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| it's a funny thing about generationsso, if we live longer, it would seem to follow that we'd do better at learning from our mistakes and maybe even accelerate our species-progress to something a teensy-weensy but faster that the current imperceptible crawl. Well, it kinda seems to follow, anyway.
but if, as we receive increases to our longevity through medical and scientific research, we only offset that gain by remaining fixed at a pubescent stage of emotional development, what's the point? We might live longer, we might remain at our most fruitful and multiplicitous, but our S.Q. ((Stupidity Quotient) is either remaining at a fixed point, or may actually be increasing.
Bummer.
Yet I remain optimistic ... not so much that humanity will necessarily continue in situ, but that it will continue in any form at all. After all of this dust settles, there may not be very many left compared to the present, and there will always be the instigators and the self-interested, but every day the Sun comes up is another day to take another swing at it.
PAX
below are the lyrics of Bruce Cockburn's "You've Never Seen Everything". He always manages to put it better than anything I might say.
Thanks, Mr. Cockburn
Nobody's making me say this
I'm talking to you
Been travelþing 17 hours
Irradiated by signals, by images
of viruses, of virtues
like everyone
Like exiled angels we swing out of the clouds
Above night city-
Fields of light broken by the curve of dark waterways
On the other side of the world
an unhappy teenage girl sets fire
to herself, her house, her neighbourhood and some that dwell therein
Sorry simulacrum of sad dawn
You've never seen everything
Sleep of the just, sleep of reason, any damn kind of sleep please!
I'm trying to balance on a sloping bed in Naples
or is it Skopje? I forget
Through the thin hotel wall a man groans in his dreams
And on the other side of the world
the drug squad busts a child's birthday party
Puts bullets in the family dog and the blood goes all over the baby
And the Mounties are strip-searching schoolgirls
because they can
And a car crashes and burns on an offramp from the Gardiner
Two dogs in the back seat die, and in the front
a man and his mother
Forensics reveals the lady has pitchfork wounds in her chest -
Pitchfork!
And that the same or a similar instrument has been screwed to the dash
to make sure the driver goes too
You've never seen everything
I see:
A leader of the people with a ring in his nose
And the leaders of business tell him which way to go
With tugs on the golden chain which once led the golden calf
And we're supposed to be impressed with their success
But my mind goes blank before the unbelievable indifference
shown life
spirit
the future
anything green
anything just
Bad pressure coming down
Tears - what we really traffic in
ride the ribbon of shadow
Never feel the light falling all around
Years ago when my brother was in India
A small town baker got a bright idea
He cut his flour with pesticide
and sent a bunch of neighbours on their longest journey
He was just being cheap -trying to make a profit
Didn't even have shareholders to answer to
But it's worth remembering, as we sell off the forest
gene-splice the world's food into an instrument of control
maim and destroy as acts of theatre,
what came next -
That when the survivors looked around
and understood what had been done
they butchered
that baker
Snow swirls in the parking lot light like flour
like pesticide There's a trade war brewing - or at least that's the face they paint on it
But it's only more transnational manipulation
It's all bad magic and gangrene politics
Hormone disruptors and carcinogenetics
Greed twists eternal in the human breast
But the market has no brain
It doesn't love it's not God
All it knows is the price of lunch
Here I sit
Staring at my own shadow
Feeling my blood move
Trying not to have a drink
Trying to find somewhere to put the rage I'm carrying
Bad pressure coming down
Tears - what we really traffic in
ride the ribbon of shadow
Never feel the light falling all around
Never feel the light falling all around
You've never seen everything
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| the voteyeah, there is one more thing.
quite a few of my younger acquiantances appear to have their minds set on NOT voting "because it won't make any difference". I understand the feeling and the sentiment. I think it might also explain how George W Bush was elected to the second term.
If you do register to vote and then make the trip to the polls to cast that vote, it's possible that something might change for the better.
If you don't register and don't vote, there's an excellent chance that nothing will change. You'll still get the opportunity to complain about how f*cked up the new guy is and how he/she is taking the country to the cleaners, but you'll only have yourselves to blame.
Tune in.
Listen.
Choose.
Vote.
that kind of involvement isn't too much to ask in exchange for the opportunities that are offered here. Even if you figure that you'll never have kids, you should do it anyway, because it some time in the future there'll be someone else just like you, wondering how things ever got so screwed up, and they wouldn't be far wrong if they blame YOU for not voting.
No guaranteed outcome, no predictable future. Just a chance to help shape that future. Think about the 2000 election ... if someone other than Mr Bush had won, our present situation overseas might be very different.
Passionate about your interests? That's GREAT!!!!! Why not make being an active citizen something you're passionate about?
