Fred Brighton-57

"The only true consistency is inconsistency, and true inconsistency is inconsistently inconsistent."

Brighton's Theory of '57 shook the philosophical world, and they all went down to the local pub to have a few pints of brown ale and to discuss the implications of the young philosopher's new work.

"So, in other words, the Universe could be just cooking along, doing it's thing, and then POOF it all changes, with no obvious connection between one Universe and the Next. That moment before, that last moment of the Old Order, that might have been a minute ago. But up on the top shelf of your bookcase there is a mote of dust where before there was none.

"And the names of the Demons of the Gate are Belief and Perception, And Belief wields a mighty staff to block the passage of unbelievers, Whereas Perception swings the Green Jade Sword, which alone can cut through all blocks to Knowledge and so to Wisdom."

The cat climbs onto the top of the outdoor sink and then leaps to grab the lip of the sill of the bathroom window. Then she scrambles and cries and scratches at the siding with her hind legs. Someone opens the screen and pulls the cat through, and then replaces the screen.
"Where you been, cat?"
"Me? Out."
Tch tch tch. "That's what you told me last night." The light goes out, the door closes. Now muffled:
"I'm beginning to think you ain't gonna pay back that money. I'm beginning to wonder about this friend of yours, what's his name?"
"Burt?"
"Yeah, Burt. I think I should meet this guy. Soon. Like this afternoon. Now what?"
"...me out! Now!"
"Alright, alright. Here's the kitchen door. Now go find that Burt meatball and get MY dough!"
The cat runs to the birding station and waits to see if a bird is going to land there. She waits a minute, then two. Her tail twitches, just the tip, from side to side. Suddenly she whirls and runs to the shady side of the house, to the outdoor sink. She jump to the small screen covering the bathroom window and starts to loudly proclaim,
"You'll get your goddam money when and if you learn not to replace the fuggin' window screen! Now get in here, NOW!"

Daddy's Day

I found myself calculating the difference in time to California and heading for the phone as I saw it was Father's Day. No, it's too early to call Dad. Lessee, earth to the One is about a lifetime away. It's Sunday today... oh, so listen...can you hear the sunshine hitting the air and shifting the layers? It hits the leaves and pushes their fluids around, changing sugars and such. The trees wave their branches about in the breeze to expose all the surfaces to the sunshine. In that way our Father shines upon us from all directions, giving us heat and moving our fluids around.

What? Father? Will usually waxes poetic about Mom, especially on Holy Days. But remember, the Tree has two sides and we are reminded to honor the Father and the Mother. Yesterday was Solstice, today is Sunday and it's Father's Day. I'd like to go sit with Dad in the back yard while the birds are singing and calling to one another. He loved their singing and he loved to watch them fly. I know that when he watched them fly, he was flying too. I've been with Dad in the air, I know how he loves those lazy eights and looping turns. We'd go flying nearly straight up in that Cesna 175 until it'd pause, we'd be weightless, and then we drop, loop and turn until any normal man would have passed out or thrown up. I always got to the brink of passing out but held on because sometimes, on a crazy whim, Dad would hand the controls over to me and say, "Here, Stud, take over."

My razor is dull, I can't finish my shaving. It's a disposable but I use it for about a year before tossing. It must be about a year. It's always strange going to buy a bag of cheap razors with a couple day old beard, maybe half shaven. I feel like I need someone to help count out my change. "Here we go, Billy. How many pennies do we have?"

Dad used to hunch his back and roll his shoulders. I never thought much about it until recently, when I roll my shoulders, trying to relieve the stinging, burning fibromyalgia pain. I get up and walk around, angry and impatient, waiting for the damn pills to kick in. I sit down, continue typing, mis-spelling and rolling my shoulders. Dang, it hurts. Dad used to snap at me when I bothered him for something or another. Like starting the lawn mower or finding where I'd misplaced his hammer. I always thought he was mean. Now I'm mean. But it's just because my pills haven't kicked in. Dad didn't have pills to kick in. The best he had was beer and a shot. Yeah, I've tried that but the next day it's worse. I think if I had to live like that I would have to be grumpy the second or third time a kid asked me to get up and do something.

"Here, Stud, take over"

No can do, Dad, you're the man, I'm just a close second. I can fly a Cesna for a few minutes once you get us up into the air, but I'm no mean eagle. I happen to know my Father can really fly. I know he trusts me to carry on down here until I get my wings and can join him in a dizzy, crazy , lazy eight way up where the Sun shines in all directions, warming us and keeping us smiling.

I love you Dad, call me sometime when you get a chance.

Delayed Responses

I was mincing some dill and sage to put in the dumplings when, as usual, I thought of Dad's dumplings. His mother had taught him how to make cut dumplings and for years our family enjoyed the chicken and dumplings he made. Several years ago he and mom came up for a visit and I made chicken and dumplings for them. Mom said she "liked" them but Dad was vocal in his criticism. "Your Grandmother knew how to make good dumplings. These are drop dumplings! It's not the same, Bill, just not the same. I don't know if I can eat these."
Well, he did eat them and I bet he sort of "liked" them, but every time I make dumplings I think about Dad's cut dumplings. It's like making a pie crust, you need a sizable clear space to roll out the dough, then you have to cut them and set them aside to toughen up. They are great, but my drop dumplings are fine too, especially with fresh dill and sage in them. But I have decided, and you can hold me to this, that the next time I make dumplings, just for Dad I will roll and cut them. I bet Margaret will like them so much she won't let me make the drop kind anymore. That would make Dad chuckle, wherever he is now. I bet Grandma is cooking for him and I bet she's trying new things he won't approve of. Dad needs to loosen up, especially now that he's dead.

Wet Thursday

My room is a dull collection of surfaces and muted colors, except where the novels under the side lamp are illuminated, and even they are mostly black and red. Reminds me of a kids joke. But outside the world is green. It starts where a bottle of ginger ale is sitting on a TV table in front of the couch. Green, but just at the top where the window light hits it, like a key lime pie green. At the window the plants are all translucent green, shades of glowing green. It flows out onto the world forming great shapes of green. The world is textures of green, all glowing and growing and shedding light. If I was 17 again I'd think I'd gotten some fine acid somewhere. It used to be like that, everything led to acid. They told us that acid rots your brain, like a battery left open on a tossing ship. The idea did more to intrigue acid users into doing yet more of the toxic brew than any fear to them about their minds. See, this is how the train moved for those young idiot savants of the sixties:

Acid causes changes in consciousness which is predicated upon one's personal paradigm of the universe and one's place in it. Fearful people generally took acid to find peace, but peace comes from within and all they found were scary bright lights and sounds they couldn't understand. Your friend or guide was supposed to interpret those inputs for you. Reference peyote rituals and coming of age rituals. Science, in the form of physics, specifically quantum physics, tells us that the immediate universe is a product of perception, relative to one's place and time, one's paradigm. Example: delusional people believe things are a certain way, based solely on their brain's chemistry and their perceptions of the immediate universe. There are no hard edges in nature, so we are all of us to some degree, delusional, otherwise we are enlightened. Acid tells us that there are no hard edges in the universe, according to any number of paradigms, therefor it is likely that we are all of us some degree of the universe, and therefor some degree of ourselves, a self referencing existence. The conclusion reached is that you don't need acid to become delusional, nor enlightened, you simply need to change your paradigm.

