Perspective

You've probably heard/read the parable of the blind men and the elephant. There are many variations, but here's a 'Reader's Digest' version:

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Three blind men are led to an elephant, and invited to touch it and 'see' what they make of it.

One blind man bumps up against a leg, encircles it with his arms and declares, "The elephant is like the trunk of a tree."

Another blind man takes hold of the elephant's trunk and says, "The elephant is a great serpent."

The third blind man grasps the end of the elephant's tail and says, "The elephant is a big, coarse brush with a flexible handle."

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Here's a visual iteration of the parable:

And by the way, I am not nearly as wealthy as that last photograph makes it appear that I am.

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Poppies

Something a little different -- a couple of photographs of poppies:




My wife dragged me out of my 'cave' to come see them, and I'm glad she did. The blossoms are so stunningly, stupefyingly beautiful that one is rendered speechless.

There is no flaming, bleeping, honking way that Darwinian 'evolution' explains such things. 'Sorry. 'God' works for me. 'Works way better than that 'evolution' bullshit.

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Rhyming Couplet du Jour

9/11 was an inside job,

And what can you do about it, yob?

                                             Tom Gaspick

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And here I said I wouldn't revisit the subject of 9/11. I'm just as full of shit as the bastards who pulled it off.

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Bonnie Parker

'Beats me why I chose to post this.

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9/11 Was an Inside Job

Ok. I've had about enough of officialdom's bullshit.

In the brief video you see WTC7 collapsing into a very compact heap -- 'into its own footprint' as they say.

WTC7 was not hit by an aircraft. WTC7 had some minor fires burning in it. WTC7 collapsed into its own footprint. WTC7 was brought down by controlled demolition, as were WTC1 and WTC2.

If you can continue to 'believe' and spout the official line about the events of 9/11, then you must be one of the following:

a) Deluded.

b) Willfully blind.

c) Really, really stupid/dense/witless.

d) Complicit.

e) Insane.

There are no other possibilities. Consider what that tells you about each and every member of officialdom, and the mainstream media.

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That's all I have to say about 9/11; I will not revisit the subject -- there's no point in doing so. One may as well belabour the point that the sun rises in the east.

9/11 was an inside job. The preceding sentence is true. We are 'governed' and 'informed' by charlatans. Treat them, and conduct your affairs, accordingly.

Goodnight. Pleasant dreams.

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The World is a Scary Place -- Be Afraid

I had a load of laundry to launder, and while I had the washing machine's lid open, I noticed a trilingual warning label affixed to the underside of the lid. In English, it reads like this:

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"WARNING.

Fire Hazard.

Never place items in the washer that are dampened with gasoline or other flammable fluids.

No washer can completely remove oils.

Do not dry anything that has ever had any type of oil on it (Including cooking oils). [Emphasis mine.]^[1]

Doing so can result in death, explosion or fire."

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Well now, that's pretty dire.

I've heard of people blowing up themselves and their homes by attempting ersatz dry cleaning with gasoline in their washing machines -- urban myth, possibly?

What catches my eye in the last sentence of the material quoted above is the order of the last three items. Shouldn't 'death' follow 'explosion or fire' -- not precede it? After all, how much cause of or concern for an explosion or fire could a dead person possibly muster? -- shouldn't 'explosion or fire' precede 'death'?

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This makes me want to do an experiment: procure an old but functioning washing machine; park it in the middle of a big open space with a long, heavy-gauge extension cord to power it; fill it with gasoline and greasy mechanics' rags; start it up, run like hell and see what happens. That could be huge fun. My guess is that I'd end up with pretty clean rags, a washing machine with ruined seals and a serious gasoline stench hovering about the place.

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Note:

[1] Consider the absolutes in that sentence. I can only take it from that sentence that a cloth table napkin that someone's used to wipe a tiny bit of vinaigrette salad dressing from their mouth with could potentially blow one's house off its foundation if dried in the dryer. 'Time to go crawl under the bed.

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Compare and Contrast

I recall 'compare and contrast' assignments from my high school 'education' -- they made me gag. I never could work up much enthusiasm for comparing and contrasting.

Recently, though, I've seen things worthy of comparing and contrasting.

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Consider this -- what a stonemason can and does do:


Then consider this -- what the president of the USA can and does do:


Compare and contrast.

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Don't Let This Happen to You

Pictured is the vehicle that Bonnie and Clyde died in. The posse that ambushed them reportedly let loose about 130 rounds.

Now that's what you call law enforcement.

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Brown Sugar

I was casting about for something to post, and I came up with this:



Yeehah!

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Rhyming Couplet du Jour

Money is honey, my little sonny,

And a rich man’s joke is always funny.

                                     Thomas Edward Brown

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Common Sense

'Common sense' is what tells us that the sun circles around the earth, that lent money must be paid back with interest, and that the authorities must know what they're doing (else they wouldn't be the 'authorities', would they?).

Bleep 'common sense'. 'Common sense' blows chunks.

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I Can See Into the Future

This is amazing. I seem to have acquired the ability to see into the future. A vision of the future is upon me right now -- in a few seconds, I'll be in the shower taking a shower.

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Amazing! My vision came true. I've showered, just as I saw in my vision of the future.

Oh, here comes another vision of the future -- in the very near future, I'm going to light a cigarette and smoke it.

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Bingo! That vision of the future came true as well. I appear to be onto something here.

