We must love living on the edge of our seats.  Look at even the most benign reality show, for example. It’s about bakeries, which is not the most likely spot to get capped. Yet the show is titled “Cupcake Wars”, as if employees show up each morning at three packing heat and wearing Kevlar.  No matter how innocuous the concept, it’ll be tarted up to emphasize some extreme nature.  Because the corporate minds have decided that we need some cheap thrills in our otherwise dreary existence. We’ve become, for many of us, a society fueled on NASCAR, Ultimate Fighting, and Mega Energy drinks.

Should you ask The Good Doctor for his considered diagnosis, I would tell you that emotive imperative is behind all of the television scheduling, and for that matter all of the current political brinkmanship.  The only thing missing from these fools on the Hill is for one of the GOP Congressional Leaders to start some serious bodice ripping. Richmond, VA’s Eric Cantor crushing his own glasses before engaging in a cold-from-beyond-the-grave chuckle. Everyone with a dog in the game is gangsta, yo.

Not just President Obama, who’s looking more and more not so much a modern Fredrick Douglas as he is a reborn Bruce Lee, stretching a set of policy numchuks over some poor opponent while he works that lower jaw and neck into a contortion of hyper extended muscle mass while he stifles a primal howl. Nancy Pelosi is a badass sistah as well, swooping down on the unsuspecting with the elegance that comes with a well-executed Kung Fu fight utilizing wirework.  John Boehner, despite his unfortunate moniker, and while not as wiry as his steel cage match-ups, is using the only mutant power he has, his emotion, as a milder sonic tsunami to score his points.  Crikey, even Harry Reed is coming on like the door-to-door Britannica salesman who night owls as a stealthy assassin.  All this effort is just to please about twenty to thirty, thirty-five percent of the American public.  And to placate the people who pay so handsomely for their services, of course.  Both the over the counter and the under the counter tabs, because when the under the counter IOUs come due, Dear Readers, I’ll tell you, there’s just no messing about with the principle owed or the interest it generates for the note holder.

Back to the lucky population segment for whom all this drama is directed, though.  Those junk food fueled, lowest common denominator stimulus activated, Broca brain directed mass of malcontents who are making the public wheel squeak. For forty years or so, as the nature of education was disdained, then derided, and ultimately dismissed; as the carriers of news and information over the public airwaves were bought up, de-funded, retrained to chase shiny objects or their own tails, and finally genetically modified into a source for riveting newscasts rivaled only by Great Aunt Lola’s Branson vacation slide show.  It helps things along, natch, when the Congress decided to revoke the policy once known as ‘The Fairness Doctrine’, which took the ludicrous position that one shouldn’t tell monkey crazy lies on radio and TV and get away with it.  Bullet Point: You wouldn’t believe the wacky stuff you can get away with saying when you’re unaccountable for it.

So picture this:  here’s a bunch of folks and they’re getting as squirmy as a cat being given a veterinary shot over the fact their unemployment is almost (or long) gone; their spouse, who’s on disability from a serious medical condition exacerbated by their former workplace, whose idea of safety equipment was a butterfly kiss for each shift worker, and who would still be complaining about it to their work buddies, if the jobs hadn’t been sent to the Argentinean Pampas for the US tax breaks.  Op top of that, maybe these aforementioned folks have other kin sharing living space, whose disability is more a matter of vocational choice rather than medical necessity. And when there’s health care involved, that just raises the stakes, not just for the well being of the citizen and consumer, but also for the various business interests making a profit off of said walking cellular bags of water.

You definitely don’t want them standin’ on the pavement, thinking about their situation, At the same time, though, you need something really major to keep distracting them, because no matter how many kettles of corn chips and cans of Dew they consume, sooner or later their minds will inevitably come around to those most basic of human urges – security and safety. And it’s best to run the distractions in waves – one from here, another from there. That’s what’s great about ‘Murrkins: We like to wade.  We enjoy dipping our fingers and toes into the cool mushy tidal sand of packaging and propaganda, especially if we think it makes us sexy.

