Life is a Hoot, er?

April 6, 2023 11:20pm

We pulled the fiber at Cardinal today and terminated the Cat 6 drops. We quit about 6:15 and went to Hooters for dinner. I had not stepped foot in a Hooters for many years and it felt like decades had passed. The decor was dated, the other old guys in there to ogle the waitresses were geriatric characters in need of a Viagra fix and even the young girls seemed like tired old whores whose sparkle was dimmed by the dingy surroundings that are life in the confused 2020’s.

We don’t know anything any longer: not what a woman is, not how to respond to sickness, not the many ways the middle class is suffering so that both ends of the socio-political spectrum can take, not why we lie about most every part of our lives, not why we must constantly flirt with wars we should avoid. No, we have enough on our own plate – it’s humble pie and we will be eating every bite very, very soon. The rest of the world now knows the emperor has no clothes and all that remains is to see the consequences of that recognition.

So, the mothers-to-be working at the Hooters don’t know what’s coming their way but it won’t be pleasant or profitable as America continues its slow decline into chaos and mediocrity.

One Thousand Lives

April 8, 2023 1:20pm

We have family coming for an early Easter dinner. The crucifixion yesterday and the resurrection tomorrow. People (most at least) need hope; defeating death is about as hopeful as you can get. But don’t despair, if you don’t make it, you’ll never know! Just get ready for that part where you finally let go. Then, it’s easy. Plus, there are benefits; no need to worry about all those little needling chores and obligations you kept putting off all those years! All gone. All gone! They won’t be dragging behind you like Marley’s chains. The links between you and your prior life are broken and forgotten.

Happy You!

How many lifetimes would you have to live to get everything just as you wanted it? How often would the unexpected thwart your plans? Each new life comes with its own tribulations and gains in one area are offset by loss in others. Best to give up those dreams and just accept the life you were given! Amor fati.

Impact

April 10, 2023 9:20am

A few days ago, I was returning home after an infrequent day of work. It was evening – just about sundown. the entire northwestern sky was ablaze with orange luminous clouds. It looked like the whole horizon was on fire. They say that’s what happened when the asteroid hit Yucatan 65 million years ago killing the dinosaurs and most of the species existing then.

Simulations show that a half billion people would die immediately if that impact occurred today. The dust, debris, and water vapor in the air would block the sun for years after impact, killing all remining organisms larger than a cat.

So, we’re back to a beginning. Think about that next time you see a beautiful sunset and ask yourself what’s really important.

Belief vs. Desire to Belive?

April 15, 2023 8:43PM

I could have been sitting before a screen watching someone’s version of our existence…. instead, I’m sitting in a hanging chair on a barn porch listening to songbirds and watching the alignment of clouds forming a musical notation to the libretto of the birds. The bough on the tree 10′ from me sways to the rhythm of the universe I’ve chosen to observe. In the distance, beyond the trees at the horizon, geese raise a cacophony indicative of an internecine conflict bordering on a coup. Soon, it abates, and the songbirds resume their tribute to life. This picture so perfect, I could wish for no better accompaniment to the life I lead. I can no more understand its complexity than I can translate the confusion of the geese in their tribal conflict, but I can, with certainty, conclude that all is well in the personal universe of my life. What better entertainment is available to the human? The temperature mild, the sky cloudy and luminous, the birds in song. It probably doesn’t get any better…. yet, in my mind, I know the denouement. I feel in my hand, a textured surface. I hear in my ear the mechanical click. I know what’s coming. It’s what was always coming, regardless of good times or bad. Regardless of anything – it was always coming.

Now, I’m reading the Diaries of Witold Gombrowicz. My first impression was that he was a narcissist of the first degree –he seemed to believe that he was superior to everyone. Only he was privy to the truth of existence. Then, I came upon his description of a correspondent who wrote the following:

“Of course, I don’t want to know anything, anything, anything at all. I just want to believe …. One can believe only if one wants to believe and only if one nurtures one’s belief…. yes, for not only must one believe, but one must also believe that one must believe. One must have faith in faith.”

Gombrowicz wrote the following: “The father of this woman simply believed, without the prefatory exertion. But she has first to “want to believe, in order to believe, her faith becomes an exertion. When God stops revealing himself to the Catholic woman and she has to create him for herself, don’t we fall from heaven to earth? This revealed faith has begun, therefore, along with all other human ideas, it’s march to its sources. So even with this approach, truth is not as great an obstacle to understanding as the will, the desire to impose a certain canon onto oneself, in order to be somebody specific, in order to be somebody…… those who want to believe differ very much from those who believe.” – Witold Gombrowicz

Understand this truth before you go any further on your journey: “THOSE WHO WANT TO BELEIVE DIFFER VERY MUCH FROM THOSE WHO BELEIVE.”

