More of Blowin' Stuff Up Real Good

From the macro to the micro.

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Please Lemme Out!

For a creature that can't speak English, cats sure can communicate.

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Blowin' Stuff Up Real Good

'Remind you of anything?

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[P.S. Whoever did the music/video synchronization on that is brilliant!]

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Scary Face

Get a load of Mitt Romney's face here.

Creepy or what? His mouth looks to me like a sinkhole for all of working-class humanity's possibilities.

I swear I've seen that exact face before somewhere. It was devouring something, and what it was devouring wasn't pretty -- it wasn't devouring chicken wings.

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Addendum -- SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012

Here's an interesting take on Mitt Romney.

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Addendum II -- MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2012

Just when I thought the republican ticket couldn't get any more psycho-laden, Romney picks this freak for his running-mate.

OMG! I'd be afraid to be on the same continent with that guy. He could face you with that bizarre grin as he stuck a knife between your ribs. Were I to find myself on the same continent with that guy, I'd go run off to the coast and start building a boat.

And come to think of it, I am on the same continent with that guy. Jesus H. Christ, get me outta here!

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Fun Quizzes

This quiz is hilarious. Take the quiz to discover your 'colour'.

I took it, and it seems that I'm 'green'. Following is what was reported to me when I submitted my answers:

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"The Color Green. You are a calm, restful person. You love nature, and nature loves you. You are considered an outsider, struggle to make friends. But, you always keep the friends you have and are kind to anyone."

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Hmm. Parts of that analysis are iffy.

Here's a quiz that resonates with me in a perverse sort of way (i.e. I don't have a high school diploma).

I scored 84%. Here's the report I got:

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You paid attention during 84% of high school!

68-84% Pretty good, you know that there are libraries and newspapers, and you remember what you've read. You were a child that wasn't left behind!

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Actually, I paid attention during 100% of high school; that's why I hated the place so much!

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Oh, What's The Use?

Recent research indicates that the universe could end sooner than previously thought -- in only 20 to 22 billion years. It seems that 'dark energy' (sort of gravity's opposite) is growing; when it grows to infinity, the whole place is going to blow up real good.

The article I got that from is here. The article's penultimate paragraph is noteworthy for its exactitude. I've transcribed the paragraph below.

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"Zhang and Li write that the the Milky Way will be torn apart 32.9 million years before the big rip. The Earth will be ripped away from the Sun two months before the end, and we'll lose our moon with five days left. The Sun itself will be destroyed 28 minutes before the end of time, and the Earth will explode a mere 12 minutes later."

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And if you'll excuse me, I have to go hit the reset button on my bullshit detector; the detector's making an awful racket.

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Beer Temperature

A recent post at The Hipcrime Vocab touched on the 'chilling' of beer. The post tells of a high-tech, very expensive fridge that can chill a can of beer in minutes. The post makes the point that that's a costly technological achievement of little real need/use; I agree.

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What I don't 'get' from the get-go is the 'need' to chill beer -- there is none. Cellar floor temperature is about right. All that's needed to have cellar floor temperature beer is a cellar floor.

The brewing of beer long predates refrigeration. The earliest brewers didn't sample their product and say, "This stuff has possibilities, but we may as well shelve the idea until refrigeration gets here." No. More likely they said, "Yeehah! Stash this stuff in the cellar where it''ll keep at a nice temperature."

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I've had beer in American bars where it was served so cold that your teeth complained. At that sort of temperature, beer may as well be amber-coloured water laced with a bit of alcohol -- it's a flavourless cold liquid.

A cellar floor is all that's needed  for right-temperature beer; $2,500 fridges need not apply.

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Porto Rico

There's no such place as 'Porto Rico', except at the CBC.

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All I want from CBC Radio anymore is the traffic report in the morning, and that only to learn whether I should give up on getting to work and turn back home because of flaming, smouldering wreckage littering the freeway. (That's rare, but it does happen.) I try to switch on the radio just in time for the brief 0630 hrs traffic report, but I don't always get it spot on. This morning, I tuned in in time to hear the morning show lady say, "Porto Rico".

It's 'Puerto Rico' -- (pronounced, pwehr-toe-REE-ko, not por-toe-REE-ko).

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Am I being nit-picky? Perhaps. But surely a country's flagship public broadcaster has an obligation to maintain a high standard of presentation of the country's language. CBC Radio's standards are circling the drain these days.