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It dawns on me that it might be possible to entertain alternative visions of the future. For example, I can see a near future wherein I go upstairs and give the cat a swift kick in the ass, causing him to become suspicious of me and hate me, or I could go upstairs and treat him to a bedtime 'fight', which pleases him greatly and helps to keep him on an even keel -- bedtime 'fights' are a favourite bit of his daily routine.

I suspect that anyone could do this, even the president of the USA. Barack Obama could envision peace and dialogue with Iran, or he could envision warfare with Iran. Which would be better?

I advise everyone to exercise their ability to see into the future. The future could very well be what one chooses to make it.

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WTF!?

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On Knowing When to Hold, Fold, Walk or Run

A website I frequent was on the topic of 'career advice for young people' the other day. That put me in mind of an old Kenny Rogers song, "The Gambler".



The pertinent bit of the lyric is, "You got to know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em; know when to walk away; know when to run."

Tell me about it.

When I went to work for Xerox in the early seventies as a field service technician,^[1] and saw what an utter crock of shit that line of work is, that's when I should have folded and run -- fast and far. But I didn't. I stuck with it -- though not with Xerox for very long; I thought at the time that Xerox was an aberration, and I went elsewhere. Everywhere I went turned out to be equally shitty -- Xerox was not an aberration; Xerox was merely the norm. So, here I am at the age of sixty, well and truly trapped in a line of work that I loathe.

I often ponder the problem of such career traps, and how one might avoid falling into them, and I'm perpetually left stymied and baffled. In my own case, there never really was any escape. I lacked the intellectual wherewithal and courage to simply stop, and do a radical rethink of my predicament. I just kept on keeping on, thinking that eventually I could make something satisfying of it all. There were a couple of times that that came about for awhile, but they didn't last long.

At bottom, it's been ever and always about grubbing for money. Grubbing for money in the corporate cog-wheels is a vile way to occupy oneself. One should avoid it like the plague.

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Notes:

[1] A Xerox technician's job title was 'Field Engineer', as I recall. 'Field Engineer'^[2] is a euphemism for 'vacuum cleaner operator'. Spend two years at the DeVry Institute of Technology studying electronics engineering technology, and Xerox will consider hiring you to operate a vacuum cleaner. (In plain English, what that last sentence outlines is what's known as a racket.)

[2] Or it might have been 'customer engineer'. Either one is equally absurd. Real 'engineers' would have every right to launch a class action lawsuit against the purveyors of such claptrap for cheapening the good name of their profession.

By the way, Xerox had a rigourous dress code for their on-site technicians -- suit and tie. Picture a guy wearing a suit and tie scooping out the sludge from a septic tank, and you'll have a good visualization of what a silly outfit Xerox was in the seventies, and probably still is now.

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Calmly Contemplating the Mysteries of the Universe

Well, what else could he or she^[1] possibly be doing?

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Note:

[1] 'Toad sexer' is not on my resume.

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More Fun From the Mailbox

This was in my mailbox today. It looks important.


Let's see what's inside. (By the way, a small utility knife is the most elegant letter opener in the known universe. It looks like this in use.):



Ok. I have the envelope's contents out, and I can read the material -- it's from Pine Ridge Memorial Gardens Cemetery and Cremation Centre. Whoopee.

There's a sheet titled, "Community Survey -- What do you think?"

Most of the questions appear to deal with factual matter rather than opinion; I'm not sure how this constitutes an 'opinion' survey. Be that as it may, let's have a go at this.

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1) Please check your appropriate age group.

I'm 56-65. My 'opinion' of that is that I'm pretty bleeping old, but I wasn't asked my opinion, I was only asked my age group.

2) Have you ever been responsible for making cemetery or funeral arrangements?

I've attended a few funerals, but I've never made the arrangements for any. As for my 'opinion' on funeral arrangements, my opinion is that such things fall within the purview of 'business and commerce', which activities I find to be loathsome.

3) In the event of your death who would be responsible for making arrangements?

Arrangements for what? Arrangements for hygienic disposal of my soon-to-be-stinking remains, right? Whose bleeping business is that, anyway, aside from my wife's and my son's? My 'opinion' is that there ought to be a comma after the word "death" in that question.

4) Do you think it is beneficial to have arrangements made in advance?^[1]

Duh! 'Beats having to do it 'on the spur of the moment'.

5) Have you prepaid for any arrangements? 'No/If Yes, where?'

The phrase, "None of your bleeping business!" springs to mind. How's that for an 'opinion'?

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Enough. You get the idea. This is not an 'opinion survey'; it's a bit of marketing twaddle from a corpse disposal firm. Fair enough -- corpses must be disposed of. After all, they can't be left to just pile up willy-nilly. What would the urban landscape be like if that were allowed to happen? Fallujah late in 2004?

But please, spare me the 'opinion survey' bullshit.

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Note:

[1] A wicked thought occurs to me here. The outfit responsible for this 'survey' does have a valid point that they get across very well with this question -- i.e. it's much better to have arrangements cooly made well in advance of an inevitability, rather than have to make them hurriedly in the midst of a tragic, though inevitable, event. That said, one could argue that funeral homes ought to have kiosks in the maternity wards of hospitals -- one-stop-'shopping', so to speak.

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A Rhetorical Question in my Mailbox

"Do You Own a Home and Need Money?"

That's like asking, "Do you have a full bladder and need to take a leak?"

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Isn't that the happiest, finest little family in the picture that you've ever laid eyes on?

I think I know why they're so happy. They've just re-mortgaged their house, and now they can 'afford' to go get decent haircuts.

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