This is an ultimate truth. Understand which camp you’re in before you proceed.

Theft and Sophistry

April 17, 2023 8:29am

Saturday, we stopped at Harbor Freight to look for a battery charger. Walking through the parking lot, I noticed a black plastic box below the passenger door of a truck. I assumed it had fallen out unnoticed when someone exited the vehicle. I picked it up and considered taking it into the store to find the owner. Then I realized there was a young black man sitting in the truck watching. I motioned to him to take the socket set and he opened the door with a wan smile and took the tools. Only later did I theorize that he had shoplifted the sockets and dropped them from under his coat as we pulled in.

Honest people subsidize criminals every day. Not only does our government ride these honest beasts of burden to death but corporations bill the honest to recover the losses to the criminals. What would the world look like if everyone was honest?

I started down a rabbit hole into post-structural philosophy before asking myself again, what benefit to society? Those who spend their entire lives developing esoteric systems of thought have little effect on those who build and maintain a civilization. These intellects gather to impress with their erudition, make no contribution to real progress, and bicker over who is the smartest among them. Human weaknesses honor no credentials, afflicting the intelligentsia and the masses equally. Only the wise of both groups have hope of overcoming our bestial nature, innate frailty, and baser emotions.

Camden Burials

April 24, 2023, 11:44am

Woke up at 5am and entertained thoughts which seemed worthy of writing and now are lost. We spent the weekend in Camden, SC at a commemoration/reinterment of 14 combatants who died in this revolutionary war battle. August 16, 1780, in a sandy forest of long-leaf pines, these boys and men were killed in action. Twelve were patriots, one was Native American, and one was a Scottish Highlander. The Americans lost the battle, so the graves were all hastily dug and very shallow. The remains lingered there in the battlefield until located months ago. They were exhumed, analyzed and respectfully reinterred with military honors. A detachment of Scotch soldiers came to participate along with the US military, the Sons of the American Revolution, and reenactors from the Continental Line. I marched in the parade as a SAR member, attended the funeral, and the battlefield memorial. So cynical that I rarely become emotional, I felt the wave wash over me as the speaker said that the fallen boys in their teens were boys in age only but warriors in spirit. What drove them to risk life on that battlefield? Most would say love of liberty but life is not simple and we cannot know their motives. Nevertheless, they died and I mourn their loss. Four hundred more graves lie in the sandy forest floor, their occupants may never be found but the sacrifice is real.

Artificial Stupidity

April 25 2023 9:30am

The Biden Administration moves to formulate policy on digital currency. Couple this with the concern over AI and you have a recipe for disaster. But there may be a silver lining. If (big if)! AI can be structured to follow logic, with NO competing bias, we might be surprised by the outcome. Using only honest, hard data, AI might recommend that politicians actually create a balanced budget, follow the constitution regarding declarations of war, and treat all Americans as equals. It might recognize that many social policies do not have the desired outcome, and that lower expectations for minority students might make us feel good in the short term but have disastrous consequences in the long run. It might conclude that defunding the police when less than 20 unarmed blacks are killed per year, is not a productive policy. It might show that overall crime rates are lower in states and cities that support the 2nd amendment. We can’t know what will happen, but it may not be as catastrophic as we fear!

On the other hand, humans treated like data points may end up feeling like government chattel that can be discarded as needed when the cost of “ownership” becomes too high.

Integrated Circuits

April 28, 2023 9:09pm

Molten metal I make, I create. Vulcan in my underworld of misbegotten understanding. A half-moon and Venus hovering. Goddess of …. something we made up to give life meaning. A dream deferred: what was it we wanted? The hand of God stretching to lift us to some higher plane? We are just a daydream of God who reclines on a divan in the far outer realms of creation. Others, more advanced occupy his thoughts mostly, but the savages here on Earth occasionally come to mind. The brutality and bestial nature of these backward primitives sometimes entertains him. Will their consciousness rise to the next level, or will they regress to their tribal ancestry? Time will tell. It reveals all. Eternity beckons to all who grasp mortality. it is the gold ring of awareness. Don’t want to cease to exist? There’s only one remedy and you can’t have it.

Golden light of forge fires play on long limbs of illusion. Captured mind submits to the propaganda of procreation. The weak-willed reject the truth of the eons of biological reproduction- falling prey to the lies of those who would remake the world.

Humans easily swayed believe the subtle iniquities of the serpent that slowly tightens the coils, squeezing out all opposing narrative. The constriction driving out the logic, rationality, and objective reason until all that is left is the lie. There may be no God, but man is not a candidate for that position. Gnothi Seauton.

Our cities look like integrated circuits from above. Maybe we are only the electrons deciding the fate of some universal crypto currencies.