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Motivational Posters

Corporate motivational posters crack me up. My workplace has mercifully few of them, but it does have a few. Here's a 'good' one:

The caption reads, "To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory."

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WTF is that supposed to mean!?

Did someone actually compose that fatuous metaphor with a straight face? Are employees supposed to conduct themselves as if those are words to live by?

If anything, it seems to me that a riskless conquest would be a glorious triumph. Wasn't that what George W. Bush had on offer when he launched his invasion of Iraq?

I would love to have observed the whole sequence of creation/production/publication/distribution of that poster. I'm certain the most hilarious, outrageous Monty Python skit would pale in comparison.

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The Second Amendment

The second amendment to the constitution of the USA has long intrigued me. Here it is ripped off from Wikipedia:

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The Second Amendment

"There are several versions of the text of the Second Amendment, each with slight capitalization and punctuation differences, found in the official documents surrounding the adoption of the Bill of Rights. One version was passed by the Congress, while another is found in the copies distributed to the States and then ratified by them.

As passed by the Congress:
 
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. [Note the needless capitalization of 'arms', and the needless comma following 'Arms'.]

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

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"... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is pretty clear and unequivocal, but what are we to make of that "well regulated militia" clause? That seems to suggest that an overseeing authority is meant to corral and govern "... the right of the people to keep and bear arms".

Was there ever a murkier bit of 'legislative' writing? It strikes me as a bit like saying, "Elmer the Safety Elephant's admonitions being necessary for the safety of pedestrians, the right of the people to cross from between parked cars shall not be infringed." [Ok. I admit that that's a bit lame and convoluted, but you get my drift, surely.]

I'm inclined to think that what the framers/drafters/amenders of the USA's constitution were sadly lacking was a good editor -- someone who would have looked over their drafts, pointed out things like, "well regulated militia", and said, "Exactly WTF do you mean by that? Could you spell it out before you commit it to paper?"

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Anyway, all of that aside, what is the USA's constitution anyway? -- Holy Writ? Un-bleeping-likely! It's a bleeping rule-book, written by a bunch of guys with vested interests and a marginal grasp of English grammar.

You wanna 'keep and bear arms'? -- go right ahead; it's what the criminals do, why shouldn't you?

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Leaskdale

'Leaskdale'; now there's a place-name to conjure with.

Leaskdale is a little place in southern Ontario near the town of Uxbridge. Try pronouncing 'Leaskdale' correctly. Go on, I dare ya to try. This CBC person failed at it, several times.

She says 'Leaksdale' three times within two minutes -- not the correct pronunciation at all! What manner of place would get named 'Leaksdale'? I don't think I wanna think about it.

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A Visual Irony

In an earlier post, I was playing about with the American national anthem a bit; something in the two videos embedded in that post caught my eye.

Starting at about 50 seconds into the Jimi Hendrix video, you see a skeletal tower in the near distance behind Jimi's head (a speaker tower, I suppose).

At about 30 seconds into the second video, there's a skeletal tower that's eerily evocative of the speaker tower.

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For whatever that's worth.

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Why Illustrated Dictionaries are Illustrated

Illustrated dictionaries are illustrated for good reason -- there's nothing like an apt illustration to truly reveal the meaning of a word. Here would be an excellent illustration to accompany the dictionary entry, "smug".

[Smug: adjective, smugger, smuggest.

1. contentedly confident of one's ability, superiority or correctness; complacent.

2. trim; spruce; smooth; sleek.]

The illustration is from a full-page ad in today's National Post for a real estate outfit.

Get a load of the matriarch; is she a piece of work or what!? The kids are not figuratively far from her. Dad looks positively humble and humane in comparison.

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Mass Shooting Bafflement

Throughout my boyhood and adolescence, my dad's shotgun and hunting rifles were kept on an open rack on a wall of his basement workshop. In addition to the rifles and shotgun, he also had a .38 calibre Smith and Wesson police special revolver that he kept in a WWII vintage ammunition box up on a high shelf. I can't recall clearly where the ammunition was kept, but I'm sure it was nearby and accessible -- it certainly wasn't locked away in a bank's safety-deposit box.

