resulted in all this. It may have been because he was forbidden from going to the movies with that cute girl, Gayle, when he was 12, and that led to another chance thing which landed him in bad comapny, and on and on. He was forced to cut the grass that day, didn't go the the movie, then went down the street and ran into Tony, who talked him into sniffing glue.

If he'd gone to the movies he'd be a physics professor at a large university in some great coastal city, have two intelligent well behaved kids, a wife who gets better looking every day, and he'd be happy as a clam, and alive.

Instead he led a troubled life, dropped out of college, flirted with various addictions, was a full blown alcoholic at an early age and his troubled brain and addled mind simply could not see life through the chaos.

All because his slave driving, nazi parents couldn't wait until later in the day that Saturday for him to mow the lawn. Or let it go until Sunday. Either they thought they were instilling a good work ethic, or else they were just dogmatic creeps who hated their children. Well, it could be that they had some obsession and/or compulsion related to length of grass or yardwork in general.

I don't remember the specific events in the story told by Mark Twain, but it was that sort of thing.

And if the guy above did NOT off himself, he would have entered the 10 items line at the grocery story behind Mary Smartypants, causing Barry Brilliant to choose another line, thereby preventing the chance meeting of Mary and Barry, who would have mated and produced the next Einstein, and also the next Joan of Arc. A very interesting brother and sister combination.

So, since things have gone as they have, all starting with the slave driving parents and the lawn, ending in the sad suicide, we can look forward to a brilliant scientist and one bad ass, freedom loving chick to enter the scene in a couple of decades.

See how it works? It is what we call the unknown factor which is everywhere in life. That covers many things in science, politics, etc. So ignore anyone who thinks there are only so many ways to skin a cat, or that skinning the cat won't lead to a different path than not skinning the cat. You just don't know.

That's why it sort of irks me when people go on about how could God let this or that happen. If you ever created an invention with moving parts and a control system you would understand. You build it, set it up and let it run.

If you are lucky, or the creation is lucky, when it breaks you can fix it. That's divine intervention. You didn't make it break. You just lovingly set your machine into operation, hoping for the best. So bad things happening neither proves nor disproves the God concept. I tend to think it is such a different deal than we traditionally think that it would be very mind blowing to actually know.

But in my own life, I swear it feels like something other dimensional saves my ass over and over, and occasionally sprinkles me with lucky dust. How that works, I haven't a clue. But, from the standpoint of building a working model, I don't really know how my own happy-parts work either. Glad for the good things, understood or not, and that's about all you need to know.

Dear Whatever is God

Am I really as hopeless and lost as I feel?

Please answer in a way which will mold the truth into something like,
"Hell no, son, you are destined for marvelous things, all of it exciting happy and perfect, with plenty of wild sex, money, travel, good health, and lots of respect from your fellow earthlings, both human and inhuman--like bears."

Secret Life of [name withheld by my request]

My friend who lives in or on the North Pole, whose name may or may not be Sally, has been holding out. Before I go further, the reason I don't give a name and then stipulate, "not real name" is because that gives you one name to rule out, narrowing it down a little. I prefer to keep you completely in the dark.

Who knew? This chick plays great finger picking on guitar. She hasn't even been playing in ages and picked it up and went to town without once having the dead fret thing that happens if your fingers aren't chording hard enough, and not once did I see one of those instances of falling out of rhythm because she forgot a particular fingering. It was quite surprising. Even good players who haven't played in months and possibly a year or so before that will fumble a bit.

Not Sally. And she can sing. I had no idea she was that much better of a musician than I am. Most people are, but still, not everyone. And then I heard her daughter sing. She sang with her fiance and the blend was spectacular. I thought their sound and style was the kind of thing that could really go somewhere. They have other lives and I doubt the poverty life of trying to get your music out there appeals to them. But making music certainly does.

Sally was down here to see family and they invited me to a gathering at her brother/and/or sister's (see I am not going to give too many clues, but the item in question is in no way gender confused) home at an undisclosed beach, right on an undisclosed ocean. The fiance who is in a branch of the armed forces, which I will call the possibly air, land or sea Militants, wrote some pretty interesting stuff while based somewhere other than here.