So what is bigger than an honest-for-real National Economic crisis? It’s pretty much the gift that keeps giving; distraction wise, as every response and counter response breathes life into new cosmic strands of distraction.  Best of all, if your PAC plays its cards right, you can stretch your crisis out for a much longer time span than it might survive on its own. Stomping the floor and acting like a spoiled brat, rather than the time out or swift whap on the butt (open handed, please) those behaviors typically prompt, can inspire scores of one’s followers to see them as brave and principled. Go figure.

So, if over the next short era of history, whenever you witness these actions from the people we entrust running this multi-trillion dollar global enterprise, with a side dish of “tsk-tsking” and/or shoulder-patting from the Tribes of the Aligned Talking Heads, and they’re not talking about how to make your life more secure and healthy, just remind yourself: “It’s Only A Game” Well, it’s only a game to these mugs, that is.

While The Good Doctor was still a mere whip of a snapling, I was taught the most basic American hymns in school, all the ones prominent in words and ideas of notions like “freedom” and “liberty’ – with a more or less healthy underscore of good old Judeo-Christian (emphasis on the latter) values.  Not that I’m jackerwauling concerning those events, mind you, I enjoyed them at the time and to this day, under the right discreet time and sensible place, they bring a simple enjoyment to The Good Doctor’s heart, such as it is..  And it’s those things that come to mind when considering the State of Things today.

First off, we’re living in Bully Times.  I don’t mean a Teddy Roosevelt type hail-fellow and Noblesse oblige approach to the political theatre, where you invariable follow up the word “Bully” with a strong “Huzzah!”; I mean it in the roughish and coarse way – these are the times, and really have been since even before a date became a noun ten years past, when devotees of the most sordid and vile practitioner of that school of tradition that inspires its alumni to take what ever they want with no thought to the consequence to anyone or any thing else that happened to be unfortunate enough to be in the same reality, or to even feel the urge to be polite about it.  Folks who wear mean like a smart summer suit.   Add to that the observation that this attitude has sprung up among the governing and media crowd like roaches in a ground floor flat, and you’ve got Bully Times.  Now when I was still that little’un mentioned earlier, another part of that code, emphasized by both myth and movie, was that you stand up against bullies and help protect them whut’s being picked on. Regardless of whether It was Mark Twain. Frank Capra, or Opie Taylor, you didn’t let bullies flourish.  Nowadays they’re running their own media empires. Go figure.   Yet these people heard the same stories when growing up – many are contemporaries in one or another or more, and likely have enough common experiences to engage some empathy.  Then again; Nope. For these specimens of the human endeavor, “freedom” has a different meaning; this class of citizens believes they should have the freedom from answering to or making amends to any other citizen that they disenfranchise, never mind the flavor.  They see a type of person they’ve had to toady up to, and the more presidios & powerful you are, the higher up the status chain, the fancier are your toads.  So it is we as a nation seem to have come to this crossroad of self conception; whether we were led or just stumbled here are the details for historians and bards to savor in a future time; our dope slapDope Slap question today:  Do we really want to become a nation of bullies?  I mean, sure there’s a cheap satisfaction to inadequately fill the hole in one’s soul, but the joke Goddess Karma plays on them is they become dependant on the very people they would rather just have in their life when they want somebody to shove.

While The Good Doctor was still a mere whip of a snapling, I was taught the most basic American hymns in school, all the ones prominent in words and ideas of notions like “freedom” and “liberty’ – with a more or less healthy underscore of good old Judeo-Christian (emphasis on the latter) values.  Not that I’m jackerwauling concerning those events, mind you, I enjoyed them at the time and to this day, under the right discreet time and sensible place.  And it’s those things that come to mind when considering the State of Things today.

First off, we’re living in Bully Times.  I don’t mean a Teddy Roosevelt type hail-fellow and Noblesse oblige approach to the political theatre, where you invariable follow up the word “Bully” with a strong “Huzzah!” I mean it in the roughish and coarse way – these are the times, and really have been since even before a date became a noun ten years past, when devotees of the most sordid and vile practitioner of that school of tradition that inspires its alumni to take what ever they want with no thought to the consequence to anyone or any thing else that happened to be unfortunate enough to be in the same reality, or to even feel the urge to be polite about it.  Folks who wear mean like a smart summer suit.

