Around Here

It is hard to see her in the top photo, but here's the rock lady with the hooded cloak.  I always see her when I am at that spot.  She looks holy and mystical but shows poorly in photos, like a vampire.  But she is not of that ilk.  So, that's my go-to angel in tangible form.

Here's another spot nearby where I've seen eagles soaring.  Maybe I should say eagle since I normally only see one at a time.  

These are spots I visit to hide from confusion. 

Looks like some people have posted youtube video of some of my adventures in music land.  Mostly they aren't so good because I don't do it right.  But one of them labelled me "one of the best harmonica players in San Diego".    That was cool to see.   Safe bet not to label me the best. 

My Odd Life

It is always a thrill to get a package at the post office.  Just like the tooth fairy or other magic give-away artist, someone leaves a special key in my PO Box.  I then take it to the proper package locker and open it up.  Once you put the key in and use it, it won't come out.  That way they foil would-be cheaters and trouble makers.

Today I received a package from a little known movement which seeks to ensure Obama's election by replacing Joe Biden with Vladimir Putin.  They sent me a fabulous mug, and a very classy bumper sticker.

I'm uncertain as to the connection between me and the message there at Obama-Putin.   I do see the wisdom of their suggestion.  

Anyway, I'll bet few others have these commemorative election items.  It will confuse future generations because it will be all that survived.  They'll conclude Obama Putin must have been a company that made cups and bumper stickers.

So, there you have it

All this is really the result of the ugliest ceramic mushroom ever made, and its journey on the ping pong ball path of being re-gifted each Christmas for a few years, and only between two people.   It may have been cursed, or blessed, I couldn't tell.  It was smiling, I'm pretty sure.  Like Chuckie.

Putin would have destroyed it from the get go.  Then he would have found the person who made the mushroom and made the problem go away.

I wonder what would happen if you had a poster in your yard for Obama-Putin.   People would assume you are interested in Russian politics, and support Putin, and that you support Obama here.

Or they may think, hmmm.  Maybe they'll give me something if I vote for them.  Who's Putin?  I thought it was Obama and Joe Bitin.  Maybe it his name's Joe Putin.

Regardless of all that, Vlad knows how to bring in the vote, so maybe that would have been a good move.  Too late now, I think.

This mug is going to be worth big bucks five or ten years from now.

They Promised to Loot

Coney Island looters.   Nothing brings out the part of humanity we can do without like a hurricane.  Just hang by the stores when the floods and high winds recede.

They must figure the cops can't get to them.  I wouldn't want to risk being on the bad side of NY cops.  Large people who don't care for pesky mischief, is my impression.

We've got people who are either incredibly stupid or really believe their rationale for this theft.  Or both.

Here's a choice quote from a proud looter:

"Look, they've been looting our wallets for too long," said a young male who claimed he helped himself to a TV at the Rent-A-Center.

“It's about time we start taking this sh—back," the youth, who identified himself
as Jesse James, told the Daily News

Dang, Jesse, you are truly one of the great thinkers of our time. Taking it back? As if he gave the stores the goods he is now stealing.

One difference seems to be that when the store loots his wallet, he is voluntarily trading money for goods. In this case, the store is not a voluntary partner in the transaction. Drop Jesse in the ocean a couple of miles off shore.

The only reason people spout such tripe is because they get hints in media and politics that their sorry hatred of anyone who has built something is righteous and reasonable.  They know the are just leeches but as long as people will pretend otherwise they'll milk it for what it is worth.  

Jesse should have been shot right there. End of problem.

Perhaps if the education system and a lot else had been managed and designed properly, young Jesse would have a clue regarding economics, morality, and freedom.  That takes more than public education but it is a start.  Teaching people they are victims and that one person's wealth makes others poor is not a good solution.  And that is the idea being promulgated by numerous politicians, most schools, and general scuttle butt on the street.

Good thing it is so hard to own firearms in NY, otherwise shop owners and such might have been in the mood to shoot people wrecking what they've built even more than the storm has.  And that would be so terrible.  How do cold heartless people like me expect these disgruntled consumers to get their revenge?
  