As befitted their place on a rack on a workshop's wall, the firearms were regarded as tools; just as a plane is a tool for smoothing wood, and a screwdriver is a tool for driving screws, the firearms were tools for putting meat on the table, and limiting the damage that varmints could do to a garden.

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My boyhood was not too deranged; it was pretty agreeable, really. My adolescence was another story. Adolescence brought me face-to-face with the high school monster, and the monster and I did not get along very well. I was not a happy camper in high school. I hated high school with a passion and a vengeance. Had I been possessed of Carrie's powers, my high school would be a heap of toxic, smouldering rubble that no hazmat crew would dare go near even now.

But throughout those wretched years in high school, it never occurred to me to take one of my dad's firearm's to school and shoot up the place. The thought wasn't merely 'unthinkable'; the thought was beyond and beneath and out of reach of thinkable -- like imagining the earth having a square, four-cornered orbit about the sun.

So WTF is with these shooters!? Who or what are these guys? From what planet in what universe do they come?

I dunno. They exist entirely outside of my realm of conceivable existence.

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The American National Anthem, Performed by Jimi Hendrix

And here's a variation, with appropriate visual accompaniment:



And here are the lyrics:

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The Star-Spangled Banner

O say can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
 A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
 Between their loved home and the war's desolation.
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

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And here's Richard Armour's take on the anthem (from his book, "It All Started With Columbus"):

"In an attempt to take Baltimore, the British attacked Fort McHenry, which protected the harbor. Bombs were soon bursting in air, rockets were glaring, and all in all it was a moment of great historical interest. During the bombardment, a young lawyer named Francis Off Key [sic] wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner", and when, by the dawn's early light, the British heard it sung, they fled in terror."

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I'll let my deceased dad have the last words here:

"You ought to leave a place in better condition than you found it."

                                                                                            Nick Gaspick

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Yeehah! We've Got Us a 'World-Class' City Here

Two dead; Twenty-0ne injured --


At last! World-class cityhood. We're gettin' up there with Baghdad and Chicago and Camden and Oakland.

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'World-class' has got to be one of the silliest bleeping notions ever to be promulgated.

I can think of all manner of 'world-class' shit that I'd just as soon do without:

'World-class' starvation.

'World-class' organized crime.

'World-class' corruption.

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I'd be happier if Toronto were a 'county-class' backwater of no distinction whatsoever aside from providing a decent living for its citizens.

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RRSP -- Registered Redoubtable Stealthy Purloinment

In Canada, an "RRSP' is a "Registered Retirement Savings Plan"; i.e. a bankster racket.

I have an insignificant RRSP that I began long ago when I was still employed in the big-time corporate sector (Northern Telecom and Honeywell ), and didn't know any better. I've contributed nothing to it since those salad days.

I just received my twice-yearly statement for my RRSP (I think it used to be a quarterly statement), and it has a neat little 'gotcha' on it. The interest earnings on a little less than $7,000 come to $33.62. The "Fees" come to $60.00.

[WTF!?!?!?!?!?!?]

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Think about that -- "Fees" for what?

That money exists on a hard drive somewhere as a few magnetic flux transitions. Where is the heavy lifting that needed to be recompensed $60.00 for dealing with that?

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I'll rein myself in here before I go off on a slog that I may regret. Needless to say, though, Sun Life Financial is welcome to go to the meanest, lowest, nastiest circle of Hell and remain there for eternity. If my RRSP statement is typical of Sun Life Financial's capabilities, Sun Life Financial is doomed, as well it ought to be.

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Banksters, look out!. People are catching on to your rackets. It will soon be 'game over'.

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Update -- SATURDAY, AUGUST 18, 2012

Today, my wife hauled me off to Pickering where there's a President's Choice Financial 'pavilion'. We put the wheels in motion to transfer my RRSP balance from Sun Life's clutches to a no-fees, locked-in savings account that will earn a whopping 1.35%, well under the real rate of inflation. I can hardly wait to see what Sun Life will charge me to 'release' my funds -- less than the account's balance, one hopes.

The matter took over an hour to deal with. (The one guy working at the pavilion had to attend to other people in a 'back-and-forth' manner. That slowed things down, though I really can't fault the service we received; it was competent and courteous.)

So, roughly three adult person-hours plus travel time and fuel were consumed to accomplish what? -- to cause a few magnetic flux transitions to change their address once the documents have been processed, that's what. Real resources were expended to manipulate an abstraction. Nothing of any real use or value was produced or accomplished by that resource expenditure whatsoever.