Add to that the observation that this attitude has sprung up among the governing and media crowd like roaches in a ground floor flat, and you’ve got Bully Times.  Now when I was still that little’un mentioned earlier, another part of that code, emphasized by both myth and movie, was that you stand up against bullies and help protect them whut’s being picked on. Regardless of whether it was Mark Twain. Frank Capra, or Opie Taylor, you didn’t let bullies flourish.  Nowadays they’re running their own media empires. Go figure.   Yet these people heard the same stories when growing up – many are contemporaries in one or another or more, and likely have enough common experiences to engage some empathy.  Then again; Nope.

For these specimens of the human endeavor, “freedom” has a different meaning; this class of citizens believes they should have the freedom from answering to or making amends tin any other citizen that they disenfranchise, never mind the flavor.  They see a type of person they’ve had to toady up to, and the more presidios & powerful you are, the higher up the status chain, the fancier are your toads.  So it is we as a nation seem to have come to this crossroad of self conception; whether we were led or just stumbled here are the details for historians and bards to savor in a future time; our Dope Slap Question today:  Do we really want to become a nation of bullies?  I mean, sure there’s a cheap satisfaction to inadequately fill the hole in one’s soul, but the joke Goddess Karma plays on them is they become dependant on the very people they would rather just have in their life when they want somebody to shove.

Of course, all of this could be moot if it turns out it’s all a by-product of our fervent subliminal psychic connection by which we all invested in manifesting this realm- sorta similar to either Jung’s concepts of the unconscious collective, if you have delicate sensibilities, or the Matrix, if you’re more intravenous tubing and placental goo oriented.  If that’s the case, then we could resolve many issues, much less a current one I could name which focuses on giving reality to a number so big it nears a mythical rank usually reserved for winged horses.  Even there, though, one wonders if it isn’t time to simply visualize “honorable” and ‘considerate’ and then, having seen them, manifest them. Teddy Roosevelt would likely approve.

http://kenyanbirthcertificategenerator.com/6b6d3dd41e21e364e572a025d87ecd69

With all the redoubt in the world today, the Murr’kinn Electorate have evidenced this redoubt by electing a cadre of Birthers and Conspiratorialist representatives to the House and even some to the Senate.  This lists includes Rand Paul of Kentucky, who doubts evolution, the role of community support and resource commitment for the aged and needy in our society, and whether equality is all it’s cut out to be. He’s now a US Senator at the US Capitol, where , since his dad is a veteran policy maker who wields a broad scimitar of influence in certain conservative circles, Rand will be assigned the Committee to Procure Ice.  In such times it would be folly to even discuss in a fleeting manner anything as mundane as cleaning.

And yet

There are three basic levels of cleanliness where visitors are concerned.  There’s the ‘Just Us Folks” level, where things are straight, more or less, with a minimal evidence of cobgoblins, which are ferretous elusive creatures of ephemeral sweet dreams and cat hair.  This population level of cobgoblins may reflect the need for eventual vacuuming or dusting, though at a glance things don’t appear too bad , as long as it’s just us folks.

The next level is the ‘Newspaper’ level.  One could substitute ‘Gas Meter Reader”, or ‘special Delivery Person’, but where’s there’s a chance you’ll let some things go for one or more of that particular strata of guest, it quick as a second thought vanishes, because if a newspaper reporter is coming over – bode-deh!  You’ll spiffy up right quick.

The next more involved level is “Health Department”, which I suppose should be fairly self explanatory, unless I’m being paid by the word.

I could, of course, connect them all through cute little filmed segments, the way movie short features used to do in compilations like ‘The Passing Parade’, which featured short films on various subjects.  One for example, used  dubiously accurate historical vignettes about the origin of the rhyme ” When The Bough Breaks’ the story of John Peter Zenger, and the always gripping fancifulness of ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ to demonstrate the back story meaning of their presence in the Bill of Rights, and so influenced who knows how many present day pundits and Fux Noose Commentators, by pointing out that we have a sound Constitutional system via a parable that also informed the youth of America in the post WWII period that they could say whatever ever they want,regardless of how historically accurate it was, print it, and not be treated with cruel or unusual punishment – hey, maybe you can even run your own network!  Certainly, as evidenced in recent Murr’kinn campaigns, short term leasing remains a viable option.