I don't know what it was I expected, but the quality of the Sally crew when it comes to playing music exceeded whatever I must have expected. Sally was looking good, too, which creates lots of confusion, partly due to her citizenship in The North Pole, and because lots of things tug at me in various directions lately and I have no map of my future.

It is quite obvious this mild mannered popcorn cook woman has been hiding the musical mojo within. Previously she led me to believe she didn't even care if she played an out of tune guitar, and acted like she didn't know how it worked anyway. Wimmins, they will fool you any chance they get. They won't admit it, but it is a key element in the Secret Code of Wimmins.

I was nice to witness such art after watching the Chargers throw away yet another game. I'm convinced that the mob is threatening to harm Phil Rivers' family unless he throws X amount of passes per game to the other team, and that they are paying his line to let the other guys in to chase him around and tackle him. Either that or the coach has handed out different playbooks to the receivers so they cut left when Rivers thinks they are supposed to go right.

I'm highly skeptical of Norv, the coach. He's a good guy, I think, but lets his team and the other teams walk all over him. I've offered to counsel him but I get no reply.

Too Confused to Know

Sometimes I have no idea what to do with some situations. Just do not know.

I think this is why I hide away. When I don't I miss the simplicity and freedom.

The matters of time and space and logistics etc can be a bit daunting. It is always feast or famine in so many aspects of life. Usually the feast lasts a very short time then the table gets rudely cleared by the Ur life suks police, and somebody gets pissed off because you didn't rave about the duck beak soup, or select their pie for desert.

Voodoo Eye Ailments

It was a dark night, and I was minding my own business. I'd just walked in the door and turned on the light when I noticed an upside down couplet of musical notes floating in the periphery of my left eye's field of vision. When I moved my head or my eye or changed focus it moved too.

I could make it dance right in front of my face. I tried to snatch it out of the air but it was more elusive than a quick housefly. It was black like how notes are printed on the page. And it was dancing around like it didn't have a care in the world, and in my line of sight. No respect whatsoever.

Soon, I was on the computer searching for answers to black spots in my vision. The results were predictably off subject, with links promising answers landing me on pages with links promising to explain "black spots on penis". Who cares?

Finally I scored some info which indicated I probably wasn't going blind. This has gone on for a couple of days with day one being a day which consisted of me trying to avoid a migraine by not moving much. It felt like one of those that goes through the back of your eyes and rips your brain out. I am good at heading those off at the pass if I am left alone, so I managed to avoid the pain while only experiencing the dull wittedness that comes with it. I had to do some work over at the big O's pal's house.

Whether the musical notes, which changed into that Batman logo that the commissioner projects up in the sky, were related to the rare headache, I don't know.

I decided I better get checked in case the retina was falling apart or something. It turns out it is just the voodoo thing peeling off and it happens and is generally OK. It "should" eventually fall away from where it is in my eye and go away. At least I learned that all other aspects of my eyes are very healthy and my blood pressure was 98 over 63. Maybe I should update my glasses more than once every five years.

What made this voodoo vicious thing happen all of a sudden is unknown. I'll bet I got bumped by something or a ball bounced off my face and that is what happened. I am not good at keeping track.

The difficult thing was that I went in at 3 and they dilated my pupils. It must have been around 4 when that happened and it must take hours for the stuff to wear off. I had to hang around forever before I risked driving. I did end up buying some sunglasses but they won't be ready for a week or so--progressive lens and curved shape blablabla. So that took some time.

It was dark by the time I got out of there and all the lights looked like starbursts with long rays. I waited until maybe 630 after eating an overpriced pretzel. This place is at the edge of a mall. I do not like malls. It is as if they took the ghetto, separated it into various parts, put designer names on those elements, and presented them in very clean nice stores in the mall. What is that about?

Anyway, I got impatient put on cheap shades to cut the glare and risked it. Once I got on the straight stretch of highway the going was not too bad. Getting to that stretch was a game of guess where the lanes are, and is that guy on my tail going to kill me with those headlights or not?