The proportion of the 'economy' that consists of that sort of worthless resource expenditure is staggering. The human race needs to do a rethink of how it conducts its affairs. The present 'system' has "doomed" written all over it.

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$1,988,000

The street I live on has a very mixed bag of house styles and values. There's everything from cedar-shingled shanties like mine, to great grey mansions like that of the wealthy guy up the road.

It seems that that great grey mansion is on the market these days; its asking price is $1,988,000.

I hear it has seven bathrooms in it.

In a house with seven bathrooms, surely no one ever has any credible excuse for pissing their pants.

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Transcribing Song Lyrics

Transcribing song lyrics is one of the most challenging things I've ever done. Here's my latest, best job of it. [Scroll down a bit.] It's still not flawless, but it's pretty good.

I started out with a 'transcription' that I got off the internet. On close examination, you soon see that such transcriptions leave a lot to be desired. So, with that flawed transcription in front of me, I listened to the song -- often and carefully. It took many, many revisions to arrive at what I finally posted and, as I said, it's still not flawless. The technicalities of punctuating it perfectly are beyond me, so I left it largely unpunctuated.

So, what's the point of all this? I dunno, really. Maybe only to point out that much of what we hear is a blur -- its exactitude whizzes by us and escapes us. Bear that in mind the next time you're receiving any 'information' from any medium.

Anyway, it was great fun. If nothing else, I've managed to post the best transcription of the lyrics to "Mercury Blues" that I'm aware of.

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Clutter/Busyness

Here's an interesting take on 'clutter'.

It strikes me that 'clutter' is the physical analogue of 'busyness'.

Clutter and busyness are both to be eschewed.

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A 'Jeapordy-Style' Quiz

This quiz is quite something. I scored 67%, and I'm not ashamed of that lame score -- it's some quiz.

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The Efficiency of the Private Sector

Now there's a phrase to conjure with: "the efficiency of the private sector".

I've spent my working life in the non-unionized corporate private sector, and 'efficient' is not a word that springs to mind as descriptive of its operation.

"Efficiency of the private sector" is a non sequitur. It's like "virtue of the sinful"; "erudition of the ignorant"; "eloquence of the mute".

The private sector is about as efficient as a four-cylinder engine with one spark plug connected. The 'private sector' is a scene of money-grubbing desperation on its good days, and a scene of outright criminality on its bad days.

With all due respect to the libertarians, the private sector can go to Hell.

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You Learn a New Thing Every Day

I need to have an MRI scan done on my spine to determine why I'm so bleeped up lately. Before you can have one of those procedures done, you have to supply some background information.

The very first thing they want to know is, "Have you ever done any metal-working/grinding?" In my case, the answer is, "Yes, much."

There's a very good reason for that question. It seems that if there's so much as a microscopic particle of ferrous metal embedded in an eyeball, the MRI's alternating magnetic field will cause that particle to travel about inside the eyeball and destroy its innards -- not an outcome to be wished for. To screen for that possibility, you're sent for an x-ray of your head -- an 'orbital x-ray' it's called.

Now, consider how the medical profession might have come to possess that knowledge of what an MRI scan can do to an eyeball. Did they foresee it, and put the orbital x-ray screening in place before they ever MRI'd anyone, or did they fetch some poor machinist out of an early MRI scan, look at his face and say, "OMG! WTF!?"

If the former, those possessed of such foresight ought to have been richly rewarded for it.

If the latter, that machinist ought to have been canonized for his sacrifice.

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Anyway, getting old blows chunks.Forgive me for thinking that the premise of "Logan's Run" was not a bad idea.

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Alan Jackson -- "Little Bitty"

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I Ain't No Poet, Don't I Know It. But What The Hell, Here's a Go, At Poetry -- However Fucked Up It May Be.

The Earth provides,

But bankers strive,

To create scarcity.

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What shall we do

With bankers who,

Make scarce the stuff of life?

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Wish  them well?

- --

No!

Send them to Hell!

Along with their usury.

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Mercury Blues

Now this is entertainment!



[Dear God, forgive me for this observation, but I can't resist; that poor girl in front at the left has the flattest ass in the known universe.]