Thus, you are what you eat, what you shit, what you till, what you plant, what you admire, what you pluck, what you kill and what you bury.  You are what you believe you are, and you might believe you are alone, and then you are.

There is a difference between delusional and illusional. It is important to remember that.

When one is tripping on acid there is often the sense of rapid motion when others might perceive none at all. It's also possible to have that sense of rapid forward motion at the same time those around us are perceived as standing stock still, sometimes combined with a sense of going in all directions at once. The “others” who are standing stock still may in fact be moving, so that one's perception of them increasingly diverges from what they themselves might perceive, and any of the other “others”. The resulting paradigm can be confusion during communication. Nobody makes much sense on acid to others, but often it can feel amazingly sensible. During these times it was always good to have a friend there to tell you how sensible it was not to act too swiftly on one's new awareness, due to the fact that one's chemistry had changed, and it might change again. You could sense this, even if you couldn't absorb it all, like an enormous cake with just the right icing. It would still be your downfall to try to eat it all. At these times it was always good for someone to tell you that, indeed, you had eaten it all, and then show you an empty plate.

You can spend a lot of time trying to see through closed eyes. There are those who would tell you to open them, and those who would tell you to keep trying. Only you can tell if you can see through closed lids, or what you can see. It stands to reason you can see your body, or some version of it. The trick is seeing past your body to some other version of it. Now understand that the stand of trees outside, so vivid in their greenery, are in turn receiving photons bounced off your body, vibrations coming from your body, so that they are perceiving a paradigm as well, and it differs radically from yours. Their perceptions, we are told, must including their roots and leaves, as our hair and skin and nails can be perceived by us. So their perception of self and the immediate universe will include the taste to the soil, the sound of movement, the whisper of air, the smell of everything, and who knows, maybe some electrical-magnetic perceptions we cannot image, not having those organs. So we are living in their universe, and they in ours

If a giant oak or a trembling bristle-cone be enlightened, I assume they would have some perception of me, for I have faith I am of this universe too. Faith is important when creating universes out of paradigms, for faith comes from within. The universe stands without, in all Her trembling new-greenness.

A Pair of Faces Beats an Ace in the Hole

For some time now I have been talking about the fact that every innocent life taken by American forces is connected to hundreds of family members, thousands of neighbors and friends. Let's face it, the way Americans kill these days if one little girl is blown apart or crushed you can bet a lot of other playmates and friends were taken out, maybe even a mother and father. I've written about how the disaster that put my son in a coma took me down into many a pit of dispair. When Jon was a slab of meat in Arizona and I was a father taken to the ER because I collapsed, hell for the last decade it's been tough on a lot of people, and I suggest often that we should TRY to understand the implications of your own actions, especially your proxy actions by the government forces and hired mercenaries, well it all comes back to bite you on your butt. Or smash your son's head through glass and steel, leaving you with a piece of silent meat that could look like you son, or daughter. I can't imagine Jess left with two steel claws because some young American man dropped a bomb too fast or in a wind, maybe. But now, believe it, there are thousands of young men and women eager to blow themselves up with any one of us if some person tells them to do so, the right person.

Last night on PBS they showed us the faces of thouse kids and explored their world. Well, son, it was as bad as I feared and the facts pretty clear, we are paying to maim thousands of children and we will be asked to pay a huge additional fee, the indifference fee. It's well and good to say the appropriate slogans and lyrics, but seriously, try to think of thins a moment. Every day hundreds of children in America are wounded and killed by their parents, and the President will NEVER say a thing about it. If that does not offend him, or her, then where is the goodness is the American soul that is worth sending our children off to die and kill defending it? I don't see it. What I did see was the face of a 15 year old kid eager to not only kill a stranger, but die in the process. Our goverment would add this point start going on with numbers, e.g. "it only took 19 to destroy a Great American Ediface, now imagine thousands of GeeHawdes strapped with Nuclear fuel rods living next to YOU!" or some such thing, but seriously, you probably have within ten miles of you some young American boy saying something like, "They're all the same, we outa just NOOK them all!"

It's not a fucking reality show, son. It's what my son looked like, and his friends in the ward multiplied by thousands, but no that kid will never set foot in my son's ward and see the tubes and the curled hands of a victim of violent impact to the head, like from a 15 year old kid blowing himself up. He might say that "...we wear helmets, they're pretty good.." and I would have to say, "He was wearing a damn VW van, you idiot."

And what I could say to that 15 year old, if allowed and if he could understand my words or facial tics, is that the problem with this whole thing is that people are asserting that killing children is okay and children are saying it's okay to kill the rest of them. Nothing ever works out quite like you think. Sometimes you end up spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair, unable to move, with tubes invading your throat and shit drying in your bed sores. You never know what can happen, especially if your actions are based on what some person says you should do rather than you first do no harm. You prefer to act on someone's command, like a slave or a dog, like Wrigley. Then you blow up, or maybe partly blow up. Then we all mostly die. I don't know, it sounds like something somebody from a Hollywood movie would do.