Further,  The Good Doctor, infused with the Birther movement’s call to rewrite history and their work in renaming official state forms. has decided that the time has come for a new movement to ask the President to supply documentation that he was created in this universe.

After all, heathen scientists tell us that there are parallel realities, connected by cosmic strings that touch other realities and who knows what kind of socialist mania they reflect, especially considering the possibility of anti-universes

Not that I don’t have tea and sympathy pains for these brave cherubs who, like Atlas, have decided to take on the challenge of moving worlds; however, in this case they have chosen to wrestle reality.  It’s a very human moment to feel that first unrequited emotional outreach, the lack of recognition of heart’s humanity or being authenticated by it.  The moment we believe what we believe because, dad gum it, we believe it, and rationality and common sense be damned.  The annals of music and story are laden with premises based on that one aspect of humanity.  It usually takes entering into a different level of maturity  to gain the nuance that things, while not always seeming to be what we think they are, are what they are, and so it goes (Thanks Kurt).

The side note may be that Birthers, representing a mass occurrence of this phenomenon,  are representing humanity’s maturity into a wiser species.  Not because Birthers are the end result; but because they stand for a type of evolutionary event that, in a spiritual way, parallels what happened when humans realized everything wasn’t in shades of. black and white and that nuance and color will ever be an integral part of the ride.

Yes, nubbins, it has been way too long since you have been subjected to the verbal whims and supposed wit of The Good Doctor; this was a delay that could not be avoided.   However, things amiss are now aright,  so Bob’s your Uncle.  From time to time this recent  Medical Adventure will be referenced, so keep your chops licked (or your licks chopped), your ticket ready for validation, and some ‘splainin’ will be explained.

My attention, though is on other matters.  Jeremy Rifkin references a growing movement in science to examine the genetic components to empathy in a recent column. This is a welcome development.  You see, scientists are on the prowl for the genetic component that encourages, if not allows, empathy.

An tail-chasing pursuit, one might say.  Why,  you might as well try to define the genetic structure of intuition as determine why empathy exists. Or try to determine if there is a genome that underlies the ephemeral ability we humans. attempting to define the breadth of its reach in a single word. called ‘Magick’.

While you might not find twelve (or thirteen) folks in a gaggle of onlookers who would openly claim to believe in magick, you might as easily find that many who believe in the power of prayer, so what is the difference between prayer and spell-casting beyond the semantics?

Let us see,; where has the meter moved recently?  The Good Doctor will take three examples for contemplation, two of which occurred on what is typically considered Sanctuary, the grounds of a church.

In July of 2008 in Knoxville, TN. Jim David Adkinson, driven by what he considered to be the Liberalism of the Unitarian Universalist faith, went to a children’s performance at the church and opened fire with a 12 gauge shotgun, killing toe and wounding several others.  In a letter Adkinson expected to be printed after he was to be gunned down by police (which did not happen;parishoners disarmed and held him until police arrived), he noted or only his disdain toward ‘liberal’ policy initiatives, such as welfare.  He also complained that his food stamps were about to be cut.  As to the destructive policies of liberals and the Unitarian faith, I point out that Unitarians believe in a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” and spiritual growth.

Adkinson, unable to shoot his intended targets, which would be the leaders of the Democratic party and other public figures noted in books by Bernard Goldberg and Bill O’Reilly, instead settled in shooting up a children’s church performance.

In April of this year, Richard Poplawski ambushed a Pittsburgh, PA patrol unit responding to a 911 call by Poplawski’s mother, who was trying to have her son removed from her house.  In the shootout that followed, three police officers were killed by Poplawski’s automatic weapon and two more were wounded.  In the aftermath, it was noted that the conservative bloviator Glen Beck had told his audience that President Obama was planning to take the guns away, which Poplawski had in turn told freinds, and that he posted to a white supremacist web site a You Tube link to an segment Beck did where Beck disavowed “FEMA concentration camps”.