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Here are the lyrics:

Well if I had money
I tell you what I'd do
I'd go downtown and buy a Mercury or two
Crazy 'bout a Mercury
Lord I'm crazy 'bout a Mercury
I'm gonna buy me a Mercury
And cruise it up and down the road

Well the girl I love
I stole her from a friend
He got lucky, stole her back again
She heard he had a Mercury
Lord she's crazy 'bout a Mercury
I'm gonna buy me a Mercury
And cruise it up and down the road

Ahh, let's go!

Well hey now mama
You look so fine
ridin' round in your Mercury '49
Crazy 'bout a Mercury
Lord I'm crazy 'bout a Mercury
I'm gonna buy me a Mercury
And cruise it up and down the road

Oh put it in high gear

Well my baby went out
She didn't stay long
Bought herself a Mercury, come a cruisin' home
She's crazy 'bout a Mercury
Yeah she's crazy 'bout a Mercury
I'm gonna buy me a Mercury
And cruise it up and down the road

Ahh, cruise now

Well if I had money
I tell you what I'd do
I'd go downtown and buy a Mercury or two
Crazy 'bout a Mercury
Lord I'm crazy 'bout a Mercury
I'm gonna buy me a Mercury
And cruise it up and down the road
I'm gonna buy me a Mercury
And cruise it up and down the road
Yeah, I'm gonna buy me a Mercury
And cruise it up and down the road

Ahh, let's go!

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Here's another take with some fabulous photos/illustrations:

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Goodbye and Good Riddance, CBC Radio

I got off to an early start this morning, and so I switched on my truck's radio earlier than I needed to for the traffic report. The morning show's host was saying that there was a word he meant to speak of, the word "queer".

"Oh, spare me the 'progressive' enlightenment.", I thought as I switched off the radio.

The drivel that passes for 'programming' on Canada's flagship public broadcaster has gone from mere banality to an embarrassment. Whatever their agenda is, they can play it out on others' ears, not on mine. I've heard about enough of it.

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The Simulacra Are Busting Out All Over

From the Concise Oxford Dictionary:

"Simula'cr|um n. (pl. ~a). Image of something; shadowy likeness, deceptive substitute, mere pretence."

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I'm a regular reader of Charles Hugh Smith's website. Charles writes a lot about status quo economics and its fallacies, and he often uses the word 'simulacrum/cra' to convey the fraudulence of much of it -- to the point where he catches a bit of flak for using the word so often.

I can't fault Charles for his frequent use of the word -- it's always aptly used. And I was pleasantly surprised by my first-ever spontaneous use of the word in a brief piece of mine about my pet hobby horse, 'education'. [Scroll down. I've hugely highlighted the word so it's easy to spot.]

Anyway, I've become quite sensitized to appearances of the word 'simulacrum/cra'. It's not a word that you encounter all that often, so it tends to grab my attention when I see it. Thursday this past week, I was reading John Michael Greer's latest post, and I caught three uses of the word. My first thought was, "WTF!? Is Charles ghost-writing John Michael's blog?"

Here's the relevant bit of John Michael's post, with the word's appearances highlighted:

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"The magic garments and ointments and jewels that turn serving girls into beautiful princesses, the magic boxes that bring summer in winter and winter in summer, the magic boats that sail under the waves and the magic birds that carry people through the skies, even the beanstalks of smoke and flame that took a modest number of space-suited Jacks (and a very few Jills) up through the clouds to look, unsuccessfully, for a giant’s palace—we’ve got them, or more precisely, we think we’ve got them. In point of fact, what we’ve got are simulacra of these things, the nearest approach to them that you can get by throwing terawatts of energy and the raw materials of an entire planet at them, which in most cases is not actually that close.

In a brilliant passage in Where the Wasteland Ends, a book that has lost none of its relevance or power forty years after its publication, Theodore Roszak compared the dream of flying to the tawdry, tedious experience of air travel. He was writing at a time when airlines still boasted about the quality of their in-flight meals and the leg room their passengers could enjoy on the flight, and when airports were not yet quite so reminiscent of medium-security prisons, complete with armed guards herding inmates toward the confinement that awaits them. Nowadays?  A ride in a New York subway is more inspiring, not to mention more comfortable. The same is true, by and large, of the other simulacra of fairy-tale magic that surround us these days: we may be able to get strawberries in winter, like the little girl in the Brothers Grimm story, but they’ve been picked green, artificially ripened with ethylene, and squirted with imitation strawberry fragrance, and they taste like mildly sugared sawdust.