24

So far, in the last 24 hours my friend Sharon has been suffering through numerous tests to find out why her extremities tingle and burn and her hands are icy cold. She hurts, has no energy and looks like she's in her 70's. Sharon is in her 70's but always has looked 60 something because she takes very good care of herself. Next, I fought off a nice migraine at about 3AM, no doubt caused by too many beers, cheese products and a few chocolate cookies in the ice cream for desert. So there i was, choking down Midrin caps, trying to remember what time it was, not wake up Margaret until I was dead sure it was a migraine... because BIG migraines lay me out on the floor, usually near the toilet so I can puke from time to time. Let's see, what next after the migraine? Oh yeah, because the meds make me very sleepy we woke up late and I had to drive Margaret to work in Albany, 50 miles south. Then I had to walk Wrigley because he was so good in the car for an hour long commute. That was fun except it was wet and cold. Then I slept, upon getting home, that is. I slept until 2PM, woke up, remembered Sharon, then thought about what I might do to help. Nothing, actually. I decided to see if I could bake a nice rhubarb pie for her. So the first thing is to clean up the counter of last nights dishes and dog/cat food cans. We save the pull top tabs for kidney patients. Somebody donates 57 cents per pound. Margaret like the idea but freaks out when I pull off the tabs because the metal is sharp and you have to wiggle it back and forth to snap it. "Nonsense, I say, I'm careful with sharp objects!" Unless I am drowsy from the meds and lack of sleep. Then I drag a sharp edge of tin over my thumb and slice deeply into the knuckle. Yeah. Okay, I did not bleed into the dough or the fruit and we have lots of bandaids because I'm always saying things like "I'm careful..." when the world, nay the universe, knows I am clumsy as hell, that's why I never play video games. Drip, drip, drip... leaving a trail of blood everywhere I go, trying to tear the damn bandaid open. Why should you need a combination of three hands to get to a bandaid for your dangling thumb? It's a good product, waterproof and seals the edges together nicely. I finished the pie crust in my usual incompetent manner. Grandma Shirley was great with pies, Dad was great with pies, I USED to be great with pies. Why can't I make a simple lattice top pie anymore? Dang. The good news is my back meds help with finger pain.

Let's see now, steel pin in my left index finger, slice across the right thumb knuckle, arthritis in my fingers and toes and neck and back... migraines... I think that's about it. Yeah, I'm doing great, one body part at a time. If I burn that pie I will begin to think that I'm really losing it, not just misplaced it. sigh.

I have no idea what to fix for dinner. Everything needs knives and other sharp things, as well as fire and hot metal. I wonder if I could boil whole potatoes? Sure, let's try boiling water! The really bad part about all this is yet to come, when Margaret notices the bandaid or the bloody kleenexes and unwashed dishes. Now she gets to say "I told you to be careful!" and it's not fair. She ALWAYS tells me to be careful and I always hurt myself. It's sort of the way I work. Oh yeah the cuts are getting deeper lately but that's just because I'm not careful. Dang, maybe she's right. But how the hell do you make a pie without cutting yourself? I bet Grandma's hands had lots of scars. I do know they were soft, unlike mine.

I think the bleeding has stopped. The timer's gone off. The pie is done. Looks good, except the lattice work is very chaotic, more like a black widow's web, still, it ain't store bought. I think I'll go sharpen my axe and take on that big tree out back.

What Ever Happened to the White Hats?

Going through the Guardian movie reviews I noted a certain ambivalence in the subjects. Most seem dark and depressed, even the children's movies like Prince Caspian had a lot of death. Now Terry Gilliam has a movie out starring a dead guy and his three substitutes. Wow. Should have started with Johnny Depp, he never dies. But there aren't any heroes like we had when the Lone Ranger was about. Some time around Batman, the movie, the world got a little darker. Might have been when the US of A started bombing villages to save Democracy. Or maybe it was when they killed Jack Kennedy. Dirty Harry never wore a white hat, although Clint did on occasion. My Dad wore a White hat, a Stetson, which is currently sitting on my armoire in the bedroom. I tried it on but it felt huge and tall and tight. Guess I'm no hero. Maybe I should use the hat to check on that aspect of suitors for Jess's hand in marriage. Try on the hat and see how it fits. Jess could probably fit the hat but she wouldn't try it on because it wouldn't suit her style.

Can a black man in a white hat be a hero in a bigotted country? Somehow I think not. Between the tap dancing and singing our President doesn't have time to do right. So we continue to drop bombs on children and call them collaterol damage, a term I have not heard from the White House since the Viet Nam genocide. Makes you wonder.

On the one hand we have the previous crowd of heroes still, but they are old, aged, tired and discouraged. Not that term. Cronkite still writes and speaks out for democracy for America, but the media will not cover anybody who acts like things are not well in America, the best of the best bar none, except immigrants. I would lke a political party in which the Jimmy Carters and Walter Cronkites spoke to the values we were taught about as kids in school. Those values which have been shelved for many years but still sound pretty good. You know, the kind wherein kids in high school are eager to join Peace Corps for a couple years before college rather than look for a snazzy college to get a good wage degree from. Nobody wants to be a hero if they have to live in squallor and drink heavily or eat messy hot dogs for lunch.  But the subtlety of this is so fine and clever. Note that since the early days of film the "bad guy" had wealth and a great home and a great looking bimbette. The hero lived in a house with a broken stair, cracked coffee cups and no girl friend at all unless you count the great gal he never kisses. Now we have guys who live in garbage cans as heroes. Not much to impress the children, eh? Small wonder they grow up wanting to be Wall Street speculators.

We can't just start making phony films showing rich powerful good guys because A) it's too soon and B) power and riches corrupt goodness, note the Pope. Batman is a fantasy, remember, who rarely gets laid. So somehow we need to show that even though you don't get rich, you can be happy with yourself and your kids won't think you're a loser if you fight the "Good Fight". You might even get laid. Robin Hood was a good guy who even started out rich but gave it up to fight the Bad Guy.

In India, in the good old days, maybe not so much nowadays, you would live hard until middle age and then, even if rich and powerful, you gave it all up and went to meditate by a stream clothed in a wrap and owning only a beggers bowl. You looked for peace and understanding, not wealth and power. That's India though and we think of them as "seriously messed up with funny accents". But it would be nice if somebody like Gates gave ALL ther money away in order to meditate on Life. It would be even better if the ex-Presidents all went from the White House to work in a soup kitchen. Until then I guess we'll have to make do with ancient mythology as a guide to ethical behavior and the value of a simple life.

Ah! Such Music

Wrigley likes to sit in chairs, also garden wagons, cars and wheelbarrels. But when there's nothing exciting to do, like when I'm gardening, he likes to climb into a nice chair in the shade and listen to the birds singing. Sometimes he turns his head to catch a nice warbler's tune or sometimes he closes his eyes to a mockingbird's solo. I like a dog who appreciates music..