Most recently, a Wichita , KS doctor proving abortion services, George Tiller, was gunned on May 31 as he stood in the lobby of the church where his wife and daughter were attending services inside.

Let me make an aside at this point to share my views on aborting a fetus. I daresay, if I were a woman, in most situations, I would likely not have one. Neither can I say there are no circumstances where I would consider the procedure. My wife would not have an abortion (Edit: Upon hearing this, my beloved spouse, practical woman that she is, pointed out that if she were “raped by some freakish creature with two heads and three arms”, she would indeed have the fetus aborted under those circumstances).. While I have friends who have had the procedure, in none of their situations was the decision made lightly, cavalierly or without great soul wrenching contemplation.  The only moral position I am sure of is that I am supremely unqualified to tell another human being how to approach such a traumatic crossroad, as I am unqualified to tell someone whether to engage in patient assisted suicide in the face of a terminal disease.  I know, love, and respect kith and kin on both sides of the philosophical arguments concerning terminating a pregnancy. and I will not tell them they are right or wrong, simply because I am not omniscient.

This moral reluctance does not seem to strike Mr. O’Reilly, who has referred many times of the years to Dr. Tiller in the most incindiary fashion,

The astute reader may have by now observed my thread of logic here, which is the presence of firebrands such as O’Reilly, Beck, Michael Savage or Rush Limbaugh in inspiring horrendous acts of mayhem and violence.  These people, and others, have made a cottage industry of stoking the flames of intolerance, hatred, and interpersonal bile under the premise of patriotism or moral superiority.  While I am sure there are those on the left guilty of such behavior, frankly, they don’t seem to have the platform that has been provided to these minions of malice.  The only lefty firebrand who comes easily to mind is Keith Olbermann, and I have never heard him advocate for anything worser than criminal trials for the political and social miscreants he regularly focuses on.  While these right wing hosts say they do not incite people who are already unbalanced to commit homegrown terrorism, neither can they reasonable say they do not go to the edge when they suggest that the country is under attack by liberals and left leaning public figures.

So it is time, I think, to call these people on their garbage. Not necessarily by phoning into their shows or writing letters to their producers; no, they will either hang up or refuse to acknowledge any position other than their own.  Perhaps the strongest message is by using good old capitalism, contacting their sponsors and host stations and making it clear that you can no longer buy those products or support those services advertised on programs that implicitly advocate violence and hate against fellow citizens.  Contact your representatives and let them know that if they support this kind of hate speech, you can no longer support their reelection for public office.

If enough people take the air out of these windbags, think how much cleaner our skies will be,

crossposted

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During his time in office, in 1982, Ronald Reagan famously predicted “we might see Armageddon in our life time.” Of course, he also said, “facts are a stupid thing”; so one may take his utterances within some context.

So it comes as no surprise that ‘The Great Communicator’ had his finger on the public’s pulse concerning the end times. Certainly, whatever else one can say about the man’s abilities to gloss over inconvenient facts, such as that whole Constitutionally awkward Iran-Contra brouhaha, he took a better pulse than The Good Doctor, who more often than not measures his own pulse when trying to gauge public metabolism.

Which brings us to today’s round about topic, the Mayan Calendar, which began with the Fifth Great Cycle in 3114 BC and is scheduled to end in about three and a half years, on December 21, 2012.  Nearly anywhere you throw a Google you’ll run across a link warning of global extinction, evolutionary disaster, cross breeding between cats and dogs, and other troublesome boo-boos.  There are entire cottage industries making a living fear mongering off the omens, celestial and otherwise, which concern more and more humans.

What are some of the omens of this coming upheaval?  Well, you listen to some of the delightful and very nearly sane individuals roaming gun shows across this great land and they’ll tell you straight up that the election of Barack Obama is right up there at the top of the list.  These are the same people who calmly assert that dinosaurs and Neanderthals co-existed and that dinosaur bones were buried on purpose by perky evolutionists and consider Glen Beck and his ilk a calm rational voice, so their cognitive skills are clear to see.  So concerned are these advocates of law and order that the American President will take away their guns that one of them, Richard Poplawski, gunned down three Peace Officers in Pittsburgh in April after listening to the aforementioned Beck, Savage and others.