PAX
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| happy-happy-joy-joyyeah.
BIG FUN today. A root canal at 9:00 this morning. All-in-all it went very well. A very capable and talented guy, with a good staff. My memories of my last root canal have me recalling that it too FOREVER. This one was pretty quick ... about 45 minutes.
as much as I like going to the dentist, I'm enjoying this erection year and the associated campaigning with equal zest. I think a previous post of mine may have let slip some of my disdain.
I lay quite a bit of the circus-like ambiance at the doorstep of the media. Doing the presidential race has to be a pretty straight-forward thing ... like a dog show. The flashiest pooch is the winner. How many fleas live aboard isn't as relevant as how well they mind their handlers. McCain or Obama ... not exactly the same breed, and one has been on the show circuit a bit longer, so which will it be?
Does it really matter?
I think so.
One favors the way things are and the way they've been since ... well ... for a LONG time. Some of those things work fairly well, Internet Explorer when it's ridden with viruses and spyware. It works, but not very well ... has difficulty getting out of its own way, so to speak. Out of whole package, the only things that really do work as intended are the viruses and spyware. Funny thing ... when that particular pack of hounds uses the "Founding Fathers" thing, they seem to have overlooked the fact that those same Founding Fathhers couldn't have anticipated the kinds of creeps that would manifest their own spectacular talents for armed robbery, where the implement isn't a knife or a gun, but rather a pen and a lot of career ____________s. (you can fill in the blank, if you like)
The other dog in the show is younger, and doesn't bark the same way. Just differently enough to be interesting. MAybe his operating system is something more like Firefox ... still not rocket science, but maybe a bit more free of the grayware and blackware that gums up clean operation over time. We'll see.
If we get McCain, it'll be because we deserve him ... the way we might deserve indigestion if we eat too much of the wrong thing. If we get Obama, it'll be because we deserve him, like the way we might deserve to be nervous about trying something we haven't done before. Labels like "Liberal" and "Conservative" are bullshit inventions of the media, which makes it easier to lump us into groups and make useless predictions about what we'll do. Media that's more interested in itself than the job it claims to be its responsibility and mission. Screw awards, screw ratings, screw the idea that the best time to do "the right thing" is when someone's watching.
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| What is the most obnoxious roommate behavior you have ever put up with?While attending my freshman ear of college (at a military college, no less) my assigned roommate would prove to be a substantial pain in the ass within a week or two.
He had a birth defect, which is a pretty sad situation for anyone. His particular situation included a skeletal malformation that left certain vital organs unprotected. He made sure that everyone knew of this, and as a result he was largely exempt from various obligations that the majority of us were not. He took great delight in sneering at us (me) and being insulting, seemingly with an eye to provoke and altercation. I was (fortunately) restrained, and later learned that even a slight blow could have killed him. I really tried to like the guy, but it was impossible. At the end of the school year, word came around that his younger brother would be attending with the arrival of the next class, and with that news you could almost hear blades being sharpened.
I never saw him again, and I count my lucky stars that I never laid a hand on him.
I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too! | | |
| Robber Barons and the road aheadwe get what we "deserve". If we want to preserve the status quo, we'll re-elect the republican administration (sans W.). This will almost certainly include some sort of move to strike the Roe .v Wade abortion statute. Personally, I'm Pro-Choice. When I say that in public, I hear murmurs of vile charges like "baby-killer", etc. I guess some folks think that being Pro-Choice signifies that I stand in front of Family Planning centers and abortion clinics waving in all all and sundry pregnant passers-by. To those folks I say:
You don't know what you're talking about.
I don't advocate abortion, but neither do I hold that any government body or agency has any right or place in a woman determining what she's going to do with her own body. Anyone who feels that the federal government should outlaw such a choice is a Fascist and unworthy of American citizenship. A step further ... anyone who holds up any Holy Scripture as a counter-argument against a woman's right to choose had better read it AGAIN, and this time read it for what IT says, and not for what is desired to be said.
Everything changes with time. There was a time when I would side with the argument presented by the Republican party, but evidence has mounted over the years that the Republicans are primarily interested in preserving the status quo, which increasingly seems to mean the perpetuation of the Myth of Reaganomics and the "Trickle-Down" theory. Time has shown that it doesn't work well at all, except to keep the wealth in the pockets of the few at the top. A comment to the effect that "Americans who earn less than $80k per year are too stupid to understand taxes" has been attributed to Senator McCain. Perhaps he's right ... and that could be a reason why so many Republicans are so highly resistant to any idea that includes changes to the way taxes are calculated and collected.
I'll continue this after work. Thanks for letting me rant (again).
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