Thoughts on a Spring Morning

Here's some thoughts I would like to share regarding the effect of absolute power corrupting the Dems. First, the assumption that "parties" exist as unique entities. I've been watching these entities for close to 40+ years now and all this talk of left, right, center-left etc is absurd as the talk of conservative democrat, liberal republicrat. There is a group of people who trade jobs off and on and tell us all where to send the money and what we will go to prison for. It's called the Political Party. It's made of people who have no skills other than speech, and they aren't very good at that, but they found a job wherein they get paid for speaking and signing their names. They run the country at one level while the Dictator d'jour runs it at another level. You cannot corrupt corruption except by cleansing it, and nobody is talking about cleansing our Party, just exchanging personalities. Obama keeps many of the previous dictator's ideals and people because he also belongs to the Party. He isn't corrupted, he's never been clean. He gets paid for talking and signing his name. He gives our money away and sends people to other countries to kill and destroy and mostly to move money around. War is a fantastic money laundering scheme combined with a great video game experience for those who never went to war.
   As I read about our country from foreign news sources, mostly online because they make it very very hard to find out what non-Americans are doing and thinking, I find that American people are the most lied to people in the western world, lied to by it's government. Nothing is the way our "news" says it is, and for good reason. The news business should have been a news service, a right for all the people to know the truth, because the truth will set them free. But that's like asking a dairy farmer to take down his fences and let his cattle roam the fields and woods. News sources in America serve to 1. spread the official lies 2. keep the herd afraid of Others 3. keep the herd afraid of the herd and 4. keep the herd humming. It is an arm of the government and so is part of the party.
   The Body Politic in this county is not merely corrupted, but like a person with brain cancer is failing faster than can be controlled. Witness the fine quality of "leaders" we get these days. No, 200+ years is a long time to last for a badly organized ponzi scheme tied to an 18th century philosophical essay. At this point the land mass is domesticated enough to support several efficient governments or one large terribly inefficient government. Contrary to national paradigm, we have little control over our governmental form. Notice that it never varies? That's because the same forces act on it from within. The tribolite wants to eat tribolite food even after the ocean has shifted away. So it dies or grows lungs and feet. The US needs to be less United and more States. Let Texas split, according to the Law of the Land. Let the West Coast split off according to their inclinations. Let the NE states handle their regional problems with a regional government, maybe a democracy. The US will become a federation of regions, hopefully with no standing armies. Less money to run, less need for armies, more money for schools and hospitals. Big cities like NYC should become City-States and run themselves or decay into a big museum. Let Europe try to tell the world what to do, or China, or Nobody. I like the last choice.
   Asking if absolute power corrupts assumes absolute power is absolute. It's like asking if an unmovable object can be moved by an unyielding force. No, but it can be destroyed. Absolute power destroys the existing political system in exactly the same way a needle full of pure heroin killed Janis Joplin. She was trying to get clean, like Obama, but she couldn't resist using the needle "just a little bit". Obama wants to play toy soldier too, but in Afghanistan, where his "advisers" (read yes men) tell him he can win, which would be the first time in history. America is in hospice, it's best just to organize a committee to figure out how to parse out the parts.

Change We Can Believe In

Well, besides the new dog and the new fridge, I also have a new laptop to play with. I just downloaded Scribefire and added it to Firefox. The new laptop is running Vista Premium and it's a pleasant surprise. Go figure. Now I can take my computer with me when I travel taking pictures and use the card reader to transfer the images into Picasa. Anything doesn't look good enough, I just take up the camera and take another shot. Marvelous technology!

The cat is climbing up the screen door again. She has learned after awhile I will get pissed enough to open the door and let her in again. Then she will check the food bowl for fresh wet food and if it's not just right (full) she will go yowl at the kitchen door until I get pissed and go toss her out. A few minutes later she will notice that she's out in the cold and will run around to the front screen door etc etc. Why can't she be more like Wrigley? sigh

Hmmm. This chair/laptop combination is starting to hurt a lot. Seems the angle of the dangle is all wrong, my spine is tingling, my legs are numb and the upper body is knotted up big time. So, bye.

Musings on a Sunny Monday

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009031217/its-not-just-rush

After reading the above piece I found that I was feeling dizzy and vague and I realized what it was: shock. I've seen clips of these people off and on and they never were as venomous, hate-filled and dangerous as the material in Heath's blog shows. I would have thought that the calls from these writers and radio show hosts to go out and murder and torture "libs" was breaking some kind of law. Even with the 1st Amendment there is still the legal concept that you cannot use free speech to incite murder or riots. We've arrested Muslims all over America for spouting such hate. But when a fat, cigar-smoking manly American says the same thing, he gets a pass. In fact, he gets a bonus, fan clubs, merchandising and millions of dollars.


“I’ll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo: every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress. “ says Sean Hannity and yet in spite of all the laws to protect people from violence he doesn't get a slap on the hand.

There is a layer of very dangerous people in America, people who have decided the Law is for the weak and the important thing is that America and the world be formed into a reflection of their own prejudices, hatreds and fears. Violence is their first resort, and like an Anti-Christ their leader is the opposite of all the values expressed by their supposed spiritual focus. He's rich, ignorant, hate-filled, violent and shallow. He protects himself while putting others in harm's way. He approves of mass murder, calling it "war" and thinks dead children are "regrettable". He doesn't care about life, he holds nothing truly sacred and his primary personality trait is egoism.

Amazingly, when you look at it, the official American religion is Anti-Christianity. Follow the money, connect the dots. How do Americans view care for the sick and elderly? What's the first thing that gets gutted from a state budget in economic down times? Besides funding for education, it's the hospitals and nursing homes that get their funds slashed. Here in NY we have a blind, unshaven, cross-eyed, dark skinned man for a Governor and when businesses are leaving because of high taxes and ignorant workers he slashes funding for education and health care and raises taxes on businesses. If you could form an analogy of this on an individual basis it's roughly like applying leeches to a diabetic with a high fever.

So instead of healing the sick, we cause sickness: selling contaminated peanuts, meat, salads, water supplies etc. instead of lifting their minds we force feed statistics in over-crowded crumbling schools. We send billions of tons of toxic chemicals into the air, water and earth all over the Earth, killing and maiming thousands, perhaps millions. We haul our garbage to sites off of foreign shores, killing the fisheries and starving villages. We do all this in the open, with various excuses, but with no sign that we plan to stop the killing any time soon. It would not be "cost effective" and would cut into our bottom line.

Christians worship a man who preached love and tolerance and American Anti-Christians follow men who bugger little boys while smoking crack and embezzling church money. They sing in huge crystal domes about crossing the Jordon River when most have never left their home state and couldn't find the Jordon River on a map. They send billions of bullets and bombs to the Holy land to kill people and soak the sands with blood.Some even claim to be doing this in the Name of Christ!