So determined are these devotees to protect The American Way that they are quite willing to decimate the parts of the Bill of Rights that don’t apply to gun owning white Christians. Moreover, so enamored are the true believers of the nation that in addition to placing magnets exhorting passers-by to “support the troops” and displaying bumper stickers that warn weak kneed neer-do-wells to “Love America or Leave It”, nearly thirty percent of state residents who define their political affiliation as republican are either ambivalent towards or in favor of seceding from the United States. Not unlike a political Schrödinger’s Cat, these folks both want to love America and leave it before the 2012 box is opened. What swell patriots they are.

Add to this apocalyptic equation the recent results of a survey by a Harvard professor named Robert Putnam, who says his research indicates that the percentage of youth who defined their religious affiliation as “none” had jumped from between five to ten percent to between thirty to forty percent. The fact is that many polls, when they address the question of church attendance, focus on religions centered around the Children of Abraham, that is, followers of Christian, Jewish, or Muslim faiths.  Other seekers of a spiritual path are usually funneled into the category of “Other/No Affiliation”, which means that if you practice Shinto or Wicca, Buddhism or a Native American path, you’re just SOL.  Speaking of alternate faiths and 2012 prophecies, Hindu prophecy, which uses a calendar amazingly similar to the Mayan calendar, states that 2012 might well see the start of a five thousand year Golden Age for humanity. One may scoff, though who are we to heckle Lord Krishna?

In other news, I note that once again I have missed “Taser Your Sons and Daughters at Work Day”.  However, former guard Walter Schmidt of the Franklin Corrections Institution in Florida is thankfully on the ball. In order to demonstrate “what a day at work is like”, and after asking parents for permission to do so, Mr. Schmidt demonstrated the power of a fully operational death star – I correct myself, a 50,000 volt taser on the assembled nubbins.  According to the winsome Walter, “the big shock came when I got fired.”

As was pointed out earlier, facts are a stupid thing. Who knew common sense was as well?

Now, if you will excuse The Good Doctor, I go back to practicing my Google tossing.

(cross-posted)

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Ah, entitlement!  What a comfy world it is to live in.  I have in-laws and step daughters, who I dearly love, who complain about the entitlement programs of welfare, and not without justification.  An examination of British and American welfare societies may well demonstrate the inherent flaws of a system which does not provide equity for work done compared to monies earned.  I am not not sociologist enough to intelligently and thoroughly assess whether such programs work over the long term, nor am I considering programs such as educational grants, housing assistance, or disability payments, which in and of themselves are a tar pit to wade through.  Speaking from professional experience from many years working in human services, I have seen folks who were extremely entitled to such payments, and from anecdotal experience watching the wise crone Judge Judy Sheindlin, I have seen folks clearly playing the dozens to get what they felt they were entitled to.

Then we come to the well heeled and their sense of entitlement.  An anonymously penned column from a “TARP wife” laments the loss of the lifestyle of conspicuous consumption the correspondent had become accustomed to,  like leaving every light in the house on.  She Who Once carried bags from whatever trendy fashion shopping temple was on the must have list now puts items in less chi-chi containers to not stand out in the (largely unemployed) crowd she moves among.  She calls watching ‘Law and Order’ reruns a “Guilty Pleasure” that sorta kinda makes up for evenings at the Metropolitan Opera.  She, to her partial credit, is adjusting to a newer fresher life that more closely reflects the hundreds of thousands of other people whom her husband’s business and social ilk helped to cripple economically.  If she didn’t treat her experience like a camping trip where one roughs it, it might be more palatable to feel some empathy for her position.  On the other hand, I live in an area where for the last decade or more, workers who made a living in manufacturing have been discarded as a result of business professionals (not unlike her husband), whose approach to short selling stocks bankrupted companies right, left, and center in thoroughly legal efforts to maximize profits and bonuses on the backs of workers who will never see the lobby of the Met, no matter how much of the score of ‘Carmen’ they might hum to themselves as they work.  I fret for poor Miz Biffy; really I do.