A Darwinian Opportunity

My feeling on the matter of private firearms, home made weapons and looting is this:  while maybe not making it mandatory---any shooting, destruction or battering of looters should be lauded.  No stupid trial or hindrance should be forced on those who shoot those who use storms to rob the community, whether they be invading homes or business.

Some say, "Oh but is it worth a life over material things like laptops and TVs?".   Yes.  Those lives are a detriment to the rest of the living, and if it is known that you can shoot looters in the act with impunity then maybe only the dumbest and most worthless of looters will go down.

I'm almost certain you can't make a case that the world is a better place with those creeps in it.

If this topic comes up and they hear my view, I wonder if they'll want me on a jury when I go Wednesday for jury duty.  I suspect not.

Wondrous Things

That which induces one to wonder is wondrous.   Among the many things which were stimulating wonder and investigation was the Electoral College.  I wonder why I didn't apply for that school when I was thinking of applying to colleges and universities.  The truth is, I only got one app sent, maybe two.  Auburn wanted something more which I ignored.  I applied there and FSU at the beginning of my senior year.  FSU pretty much automatically said ok due to test scores. I was clueless.

Some schools expect some level of overall gpa.  If you have a year to go, and you aren't making super grades now, seems wise to withhold admittance until the book is closed.  So, I took the easy way.  In-state school that is the greatest distance from Miami.  Too bad all wisdom ended there.

Anyway, I've never set foot on the Electoral College campus.  However, I hear some talk about people who want to do away with the institution.  This is where freedom gets tricky, and democracy, over valued.  Pure democracy is certainly not a high virtue, it just is.   You have to limit what the collective can inflict on the minority.

Both the Senate and the Electoral College are hedges against the tyranny of the majority.  That is what it is called when freedom of the few is restricted by the many, even if it doesn't infringe on them.  The first premise to get is that the USA is a democracy in a republic.  A constitutional republic.

That means there are preset limits and parameters set which are supposed to contain those with power lust.  It's a losing battle but it does slow them down a lot.  Over time, it slows them less.

Anyway, there is a wisdom to weighting some power by geography.  For one thing it more evenly gives voice to a variety of the subcultures in this country.  I can tell you that Miami and small town Wisconsin are worlds apart.  A native of either would experience sever culture shock if he found himself in the other's town.    For me, moving to North Carolina was a huge cultural adjustment.

Eventually I learned the language and even spoke it.  Maybe I adapted because I had decided I liked NC and the people and that was that.   I absorbed some of the culture, but a real southerner can tell I'm like southern lite.  Miami left my bunch with no real sense of a culture.  Miami was never quite like the heartland even before it became majority hispanic.  We spoke english, which may have created a bond with America, and most of Miami was from NY and the midwest--interesting mix.  New Yorkers had a bad stereotype going for them back then.  Apparently there were plenty of volunteers to keep the reputation going.

A direct election based on total popular vote could result in a few big cities, primarily coastal, having control.  It could leave some very diverse, long established sub cultures out of the sphere of influence altogether.  As much of this country that is federal land, who wants their landscape controlled by a few cities which are very different from your town?

Anyway, I wondered about that but see it as a kind of safeguard.  Even if the guy who wins gets fewer popular votes, and that turns out to be the current neo-bolshevik, I won't change my tune about that fine place of higher learning.

I have a friend who thinks replacing Biden with Putin would be just what is needed to fend off this Romney fellow.

I forgot what else caused me to wonder, drat!

It seems I end up with people playing music everywhere I go.  Another little party and the people all end up playing.  That is mostly what gets me invited, I think, although it goes beyond that after awhile. It seems I am somehow a fixture in this ongoing network.   I meet some interesting people this way.  It puzzles me, though, whatever 'it' is.

I've never seen so much bluegrass and country as out in the sticks California.  That's why they call it country and western.   I'd never given much credence to western part.  Now I understand.

It is good.

I hope that storm doesn't mess up your life or your stuff.