Well, I could go on, but sometimes something I read just sets off a fuse. If we can arrest and imprison people for preaching violence against America, why confine the law to just Muslims? Why not arrest Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter and the rest of the neo-cons? They preach insurrection, armed conflict and assassination. Aren't those crimes? They appear to be when a blind Muslim cleric says the exact same things. Right wing nuts blow up churches, post hate filled letters online, and promote the overthrow of the American government. I'd say those are crimes, and big ones at that. Yet rather than sitting in jail these people are actually becoming wealthy as American Anti-Christians send in their tithes. This is the same layer of society who financed Hitlers rise to power prior to WW2. Right wing fanatics, Republican, (anti-)Christian, upper class along with their followers. We were and are a gnat's ass away from becoming a brown shirted bunch of goose-steppers, with even more blood on our hands. Yet if I wrote a letter suggesting people track down Rush, tear his fingernails off and burn him alive nailed to a cross, they would track me down and arrest me. Rightly so.

Any exception to a rule invalidates that rule.

A new rule may be devised which includes the exception.

Continuing the process eventually creates a rule which is the direct opposite of the original rule.

This pendulum swing of rules and exceptions is the roadmap of civilization.

The Mongols considered their sweep across Europe as bringing the light of civilization to a barbaric land of savages. American anti-Christians considered their slaughter of thousands of natives as bringing the light of civilization to a land of ignorant savages. They nevertheless used the natives form of government as a model for the new Republic of America.

Many native tribes own and operate casinos where they encourage non-natives to gamble away their earnings, smoke contaminated tobacco and drink expensive alcoholic beverages, thus getting retribution for things like the Trail of Tears.

Twaddle, Twit and Twoh
Went out to see a show.

Said Twaddle to Twit,
"But where shall we sit?"

Said Twit to Twoh,
"We have to know!"

Said Twoh to Twaddle,
"We'll have to do battle!"

To battle they did go
And ended Twaddle, Twit, and Twoh.

New Dog on the Block

For several years I've wanted to have a dog around. I haven't really had a dog since I was a kid. Jon brought Wishes along with him for awhile, but like all the other dogs I've had as an adult, Wishes was not interested in anything I had to say, like "STOP" or "STAY" or "Don't dig up my flowers!" So I wanted a young dog who would obey and who would like to hang with me as I stumble around the house and yard. It would be good to have a dog who would travel well as I take my picture taking excursions around the county.

So, as I was getting the car out of the shop I saw that John Peoples, my mechanic, had a picture of a Corgi dog on his counter and a "free dog" sign. Seems his daughter had a sweet dog who needed more attention and more exercise. He needed a man to hang with who would play with him, drive him around and walk him up and down the street. Like me. So I agreed to take him on for a trial. Wrigley came home with me. The next day I began to feel queasy and I had some burping issues. The dog was great and I took anti-acids. After a few days of getting worse I realized that in spite of getting a flu shot, I had the flu. I had the serious shits and was very barfish. The dog curled up in bed with me and looked sorry for me, licking my hand. This went on for a few days until Margaret started getting queasy and burpish. There followed a very bad scene with her sick, as a dog, cramps and body aches and me with body aches and indigestion walking the new dog. It's been a couple weeks now and we have stopped having the flu at last and Wrigley is getting the kind of attention he needed.

Yesterday as we drove to the bus stop for Margaret we were flying down the interstate when the cars in front of me started braking and swerving. I had nowhere to swerve, however, being graced with a car on either side matching my speed. So I had a couple of seconds to see the head and most of it's body of a deer pop up from under the rear of the car ahead of us! With a whoomp and thud we went over it. By the time we got to the bus stop you could smell burning meat and hair from the engine compartment. As we stopped we could see steam coming from the hood and when I got out it was clear the radiator was losing every drop of fluid, which I needed to keep Wrigley from.

So we towed the car to John People's garage and he got to play with his grand-dog Wrigley. The radiator was split on the bottom with chunks of Bambi shoved inside. I called Enterprise and rented a small car for about a week and John told me that he'd have to hold off fixing it until the insurance adjuster could take a look at it. Funny thing, if the radiator repairs cost enough it might actually total the car! It's a 1998 Volvo after all. So we have a new dog, will have a new radiator and I think I need to buy a truck, like a Toyota Tacoma, so we have a spare car and one where muddy dog feet won't be a problem. The black leather in the Volvo has suffered from Wrigley's claws.

Finally, Izzybag Productions is steaming ahead working on my web site. I'm extremely interested in how they get my stuff up, the other sites they've done were so sweet and clean with great little features and class. My photos should be just great and hopefully somebody will buy either my sculptures or the images. We need to pay down Jess's debt. Her school loans are huge and it looks like employment might take awhile. So, look at www.picasaweb.google.com/fredbrighton for my web albums and cruise over to www.willshirley.com to see the startup of the new site. Someday when I'm famous you can say you saw it all in the beginning. woo-hoo! Life hurts, but it still is sweet like honey. Wrigley says "woof".

Wintertime Blues

Got up this morning with a sad sinking feeling
There was a big bubble of water dripping from the ceiling
The ice dams on the roof were as big as glacier
I didn't tell my sweety, didn't want to face her
So I got me a coffee and I straightened my head
When the sun comes up and my tummy is fed
I'll find me a ladder and my little nice ax
Climb up on the roof and give it some whacks
Pour on the rock salt and lots of cuss words
Like "son of a bitch" and "you little frost turds"
But sooner or later they tell me that Spring
Will melt all the ice that Winter can bring
With buckets of ice melt and posts holding up
The living room ceiling and rum in my cup.

Maybe It's the Weather

Awhile back I had an experience where my entire consciousness could be focused on a single spot. Specifically, it was my finger, my left index finger. It was pretty exciting and I have pics I've considered uploading to my web albums except at long last I do have some shame. That finger was fat. And it hurt like Hell, or along the lines of what I think Hell is like. Certainly a lot of nerve pain because that's the hardest for this society to deal with. Nerve pain gets confused with perception of self, maybe because the Self is in part the system of nerves along which the signals pass. So a lot of nerve pain means a lot less You. There's just not a lot of room for You there.

I bring this up as an example of the difference between the body and the mind. When my finger was swollen with infection and the data along the nerve pathways indicated a full blown melt-down of the fatty tissue around my index finger, I was beside myself with pain. It was as close as I could get to leaving the pain behind: just jump to the side of it. So we had a duality going, me and that pain. Most of the planets in the immediate view from Earth are "involved", as they say, with another planet or star. Partners seem relatively common. Just look at Luna and Earth, they've been going steady since Luna was torn from Earth's side by a passing high velocity mass, possibly Venus. That had to hurt.

