ODD SHOTS and IDLE PENSEES #3 reprise

Light at the End of the Tunnel

MOTHER’S ADVICE and HUMAN BEHAVIOR:

Mom’s Advice:  “Use Clorox to get rid of the DNA evidence.  Burn the barn.” – Some CSI-type crime show.

G.W. Bush’s recent efforts to rewrite his history remind me of Ramses the Great (pharaoh of the biblical exodus, if you believe).  He is called “great” because he managed to live longer than any other pharaoh and used the time to build more monuments to himself than all his predecessors and successors combined.  He had a factory that just turned out busts of his head so that he could knock the heads off other pharaohs’ statues and put his in their place.  He advertised himself shamelessly: painting and carving the story of the Battle of Kadesh on every wall and pillar in sight.  Kadesh was not even a draw and Rameses quickly signed a peace treaty with the victorious Hittite King, and went back to Egypt.  He nearly got himself killed and almost lost his army due to his egotistical rash actions as an inexperienced military leader, but he declared victory from near defeat, and covered up the fact that he came precious close to losing the farm – not just for himself, but for the whole kingdom of Egypt.  And that’s why G.W. Bush’s recent rewrite of his history reminds me of Ramses the Great, pharaoh of the biblical exodus, if you believe.  G.W. became president of the United States by the skin of his teeth and the lies on his lips: the same way Ramses II became “Great.”  – 11/04.

“Did Benjamin Franklin give up when the Germans shot down his kite?” – T. J. Detweiler pep talk, Recess.

BASIC HUMAN BEHAVIOR

More ODD SHOTS and IDLE PENSEES Nr. 9.

Citizens United - bought and paid for corporate shills.

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[More thisses and thats collected over time].

Since the beginning, religion has been in conflict with secular authority for dominance over society. Oddly, the claim to any moral high ground is suspect on both sides, and peculiar to neither.

The prissy spell check: I typed “bullcrap,” it wanted me to use: “bull rap,” “bullyrag,” or “fulcra.” I don’t see how “fulcra” can even remotely echo or apply, unless used to fling the bullcrap.

Movie recurring bit: guy in back of any group, who periodically yells, “Louder!”

“He’s about as useful as a glass eye at a keyhole.” Aladdin character, Sci Fi Channel.

On learning that Paris Hilton “copyright”-ed the phrase, “That’s hot!” What idiotic bemused copyright official okayed that? Def: Parasite – a follower of, or someone emotionally, ethically, and mentally very like Paris Hilton. Pray for a cure.

“Finally, I just stopped caring. Fortunately, it was the 80’s and no one noticed.” Rev. Lovejoy, Simpsons.

“We saw you boys crawling in there like rats after a dumpster cracker.” – Cindy, Jimmy Neutron.

“Don’t worry. I got money. I bought stock in a mace company just before society crumbled.” Selma, Simpsons.

Dominant species tend to eat themselves out of house and home and then go extinct.

“Make Love Happen guarantee at Match.com.” Now that’s chutzpah.

HACKING JACK’S

[ ODD SHOTS and IDLE PENSEES Nr. 10!! (New old stuff)]

“Hacking Jack’s Fine Cigars” Sign, Futurama.

“I prefer the hands-on touch you can only get with hired goons.” Mr. Burns, Simpsons.

“God, give me strength to be what I want to be, and forgive me for being what I am.” Antonio Banderas, Desperado.

Q: What’s it like in your little dream world? A: A little humid. One nanobot to another, Jimmy Neutron.

“There’s nothing like a little bit of truth to sell a big lie.” Barnaby, MidSommer Murders.

Excessive greed precedes the collapse of civilization. Archeology hypothesis (Mayan/Roman, etc.).

No nation in history has ever escaped the consequences of its own hubris.

“Thank god we live in a country so hysterical over crime we can try a ten-year old boy as an adult.” Mr. Burns, Simpsons.

If you want fantasy, go to the movies, a singles bar, or church.

“Take Memoprove and forget memory problems!” T.V. ad. Blanks your mind?

“I don’t have time for this! I’ve got 75 shortcakes to strawberry!” Chef, Simpsons.

“Dead man’s nothing but a corpse. Nobody cares who he is now.” Sgt. Zack, Gene Evans, The Steel Helmet.

“Men fear death as children fear the dark.” Sir Francis Bacon.

“Those who seek justice, fall prey to it.” Character, The Reckoning. Tell George Bush.

“With the 14^th moon, there’s always tomorrow and hope.” Millennium Actress.

Hope never filled a soup bowl.

Sign of overpopulation: everyone walking about in headphones to find “a bit of peace,” “relief,” and “escape.”

Odd Shots and Idle Pensees #1

Magic Mountains – Resurrection Machines

The FIRST OCCASIONAL INSTALLMENT of THISSES and THATS collected over the years:

548 Primrose Lane – Robocop’s home address before all the bad stuff went down.

“The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.” – Mechanic, Repo Man.