Hmm...a few of these musicians have the means and expertise to possibly hash over some of the ideas I've had in the late 70s.  The times have almost caught up, except government subsidizes their cronies while people like me would just deal with the market.   I have no excuse for never following up on this.  I found the burn came from unexpected places so the one I did follow awhile was abandoned in confusion.  It worked, at least.

Maybe this accelerated rate of meeting those who would get this stuff, and know the flaws, is not a mistake.  Maybe it is one of those new saints delving in the affairs of man.  Saint Poccahontos.  Maybe her holiness spells it otherwise.  I'll learn the right way so that this encouraging trend continues.

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AP Racism and Freshman English, FSU

Having lived in what some would term diverse communities for much of my life, I observe with sadness and scorn the many stories I hear and see about racism.   In Miami, during the 80s and 90s, my condition of birth was shared by a minority of citizens.

What I found was that since Cubans were considered a minority in federal terms that they found it relatively easy to discriminate on any basis which suited them.  It is human nature, to a point.  Not that I didn't have plenty of Cuban friends I did.  I liked their coffee and much of the music, etc.  But life is life.

One work experience was rife with sexual and ethnic discrimination.  I was one of the very few white males (few males of any stripe) in the place, and they took their shots.  I did not pursue legal recourse or any of that, although I probably had a better case than many I've seen in the news.  Hey, if they didn't want what I had to offer I could go elsewhere.  And I did.  So, bully, woman, hispanic.  She did seem a little underhanded but I believe she seriously regretted it by the time I left.  OK. Not to the point.

Still not to the point; I was just thinking that I bring out strange things in women.  I must learn to harness this somehow.  If I could learn to direct their reaction to something less dramatic than homicide.

Now the AP has a story about some university guy's study showing explicit and implicit racism.  It mostly focusses on white against everyone.  I tend to think this is a thing which has a kernel of truth and a bushel of BS.

When you have a culture in which young people who don't act like punks are ridiculed for "acting white", would you say that is a racist phenomenon?  I would.

The study uses techniques and questions which are iffy at best.  It seems to go the way of my English professor at FSU.  He wanted us to pull all sorts of hidden meanings and symbolism out of everything.  He was very keen on homosexual symbolism.  I caught on and finally wrote a paper for the class.

To write the paper I got stoned and drunk and invented every possible bit of sexual, homosexual, and maybe even trisexual context to the most inane of passages.   It was to the point of absurdity.  He ate it up.

I fear the same is being done with the subject of racism.  Since it is tough to find outwardly and overtly in the places they look, they claim it has gone underground.  That's like that cop who asked if I was going to be a good boy and admit to stealing some stuff and tell him where it was, OR was I going to act like a criminal and deny any knowledge of it.

I didn't steal the stuff.  So, damned if you do or don't.  It is the same thing here.  According to Chris Matthews and some others, if you are not a fan of Mr. Obama's political philosophy and way of handling the job, you are clearly racist.  It carries on like that in other areas but right now any of the usual political lampooning aimed at Obama is liable to be tagged as racially motivated.  Maybe it even has a bit of sexual symbolism too.  Maybe lesbian love symbolism, I don't know, ask my ex professor.  That dimwit.

You can find prejudice and bias and racism everywhere if you choose.  That does not mean that hate and unkindness lurk there, just that you can delve into the absurd they way I did at FSU.

Those crying race over and over are doing more to foster tribal disdain for others than even the KKK.  They've done it so successfully that some black thugs have killed people and justified it with things we know nothing about like the shooting of a black kid by a jewish hispanic man in FL.  Well, his dad was jewish I think, so he may be a druid for all I know.  The point is there.

For the record, lots of people do not much like other races.  At least they prefer their daughter marry only chinese, or black, or white or hispanic or arab or whatever.  It is how people are.  That doesn't mean they carry this all that far and seek to eliminate or even hurt the feelings of others.  They usually don't.