Politicians, or course, take the Gold, Silver, and frequently Bronze when it comes to a sense of entitlement.  Regardless of the political party or ideaology, many feel that they are free to carry out their wildest schemes or kinkiest dreams.  If I took the time just to note the Elliot Spitzers or David Vitters, Rod Blagojevichs or Larry Craigs of the recent past, my keyboard would weep from the stress positions.  Speaking of stress positions, how’s that for the ultimate sense of entitlement?  So convinced were the disloved Emperor Chimpus Maximus, Sith Lord Shotgunnus Dickus, and their Flying Monkey Minions that the baddie Saddam Hussein was connected with the eeeee-vile Osama Bin Laden, that even after their best intelligence experts informed them that, no, not so much, instead mentioning that, after all, it was Saudis behind the controls of the planes, even after all of that data was provided to their pointed little heads, they insisted that they were right, dammit, and that if legal interrogation wouldn’t give them the “facts” they wanted, then maybe something a little more . . . . extreme was called for.

One can only imagine the Sith Lord Shotgunnus Dickus, resting from his past time of deep frying live kittens, tapping his fingers together, stylin’ like Ming the Merciless, remembering his bedtime story collection “A Child’s Garden Of Fingernail Removal” and how totalitarian gubbmints from Soviet Russia to North Korea would entice false confessions from soldiers by using, ahem, extreme interrogation techniques.  Did his eyes gleam as that eureka moment struck him and he realized that here, once and for all, was the surefire way to get what he was owed, was entitled to, which was the smoking gun connecting his desire to skull fuck Saddam with the heinous crime committed upon the citizens of the world at the Twin Towers ( I would humbly remind dear readers that besides the thousands of Americans lost, hundreds were from other countries, a fact which seems to elude assorted right wing windbags).  This of course, does not include the other sense of entitlement that Sith Lord has regarding his Halliburton buddies and their KBR subsidiaries who are still getting government contracts to electrocute soldiers; again, there’s only so much space to numb dear readers minds in any given post.

In the end, who carries the burden for the intellectual and economic weasels who feel so strongly this sense that they are owed something that the rest of us schulbs can only either dream of or wake up in a cold sweat from?  I’ve got mine, where’s yours?

As a postscript, I note that the Ohio Militia plans a “Million Man Militia March” for my hometown, The Last Colony, on July 4.  They cheerfully note that “The only difference from any typical demonstration is we will all be armed.“  This reminds me of a line from ‘Casablanca’, where Major Strasser asks Rick to imagine the Nazis marching through New York and asks him what he thinks.  “Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.”, Rick says gently, if not a tad condescendingly.  As well, there are parts of DC I would not suggest dragging any camo-garbed asses into, dig?

I mean, what could possibly go worng?

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The Good Doctor has, in a previous post, commented on the rise of the Rethuglican Party (or, as its hapless chairman might call it  – “Part-tay!”).

This encephalitic pin-headed mutant is scion of a once honorable and noble political and economic philosophy which once encompassed intellectuals like William Buckley, economists like Milton Friedman, and honest to Goddess public servants like Barry Goldwater. Whether one agrees with their philosophy or not (Spoiler Alert: I do not), at least they based it on some level of cognitive thinkin’, Lincoln. Now, though, Republicanism  is a tattered empty shell.  The best  mental exercise these people can currently muster, when not holding their breath like spoiled brats, is a sprawling budget proposal which summarizes thus:

And that’s after the best minds available to Rethuglicans worked on the issue.  Fortunately, Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight.com provides an idea of what the Rethuglicans intend to do for the budget in depth

Unlike an adept who might practice Vedanta meditation seeking a unique reality, the inner Brahman, instead one finds Rethugs such as Michelle Bachman, simultaneously calling Obama’s policies “Marxist” while suggesting that “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous . . . because we need to fight back.” , after which she assuaged the populace that she “was not a kook“  I know I feel so much better, thank you.

Indeed, if I were so inclined and not ready for medication, I could continue with the evidence to support my thesis, including Michael Steele’s theories of self immolation in order to provide better lighting to identify his perceived enemies within the party he chairs, or Rush Limburger’s many gob-smacking pronouncements.