This finger of mine, this semi-me, doesn't act like the rest of the fingers. When I ask, the rest of the fingers bow their heads, but not that one. NO, it just nods, as if acknowledging a comrade. So it's just not the same as the rest of them. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable asking it to scratch my back. But still, I know it's mine and I do want to be fair. So I ask it to do things, but not things that involve bending. Because of that steel screw thing.

And Earth must feel much the same about Luna as I feel about that finger. You wouldn't ask Luna have have "tides" because, let's face it, if Luna has water, She's hiding it pretty good. It's like She never grew up, never wept and held a young one in Her Hands. Never had an atmosphere. So you're not looking for rainbows here or pretty sunrises. You love Her just the way She is. Well, maybe "love" is a strong word. "Tolerate" is good, plenty good. I mean, Hell, what are you going to do? It's not up to me, I'd be able to handle either way. But it seem to me that a finger of mine ought to be able to at least bend enough to allow me to flip someone the bird without making it into a peace sign. That's all I'm asking.

When I Was Small

When I was small, as I recall, I felt like a variation of Gulliver, somehow perfect in intelligence and reasoning but held back by size and strength because all the Rest of Them were bigger and pretty much stronger. I'm not particularly strong even now. There's a lot of times when the subject comes up, usually involving the chickens, and it isn't so much the immediate effort, because quite often that feels like good exercise, but the anticipation of the pain that comes later, after pleasure. It always hurts later. That would be an interesting thing to replace "In God We Trust", because quite frankly in God I do not trust, I've read both books and seen the movies. NO, thank you mam, In God "we" do not trust. But I respect and admire His Mother and She seems very "OK" with this situation, this "growing up" crap I seem to be doomed to plow through.

See, God used to beat me up at the bus stop and take my lunch money. As a result I grew up slower and my spinal column was not as dense as it might. So, now that I am not small, I am nevertheless less dense than average and tend to get blown about in the Winds and end up stuck in trees, tattered and torn, or made into nests of strange birds. I always seem to be doing things for birds.

Let me tell you something: some of those doves are getting too fat to fly. They've eaten up all the white millet and sunflower hearts and never with having to do more than sit and have it rain down on your head. Honey, of course they're over weight. If the finches are the penguins of the air, then geese are the elephant seals. It's not that they can't fly, they do that extremely well, but you'd never guess it by watching them on the ground. Even Canadian Geese waddle. And doves rock around as if they never saw a Chaplin movie they didn't like. Or the early Keystone Cops. Actually I saw a person walking exactly like a Keystone Cop, but it had more to do with her hip alignment than a silent movie addiction. Unless... she were a gigantic pigeon wearing the winter coat of a human being.

Wow. That's as bad as magpies. Next they'll be stealing our identities, let alone our nests. I get the feeling that juncos would never steal another bird's nest. They might sub-let it if the lease was fair and the neighborhood good for children. You can't be too careful these days, but of course all that will change with Obama in the White House. You just have to believe that the wave of "HOPE" that swept out of Washington yesterday around noon meant something. Anybody with a fully intact cerebrum had to have felt the wave that went through the Earth yesterday, like the feeling a neighborhood has when the police arrest a fourtyish white male in a late model Chevy van who is identified by seven children as the man who tried to pull them into his van on various Saturday afternoons. Except our perps are apparently, so far at least, getting away scot free. We shall see, ya never know and so forth.

So I walked around, I drove around. When I drove around I made engine sounds and gear shifting noises, like I did when I was small. It made driving around somehow more fun. I do a great brake sound. And I took pictures. In my mind's eye I look over pictures of another age. I faced my size and asthma with determination, I loved the earth, the soil. I tried to share my happiness with others. I felt then like I feel now, full of promise and mountains to climb over. I remember when I was small I didn't just want to go to Mars, I wanted to build a ship to fly to Mars. I wanted to push the boundaries of the universe. I wanted infinity to MEAN something. I had no great problem being small, I used it to climb like a monkey and fit into small places. And now I'm Big and I look at some of the things that lasted and some of the things that didn't and I still manage to have this funny giddy feeling that Things might be getting better, fairly soon.

As Long as Water Flows, Grass Grows

A philosopher once said that reality is it's own reflection. We talk of reflecting on one's life when older, we say a deed reflects well on a person's character. This concept of passive reflection is also held in the Hermetic saying "As above, so below. As Below, so Above." The first condition of Earth was water below and sky above, one reflecting the other. An early symbol of the Divine Feminine holds a mirror in Her hand. Another early form of the Goddess was the Gorgon Medusa who could not be slain because her gaze would freeze you into stone. By using a mirror you could approach Her and slay Her. By seeing Her reflection rather than her Person you could slay Her. By reflecting on himself a man was able to remove the head of the Goddess. Shamans the world over have as part of their essential set of amulets small mirrors.

Sometimes people wonder why I reflect on problems of divinity when I refer to this blog in terms of caregiving, parenting and art. But in order to care, to give care, it's a good idea to understand what you are caring for. What you care about is also important. So when I talk about Jon and his state of mind, or lack of mind, I have to understand what exactly is "mind" and why does it matter. (Did you know 'matter' and 'mater' are related terms, one referring to the stuff of the universe and one referring to the divine feminine, She who is the stuff of the universe?)

If my son is dead and the flesh that moves and excretes, coughs and falls is not human but mere flesh. After eight years all the flesh has been recycled and made new. Jon is mostly feeding formula from a tube now. No more steaks and enchiladas, no more beer or water. This mass in the bed that looks almost like my son but nothing like my son might be nothing of interest to me or it might be the screaming mind of my lost and lonely child, trapped in a form that does not obey him. Would you want to know the truth, would you try to find out where your boy went? So I reflect on consciousness.

Those people who drive their cars by the house, or walk their dogs past our mailbox, or fly overhead in planes, have no bearing on my son. They never knew him, never met him, don't care about him. I'm the last of the care givers. His mother is slightly insane, trapped in her own fantasy in the nursing home that cares for her. His friends, if friends they ever were, have never come to see him, have stopped sending the odd emails, no longer have his address. They don't care. So I am left with the task of caring and it's important to me that I do it right, so I need to understand what I am caring about and why.

If woman gives form and man gives the spark, what is that form and what was that spark? Did Nancy supply the body into which I placed a soul? Did we make a mix 50/50 of body and soul? Did I have anything to do with it at all, is the scientific myth of DNA a fantasy of modern science? What is human, what does it mean to be aware, and is there a difference between self aware and conscious? Nothing is given here in America 2009, no deep debates about the nature of consciousness. We're busy supporting mass death and destruction, far too busy to wonder at the lives we snuff out.