I remember a jewish guy getting the very evil eye for bringing me into his house in high school.  I remember a black guy's grandmother not so discretely cussing him out for dragging me in the door.  It happens.  I knew they meant no awful harm, and I figured maybe they were right--I'm a bad influence.

Oh, I should explain.  The default nationality in my discussions is my own, USA American.  Since the friends mentioned above were also born citizens, I did not list a continent or country in order to describe them adequately for the purpose of the story.  Continentally, we were all American-Americans, even though Canada and a bunch of places are in South American and North America.  It's a quiz to name which one contains Canada and Mexico.  You got a 50/50 shot, and everyone in my class passes if they pay the green fee.  That's what I call it, "a green fee".   Save the world, pay up.  You'd never guess that my teaching career started and ended on the same day.

The thing is, people in parts of California, or in Wisconsin or more homogenous places read these stories and assume all this racism must be southern white rednecks out to make trouble.  Some of that may exist but nothing like they pretend.  So, people outside actual interaction with lots and lots of other ethnicities form opinions about the fiction they are fed as fact.

All the while ignoring that, per capita, blacks are highly racist--far more so than whites in this century---, hispanics are more tribal than whites, and often rival blacks in their racist thinking.  It is obvious and easily tested.  Go walk into a predominately black area of Memphis.  If you are black walk into a white area.  The former has a 99% chance of being harassed or beaten or otherwise made to feel unwelcome. The latter has maybe a 10% chance of receiving dirty looks and maybe a rude question.

People know this.  Yet the race thing is still played as if it is some other way.  That is the reality of the here and now.  Study it, search for it, make your Jesse money off of it, or maybe try to quit fueling it and pitting group against group--usually based upon condition of birth.  This mythological belief system must go.  Maybe one person doesn't like another or disagrees with him or her, and the whole race thing is secondary, or so far from the issue at hand that no one has thought of it.

Crying racism, even though you have to claim it is underground, is much easier than actually debating philosophy or dancing through a logical syllogism.  It is shameless pandering and an attempt to discredit and squelch opposition without having to explore and win a point in discussion.

I've got no time for racism, I'm too busy being islamaphobic, and for good reason.

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Stay Dry Easties

While we sweat the Santa Anas and heightened fire risks, you nor'easters are in for another assault altogether.  If you live on low land that could flood, don't wait until the water is way up and you have to sit atop the chimney.

These events always cause me to think of the value of being able to produce electricity on site.  It is silly that by now most buildings aren't self sufficient.  But we have to subsidize our friends while pretending this is a government job.

Don't forget, it was the same basic bunch who made it illegal to produce your own power not so long ago.  Those of you in love with regulation no doubt bought the story at the time that it was for your safety and so everyone would pay their fair share.

OK, so most places are dependent.  That means those in the storm path need to get things set so you can get by without official utilities for awhile.  If you worry about FEMA or someone not coming and getting you out of your house or telling you that breathing is easier above sea level, then I guess we'll see you on the news.

Hurricanes and other storms are pretty much a game of doing for yourself what you can with what you've got.  There will be a few people in your neighborhood who can think.  Glue yourself to one if you are baffled about which way is up.  Or, if you thrive in such emergencies,  calm the panicked ones who may seek your counsel in one way or another.

Good luck.  I hope it goes away and nobody loses anything.

Genetically Controversial

One of the ballot initiatives, here in California, deals with genetically modified food labeling.    At first glance I thought, oh, I wonder what defines genetically modified.  Several strains of various vegetation have been created or modified by grafting, hybridization, and tweaking this and that to aid in the natural selection process.  Does that count?

I also thought it would be interesting to see if most of what I eat falls into the genetically modified food group.  But I had to delve a little into the measure to see what I could see.  What I could see was that some food which matters not to me has to be labelled while other products don't.

Without coming right out and saying it, the measure almost calls out company names and insists they label, while being sure to lay down big speed bumps for mom and pop operations and small farmers.  It is not even across the board.

That is usually the case with regulation that looks dandy on its face, but then turns out to be a case of special interest and/or company A getting something in to screw over company and/or special interest B.  The old government-business partnership which we are told is commerce heaven.