My Batman logo and I made it home fine. I catch myself making it appear, moving it around like you would a cursor with a mouse, seeing if I can make it hover over various items in my view. The thing is, it is actually a little left of direct vision so I have to play little tricks looking at one thing while thinking of what is in my near peripheral vision.

Tomorrow I plan to file for disability due to Batman logo eye. I think that comes with pension, medical marijuana, and a direct line to the mayor and the commissioner. Perhaps this is God's way of telling me my destiny is to be a super hero. Well, He can wait. I want the pension and some perks.

I hate to pick out glasses and I had plenty of help. Nice store ladies.. That was mostly for the regular glasses which I will purchase later. If I was rich, I'd be in the eyeglass place a lot. I'd have all kinds of gasses and sunglasses.

The Job I Want

Here's the silver lining to the cloud in which we find ourselves. There was a time when no one would have dreamed that America would have fallen into such dysfunction that you would become socially or legally forbidden from thinking and expressing an ever growing list of sentiments. The world of political correctness, and the Big pretense. But this opens new opportunities. New agencies. JOBS!

And I want to be the first to apply for the position of thought cop.

I catch you looking askance at someone in a burka or at a homo or even thinking that certain racial groups claim more members per capita who might harm you, I'm taking you down. You can think race or ethnicity as long as you only do it from the point of view that certain segments of the population are victims more than others; victims of bullying, hurricanes, particular diseases, price of sugar, earthquakes, paparazzi, you name it. As long as your thought or rhetoric suggests that the correct groups are victims, OK, you have nothing to fear. But you must know to whom this applies.

That goes for gender issues of most varieties as well, and for anything female, unless you are citing someone from one of the untouchable groups as the victimizer, in which case it depends on certain factors who will officially be deemed victim. There is a hierarchy which suggests what trumps what, so be up on that before you think or speak.

I get it. I know instinctively how the hierarchy of political correctness works, so I am the guy for this job. It involves more than just race and other condition of birth. It covers religious matters, nationality issues, illnesses and all sorts of things relating to sex and genitalia, and also a coolness index as defined by the Code of Dead Kennedys and pop culture.

Much of the PC handbook is unwritten and has not been put into law, yet it is being enforced in businesses and governments throughout the nation. More and more it is being incorporated into legislation and I expect this trend to continue.

Why it takes a true specialist to enforce correctness correctly is because this is not something which applies equally to everyone. It depends upon condition of birth, your associates, friends and acquaintances, where you are from, where you live and various characteristics of whomever is being attacked, hired, fired, scrutinized, or considered in any way in one's thoughts.

I know all of the nuances so I always know who to cite in cases which may confuse the less savvy. Recognizing this new and growing field and the wonderful opportunity it presents causes me to feel like I am at last in the right place at the right time. That perfect vocational fit has finally materialized.

We in the thought policing business would not have such opportunity had it not been for hate crime legislation. That opened the door wide. By gaging the severity of the crime by what the perp was thinking (beyond normal consideration of premeditation and such) rather than solely on what he did, thought and opinion entered the realm of possible crimes. And crimes bring punishment.

Such laws made the thought behind the rape, murder, beating, robbery, etc. a factor in how severely the perpetrator is to be punished. So, having the wrong thought during a crime carries the punishment of the extra jail time. Separate that out and you find what thoughts and feelings, and against whom, carry what punishments. I'll bet I could catch people thinking the wrong thing before they actually do the crime.

I could fry them for the thought, then maybe add a little wrist slapping for the crime they may have committed in the future. I believe some of that is already going on---dealing with crimes that haven't been committed but could be some day.

But don't worry, if you don't think or feel, you are probably safe.

Occupy Naubinway, Michigan

This just proves what I've been saying about the audacity of the animal kingdom. Moose are now staging Occupy events in Michigan's upper peninsula.

This moose chick decided to occupy an innocent citizen's front yard, then gave birth right there in plain view. Her demands are unclear, but many vote-hungry politicians say they have sympathy for this demonstration. The Teamsters are sending her a megaphone to better conduct her Occupy effort and so she can more forcefully announce her demands, provided she and her young mooseling reach consensus regarding what they want; demands, etc.