Why divinity and why write about it? Why not? I couldn't give a rats ass about the self-destructive twits on the news. They leave nothing behind but images that fade away. Why try to understand consciousness when so many people waste it? Look at Gaza, look at Mumbai, look at Hiroshima. But to be distracted by imperfections in a mirror will make it difficult to see the reflection. To pick at your sores will make it harder to heal. So I wonder at the grace of two invisible gases combining to form water which runs downhill to fill an ocean and provide the stuff of life for a lifetime of living.

Every day I wake to pain and wait for it to fade. Every day I take science in one hand, water in the other and combine them in order to move this flesh around without only seeing the imperfections, the nerves that startle, the muscles that twitch, the bones that fade away. Every day when I take the pills that fade the pain away I think on Jon, reflecting on our similarities, our bad backs, our need to understand and I wonder if he wakes up to pain every day, because he can't take the pills and sit and wait. They don't think he can feel anything, so they won't help him out of that pain. They don't think the trache hurts him when he coughs. So they leave it in to save them the trouble of making him move enough to not have fluids build up in his lungs.

Dad died in his sleep, Mom died in hers. Suppose for a moment that your child was sleeping and dying and it was taking years to finish the dream, would you wonder and worry? Would you shake you fist at the sky and scream WHY WHY WHY?

I'm pretty self absorbed, what with this constant pain and all. I think a lot about the various body parts rubbing and pinching and screaming. It's hard not to, the screaming is pretty loud. But maybe because my Mom was sensitive to the suffering of others and maybe because my father would splint the wing of a broken dove I find it hard, even in the middle of waiting for the pills, not to wonder at what kind of morning my son gets, what kind of things happen to him down deep inside. I read the papers online about the Gazan children dying in their beds and think of my son dying in his bed. The Gazan children are dying because we sent rockets to Israel. My son has no therapy because the money went to build rockets to kill Gazan children.

I'm not sure I want Jon to wake up to this world. I'm not sure I don't want to crawl into my bed and pull the covers over my head. Like the snow covering the earth outside my window. But spring always comes, the Goddess emerges to greet Her Mother and the world knows new life. Kicking and screaming we come out of the womb and silent and faded we return. You can't stop living and you can't stop Life, so you might as well reflect on what it means and why you are involved.

Progressive Rambles on a real Cold Day

Still working on developing some definitions for some terms so that communication can begin. It's so easy to make mistakes when the meanings are vague. But let's make given the alphabet and language, that'll save time, in a manner of speaking.

It's actually easier to just design some terms which perhaps sound in the direction of a previous term, but in this case I'm looking for a good definition for that One that was before the Duality. I mean, it's picky of me at this level to get picky over the concept that that which is before cannot be taking from that which came before it. Spoils the concept of time. Time being a concept from the perspective of the corporal observer. "You gotta start somewhere." So let's compromise with "the Deity". The purpose from our perspective is one of definition and surface understanding. "What are we talking about here?" The Deity Before the Duality would be what? Not like what, but what? Infinite, functionally infinite. This is before abstraction, which requires something to abstract from. If a miss is as good as a mile, then we miss solid understanding of any term by a mile. "Goes without saying."

The Deity is the Deity, nothing else. But is It anything more? No, can't be more than infinite. That would imply a duality exists, and we are before that. Ah, there we have it. The "before", which is also "without" also imply a duality. Wow, that was fast. It was fast because it was before Time, time requiring two. At least two and in a crowded summer room it seems that anything over two gets damn close to Infinity. But I digress.

I, for one, like to imagine in an empathetic field. When I turn that sunny beam to the Deity I am shocked to find myself I find looking back at me, as if from a long, long tunnel. That makes perfect sense. We all see ourselves as somehow related to the Deity, and since we are temporal our looks had to come from somewhere upstream, ultimately with the Deity. And we'd be terribly wrong. We came from the Duality that self created from the existence of both the Deity and Trickster. Without Trickster there could be no Universe, no us to wonder at the attributes of the Deity, the One. But there you are and there I am, so let's make given the Trickster, the element of "What...?" that comes of consciousness. Once you have infinite qualities you have consciousness, because consciousness is clearly part of an infinite set, like the Universe. More complicated than any computer for sure, and connected in an infinite set of ways. Has to be conscious to ask "What...?"

What's it like to be the One, the Deity? Well, it isn't like anything. It's a lot like Nothing, a dead ringer for Nothing, in fact, except for the perception of Self, the consciousness thing. Self perception is not only required of consciousness, but is the leading factor in acquiring consciousness. Now imagine Trickster spinning in a circle, staring back at you all the time. That's consciousness.

In time it would get boring, self fulfilling and self defeating. You can find in Life an imprint of that first boring look. You look for something interesting. There must be an Other. One way to get an Other is to see your Self through an Other's eyes. That's called Empathy, and Empathy is considered to be a feminine quality, as it receives, transforms, and delivers forth some Thing new. In time you'd have infinity filled with infinity and, being so full of it self it would give birth to it self in all it's wonderful details.

IN the beginning you liked bright colors and shining things. You like to bang things together, unless it was too loud. Everything that didn't make you cry made you laugh. You were that close to being bipolar. Later that day you liked to move, to run every where as fast as you could. When you hit things you liked them to break. Then you had children, things like you only smaller and they did things that you remembered and things that you did not. Sometimes they did things you did not like, even when you remembered doing them yourself at that time. They became more like you in power and will, and then they went away. So you did it again, bringing forth life after life, until you were exhausted and you rested. While you rested Things multiplied and grew in power and will, and some left and some stayed. Later that night you awoke feeling rested and thirsty for something. In the vision of the Night Well that reflects your own face back to you, there is the Moon, coldly reflecting the warmth of the Sun back at you.

To be the Deity, for an instance of Infinity, would have to Be like drowning in a lily white sea, with nothing to see and nothing else to be. Until with inward eye the Deity perceives Itself and asks aloud, "Me?"

The echo of that silent "Me?" put waves of ripples across that ivory sea. Each wave a criss to cross itself in Infinity. Thus, you see, both you and me. Say it loud and say it proud "I am!" but not too loud, you wouldn't want to attract a crowd.

On a Bright January Afternoon

Let me, for a moment, examine something and in that examination maybe I will shed some light on something. Don't be confused by surfaces, surface meaning. What I want to bring a light to deals with fundamental Principles. So, let's start with One. The number one or the One, it's all one. The point is, we have a point. It's just to the left there, after t. and again.