“We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it come to us.  Even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples.  For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than the truth itself.” – al-Kindi, c.801-66

“Take Memoprove and forget memory problems!” – real T.V. ad. Blanks your mind?

Interesting (real) Historical Horse Manure:

Twenty-six handpicked men were selected from the 16^th U.S. Cavalry to find John Wilkes Booth (Abraham Lincoln’s assassin), among whom was Boston Corbett, a religious zealot and military fanatic who had castrated himself for visiting prostitutes!  Edwin Stanton had ordered Booth be taken alive.  Corbett, of course, killed him. What’s wrong with this picture?

“Even I, Lucas, have heard the legend of a man fish!” – Lucas, Creature from the Black Lagoon.

“Ninety percent of things without backbones come alive in the darkness.” – no, not neoconservative republicans, starfish echinoids.  Ocean dwellers.

Ancient Greeks: To sin = “to miss the mark” – can be high or low.  Sin is not living up to, or being who you are.

Dead, uncorrupted saints make good listeners.

In ancient China they didn’t think of history as the past, but now, and in the future too, so it all blurred or blended in one unending flow, beginning, middle, and end.  In the West history is neatly compartmented with dividing lines between epochs and eras.  The Chinese View had us live in the stream as part of the stream; the Western Way allows us to cut off the past from relevance in our present, and as an influence on our future.  We can forget time in a sense and float in a bubble, separate from time and space, in it, but not of it.  The Western view, in this, as in religion and everything else in life, divorces us from connection to the rest of Creation and instead makes us little gods, capable of managing and directing our own fate, of manipulating the universe to our exclusive human ends – even if it kills us.  Conclusion: the Western Way is a confusion of our actual stature in the universe, and hazardous to our health. Modern China is definitely finding that out.

Note: Feeling loss of identity?  Eager to believe in something, anything?  You’re prime fodder for cults.

Edward Gibbon writes that it’s less difficult to invent a fictitious story than to support a practical fraud.  It is the character of falsehood to be loose and inconsistent.  The most incredible parts of the legend are smoothed and softened by minions or apologists.  Religion depends upon credulity and craftiness, which insensibly corrode the vital principles of virtue and veracity.  The useful prejudice, which has obtained the sanction of time and opinion produces the effect of truth.  People in the heat of religious faction are apt to despise the profane virtues of sincerity and moderation.

I oppose all –isms.  Isms polarize people and imperil the world.  I prefer democracy, which cannot be made into an –ism.  How could it be when one universal idea admits all ideas?  I realize that that makes democracy inherently messy, but I prefer its disorder over the violence, persecution, and oppression of any of its alternatives – all of which, are –isms.

“It’s hotter than a Fox News weather skank.” – Ned Flanders (!), Simpsons.

“God, the original Tony Soprano.” – church sign, Simpsons.

Parzival by Wolfram Von Eisenbach, 13^th century C.E.  Much ado about fabrics, flags, one’s place at the table, head-busting by foolish men for foolish ladies, and the romantic search for the fabulous grail – the holiest snipe hunt for the silliest prize: the Americas-Stanley-Wimbledon cup of immortality available only for unblemished boobery.

“He’d paid his debt to joy, his life was but a dying.” – Wolfram Eisenbach, Parzival.

Dey vas dese two crummy kids – rotten dey vas – runnin’ aboud nekkid, und fornicatin’.  Dey vent und eat all der fruit offen der tree, und dere vas gonna be no pie!  Der girl – hoo-vay – she vas a stinker dat tink she know ever thang, und snippet der papa.  Sonny vas joost a big putz, und it vas too much vor der ault papa.  Hoo-vay, dey godda go, vat’s da big loss?  Nuttin’!   Und der papa Yah-vey said, “Ged da fugg out mine garden!” Und, dat vas just da vay it vas.  Dey is outen de platz.  Phooie!

“Ve ver in der bunker, und der fuehrer vas goin’ nutsy, und ve used to call him der Nutsy Nazi.” – imagined dialog for End the Third Reich Already History Channel Show.

“They have to find a way to institutionalize the existing situation so they don’t have to fix it.” – insight on too many political debates.

People, books, and things come into our lives for a reason.  It’s up to us to figure out why.

And it came to pass that someone passed gas, and all were offended.

“There’s never been anything like it.” – Shaq, speaking for Icy Hot.

Pain is an itch we can’t scratch.  All life is pain in the Buddhistic sense.  Its temporal fleeting nature is a constant bitter sweetness, forever a tear on the edge of beauty, a sigh on the cusp of grief.  We only get it for a moment, and sitting in silence, alone, we can feel its presence somewhere, always within, always informing, if we will it so.

The prissy spellcheck: I typed “bullcrap,” it wanted me to use: “bull rap,” “bullyrag,” or “fulcra.”  I don’t see how “fulcra” can even remotely echo or apply, unless used to fling the bullcrap.

Nietzsche:

“The philosopher can attain to truth by his reason and can live by it, but not all human beings are philosophers and able to grasp the truth directly.  Most can attain to it only through symbols.”

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