No, instead, my warped sense of decency demands I not be cruel to idiot boys; at least not today . . .

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Having finally retrieved my computer from having the bad muther (shut yo mouth) But I’m just talking about my motherboard (We can dig it) replaced, I can once again provide  intellectual fanfare such as this

Ain’t technology wunnerful?

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Seven hundred years ago recycling was just as much a rage as the practice is now.  One day a monk cut up some old papyrus scraps and dutifully copied his prayer book into the reconstituted volume. One hundred years ago in Constantinople (“Been a long time gone, Constantinople; Now it’s Turkish Delight on a moonlit night“), a book hound from Denmark found the prayer book in a Constantinople library and noticed that there was, beneath the prayer book,  scribed another book whose inks had been scraped off to give the next calligraphic squatter room to work with.

The preexisting tome was a book or two written by Greek Brainiac Archimedes, where he examined ways to calculate the area and volume of  objects like eggs because sooner or later someone was going to have to be able to render items of that sort through a 3D digital format.  As a lark, Archimedes also kicked around notions of actual infinity without using a net to stop gravity from weighing in on a theorem or two.

The man was so fast he could turn out the lights and get under the covers before the room got dark, and then explain the mathematical paradigm behind the phenomenon.  Archimedes was still such a bad mammah-jammah at the age of 75 that a Roman soldier felt threatened enough to run him through with a big pointy nasty sword.  Over drawings of spheres in the sand.  There aint no easy thug life in integral calculus -a’ight?

But I digress.  There the text stood, in plain (more or less) sight for many score decades.  Just kicking dust around on the shelves, as it were.

How many wonders hidden in plain sight are just under the radar in whatever spectrum we use to stimulate our visual cortex?

For a live-time demonstration of the principle of the artifact hidden in plain sight, consider the evolution of democratic chess before our very eyes.  When the pawns create and leverage their own guild then a new wind’s blowing in, don’t ‘cha know.  This entire development of chess pieces having the capacity to challenge the player’s strategy seems to The Good Doctor as yet another example of Reverse LewisCarrollian Particularly Peculiar Particle Quantum Physics, a meta-theory suggesting that things are in fact becoming curiouser and curiouser.

Another item of evidence may be found in the presentation made at the recent AAAS Chicago conference, where attendees were told that Weird Alien Life May Exist Among Us Now!  Even though most of the suggested living spaces for this ‘shadow life’ include toxic arsenic lakes and deep sea hydrothermal vents, I will refrain from connecting them to any number of vapid rabid right wingnut lipflappers.  Why should The Good Doctor have all the fun, after all?

Still now, even one month past the Notional Presidency of our much dis-loved Emperor Chimpus Maximus, his Flying Monkey Minions try to out Dada the politics of the White King and Queen in ‘Through the Looking-Glass ‘.  Their application of the ‘Cheshire Cat’ defensive strategy (in which they would fervently hope they might disappear from public scrutiny, leaving naught but their enigmatic smile as any evidence they had even been on the premises eviscerating International Treaties, the lives and careers of covert operatives and hapless schmoes, much less the Constitution), has perhaps fallen short as as a one stop shop provider for legal alibis for Rove, Meirs, Fredo and the others as they ask us to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

Again, the actions of the aforementioned minions being another example of Things Hidden In Plain Sight (Site?), still there are other items, closer to the human condition, left hidden in plain sight.  such as
these sets of dentures found in the London Subway.

One is led to ponder what might have been; were they destined to be delivered to a war torn region to promote bicuspid peace and encourage good will, especially between a shy yet precocious whistling genius (Maybe like a Tuva Little Stevie Wonder) and an awkward though dedicated upper palate denture specialist and therapist, who can give Tuva Stevie what he’s been looking for: the operation that will allow his jaw crippled testy ol’ pa the chance to whistle just once more.

Or some poor sod realized what he was making cold calls hour after hour, and made them DIY performance art. The hybrid vigor of mis matched dental work . . . brrr; a chill just walked o’er my bones . . . perhaps a lovely picture of the evening will comfort me as I lull to sleep . .

ahhh . . . much better.

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