I'd like to know if my chips have been modified with some kind of gene that makes me stupid if I eat it, but this initiative doesn't look like a reliable way to know anything.  Dog food would be required to label but some things that I actually eat wouldn't.  I forgot the specifics.  They lost me when I realized that when they drew the line they gerrymandered to include some but not others.

Today, in a parking lot, a guitar player's wife asked me if I eat genetically modified food.  Probably.  She has a sticker on their car in favor of prop 36 or whichever it is.  I asked if this wouldn't add to food costs and administrative costs.  "Oh no, they just have to add a little to the label, it costs almost nothing. Vote for it, that is all you need to do."   I pretended I would, even though we already know my mail-in ballot has already been sent in, read, and tossed in the trash by my political adversaries.

I'm pretty sure I voted NO because I saw it as an open door to cutthroat corruption, and because implementing it and enforcing it are sure to affect costs, and now we have more food police bureaucracy.  Maybe if it had not been such a pick and choose type of thing.

That was what blew me away back when NAFTA came about.  I skimmed it---a rather hefty tome--and discovered they named specific companies and dictated who could do what where.  That is not free trade, that is the spoils go to political allies and those who own a piece of government.  If it is not a document describing principles and rules, but rather one bestowing certain rights to specific firms, then it is garbage.  That's my view.

Anyway, what if the genetically enhanced food I've been eating has twisted my mind and if it were untwisted I'd not think this way at all?  I'll bet I could sue someone if only I could remember what I thought before their genes made me think like this.

Shock therapy.  Like what put me off of Playboy way back when.   I was in the Air Guard doing about 25 or so make up drills.  Since they had no women's barracks, they put me up at a Holiday Inn.  Had to be equal.  So, I was wild and crazy and ended up with a slightly older woman who had a fairly new set of enhanced hoots.  Ever since, I have preferred real life.   The stuff in the magazines all looked fake after that.

Just my luck, as time went on this sort of installed baggage up top has become way too common and popular.  I say, if you aren't reconstructing, just leave it be.  In any case, my view of such matters changed and stayed that way.

So what would shock me into not thinking how I think?  See what genetically modified food does to one's mind?  Maybe that explains our governor, ex governor, senators and difficulty of legally throwing anything away.


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Dots

The nature of where I work, and for whom, often puts me in a position to watch the dots connect on some minor level which ties into the big picture and the things we see and hear on news outlets.  It is very strange and can be interesting.  Due to past experiences, it is not surprising to see how vastly different public talk is from behind the scenes actions.   Anyone should know that.

After all, how many times have we seen public figures and celebrities arrive on the scene in a private jet or limousine, then proceed to tell us about the evils of carbon footprints or using more than one square of toilet paper.  Hypocrisy may the best word to describe the times.  We've had various ages throughout history; stone age, iron age, age of reason, renaissance, and now the age of hypocrisy.   You have avowed racists labeling everyone else as racist, and very wealthy people instigating class warfare.

It seems unprofessional to give details regarding my work circumstance or specific discoveries which connect dots to the highest levels of national politics.  I will say that the sunrise powerlink project which I've mentioned many times was a money making scheme and possibly had more motive, none of it actually involving green energy as claimed.  It does touch politicians of both parties, and some of their money people behind the scenes.

It does no good to know what goes on because there is nothing to do about it, and most people would rather hold on to myth than confront truth.  I would.  But I do not look up to the big players except for the fact that they are energetic and not lazy.  But they are not very good people.

Lately, though, I don't know if I think of myself as very good people.  Not all the bad, just not worth much.  This may change.

Nonsense

That was the gist of the previous post.

So, now on to life and worry.  It is not in my power to put into words the things I actually want to put in writing.  The thought is there, but not clear and defined.  I think the truth is too harsh for me to explore unless it is heavily sugar coated.

That is one theory, anyway.  It is not so easy to be who I am or am not.

I smooth the guilt for my negligence by doing odd good deeds as opportunities arise.  

We shall see what happens.