That is to say, the fake magic that clutters up our lives today doesn’t satisfy the needs it claims to fulfill. We all know this.  We’ve all had our faces rubbed in it as long as we’ve been alive, starting with those childhood Christmas presents that looked so enticing in the store and turned out to be so bleakly vapid once the artificial glow of emotionally manipulative marketing wore off them, and extending straight through the upcoming election, which will inevitably be packed with rhetorical bluster about hope, change, and other vacant buzzwords destined to be discarded in favor of four more years of business as usual the moment the polls close. We all know this, and yet so many of us keep chasing after the latest shiny simulacrum, like greyhounds on a racing track in hot pursuit of a mechanical rabbit they’ll never catch and couldn’t eat if they did."

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I think we may be seeing a great deal more use of the word 'simulacrum/cra' soon. It's an excellent substitute for the vulgarity, 'bullshit'. And God knows we're up to our ears in simulacra these days.

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Further to Busyness/Occupation

Now here's a guy who knows busyness from occupation.

Cooper is never busy, but he's always occupied.

Currently, he's occupied by snoozing on the patio's swing-seat. At some later point in the day, he'll be occupied by eating his dinner, then he'll no doubt find some other agreeable occupation -- snoozing on the swing-seat some more, possibly, or licking his fur, possibly.

Don't think of Cooper as 'lazy'; think of him as a masterful seeker and finder of 'occupation'.

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Grammar Quiz

This is excellent. This quiz will furrow your brow to where plastic surgery will be in order.

This high school drop-out scored 100%!

Bleep school! Twenty-six alphabetic characters and ten numerical digits are FREE! You were born with the apparatus needed to figure out how they can be arrayed and arranged.

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Further to Busyness/Idleness

Ran nailed it nicely with this remark:

"When we talk about "idleness" we're really talking about potential idleness. The freedom to do nothing is the foundation of the freedom to do anything."

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Busyness

Ran Prieur posted a link to a nice article about 'busyness' recently. What struck me about his introduction to the link was that he seemed to assign idleness the role of busyness' opposite, like so:

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"July 2. Related to yesterday's link, The Busy Trap is one of the best essays I've seen about busyness and idleness:"

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I can't say that that's incorrect, but I find it jarring.

Now, I'm one who loathes busyness. Busyness triggers my 'run away screaming' reflex.^[1] However, I don't seek idleness as a preferable, opposite alternative to busyness; dead people and vehicles parked in driveways are 'idle' -- 'idle' is no way to be. What I much prefer to either busyness or idleness is to be occupied.

One can be sublimely occupied by a beer and a smoke and an essay to read.

One can be sublimely occupied by operating a model railroad.

One can be sublimely occupied by the company of a scantily-clad woman.

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For a good life, eschew 'busyness'; seek 'occupation'.

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Note:

[1] The 'run away screaming' reflex is not unlike the gag reflex, but it's much more theatrical.

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Quatrain du Jour II

States of Matter

Fire is nice.

And so is ice.

Vapour is ok.

But hot sauce makes my day.

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Quatrain du Jour

"Nothing attracts

the mustard from wieners

as much as the slacks

just back from the cleaners."

                            Richard Armour

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My Favourite Firework

Burning Schoolhouse

Yeehah!

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Bankers/Parasites

[Pictured is the mouth of a lamprey eel.]

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By all means, correct me if I'm wrong about any of this:

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Bankers are engaged in the 'business' of doling out and manipulating money, right?

Aside from that, what do bankers do?

Do they grow any food?

Do they mine any useful ores or minerals?

Do they haul any energy out of the earth?

Do they make/maintain/repair any useful machinery?

Do they cure any illnesses?

Do they fix any troublesome teeth?

Do they make any music?

Do they write any poems?

Do they put any meat/potatoes/salad/hot-sauce on the table?

Do they so much as tell a good joke?

- - -

NO! They do no bleeping useful thing of any bleeping kind whatsoever! Yet they rake off big bucks from what they do do.

What's wrong with this picture?

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It's well past time the parasites were reined in and quarantined.

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And here's the only thing that I could possibly close this off with:

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