You quickly learn and then understand that a point is pointless. A point has no point for the simple fact that it is one. And you come back around to what's the point? So let me explain. Then I'll come back around to an example. Any question, or fact, or explanation has either a background field, a given, some kind of basis for understanding. Even if you are talking to yourself there is more than one self involved. There's always a question and an answer. Ah! Look back over that last statement and you see the conjunction? That indicates a two parter. Now we're up to two. Now we have a point, and a direction. That's sometimes called a vector, but I digress.

A question is an absence of information, a negative form. Our consciousness, for instance ( this is that example I promised) is attracted to a question, clearly, because it forms the basis for our existence. "Who am I?" and you can take the "who" and replace it with a lot of various questions that may or may not make sense, but they would all be questions. And my point is that there is no point in a question. There is a modified point, a point with a figure above it, a kind of sickle or circle that isn't finished and then suddenly goes down to approach the point, but ends before it can. We empathize with that figure above the point and we are attracted to it's story. So we are attracted from our core to questions.

The thing is, a question pre-supposes the existence of an answer, it cannot exist without that supposition. The answer doesn't have to make sense in any particular sense, the point of a question is called an answer. It's also called a duality. Or gender. Lots of masks for lots of tasks.

Now, from a point to the point. You have a Duality there, an absence and a form. Minus and Plus. Female and Male. Before that Duality there was a One. Now put all that together and you have a triangle. Pour white sand onto a flat surface and you will have a solid triangle. Mold and shape with hands, sweat, blood and time and you have a pyramid, four sided in three dimensions based on a triangle coming from a point.

There are more stones at the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza than at the top. If you had the same number of stones at the top as on the bottom you would have a stack, and it would fall. So, a pyramid brings stability, and for thousands of years Egypt built pyramids and variations of pyramids and stacks of stones until Egypt as a fantastic Empire was no more, and the dust that chokes the visitor from afar is both the dust of the pyramids and the dust of their builders. It's all the same dust to the visitor from afar. And since the builders of the last pyramids breathed the dust of the builders of the first pyramids, it's all a great big dust recycling plant, anyway. A big Circle of Dirt.

The First Woman and the First Man drew circles in the dirt. They drew them for hours, over and over, making mounds surrounded by ditches. Like the nests of the shore birds they built their mounds and their ditches and they laid their futures in the center of the mounds and gave to them their heat. And the circles within the Circle broke open into two parts. One was two, and two were one. They were Eve and Adam. They were children to the One.

Eve was smaller than Adam, but Adam felt empty without Eve. When she was bleeding on the Moon he stayed away out of fear and ignorance and emptiness and longing. When they were as one they were close to the One, and when Eve bore a child they were united as one, a family, a solid, multidimensional configuration. It felt right.

Eve talked to the snake and became wise. Adam talked to his snake and became empty, so he went to Eve and she made him feel full. Then she did it again, got big and cranky, and bore a child, yet another boy. Another mouth to feed. Adam became distant and sullen. The children quarreled. The Serpent sprouted wings and headed west. Eve put on weight.

And that was thousands, tens of thousands of years ago! So nothing's really changed. One becomes Two, who become Three, and it get's finer and more dispersed until One is more like Nothing and the skies are crowded with Stars.

Now the birds are feeding on the seed of thistles outside my window. Some of the worthy birds will live to see Spring. Some of the worthy seeds will be shat upon the earth and give birth to thousands more. It just keeps going around and around. Not a perfect circle, sometimes a question mark, but even if it's an uneven point, it's about all I can handle at this point.

MIddle East Madness

As I read through the various articles in the various papers and online feeds I am struck by the curious fact that like so many wars recently the lines between the "terrorists" and the "forces of good" get blurry and strange. Like when America decided that pulling out fingernails was good for democracy or that bombing a people who might at some time in the future think about hurting America is good for our security. But I like to pare things down to a few basic, easy to confirm facts, just to get some semi-clear answers.

Hamas was elected to rule over Gaza by the people in Gaza, a classic democratic event for which we spend millions trying to encourage. Oh, not being ruled by Hamas, but being ruled by somebody you voted for in a fair election, unlike the election in 2000 in America when the outcome was illegally decided by 7 Republican justices. But certain states declared that we needed a do-over because Hamas was unsuitable to Israel and America. I have a problem with any country announcing to another that it's leaders are not suitable and must be removed immediately. It just doesn't sound very... well, fair.

Hamas cannot "rule" a region which is a functioning concentration camp any more than the British prisoners of the Japanese could rule their camp. Gaza functions as a concentration camp. It has the concrete walls, the razor wire, the armed guards at the entrances and the tunnels out to allow for an influx of medicine and food and weapons. There used to be a standard that prisoners have a right to attack their guards and try to escape. It was considered a human right. So the people under Hamas have been firing little rockets into Israel, injuring people and killing some too. Maybe a couple dozen. Certainly 5 that we know of in this last round of attacks.

In response the Israeli military closed the entrances, bombed the tunnels and proceeded to rain down bombs and missiles upon the people of Gaza. So far we have at least 500 dead Palestinians, including women, children, oldsters and pets. So according to the Israeli government a Palestinian is 1/100th of an Israeli. They claim the right to defend themselves, which nobody can argue about. The problem I'm having with this means of protection is that considering the culture in the Mideast, one of revenge killing, honor killing and religious killing, it seems obvious that the best way to keep the killing going is to have a serious imbalance in the scoreboard. In other words, if Israeli forces were to respond to the dozens of little rockets raining down on fields, roads and houses by shooting equivalent rockets into Gaza I would see that as a not-unreasonable tit-for-tat. You still get dead babies that way and that seems to be what everybody in the Mideast wants, so we're golden. But 2 ton bombs do not equate to an Estes model rocket with a stick of dynamite duct taped to it. Collapsing entire buildings down around it's inhabitants to kill one man is not fair and balanced. What it is, is genocide, a war crime. It's a slow genocide, like the one America waged on it's Native populations, but nevertheless, genocide.

Look at what the Israelis are saying: we're going to continue bombing until we defeat Hamas and make it so Israeli families can feel safe. Say, if you want to make Israelis safe maybe blowing up neighbors is not the way to do it. The survivors are going to very inclined to make Israeli families suffer. If you want to be safe, don't kill anyone, don't threaten anyone, don't invade their land and occupy it.

Then you have Hamas shooting little rockets over Israeli skies, mostly to no harm, but from time to time they hit a person or a house. Like I said before, the scorecard shows that little rockets versus big bombs gives the bombers a 100 to one edge. So shooting rockets is not an attempt to destroy Israel. It has no chance of destroying Israel, not even if they shoot millions of them. No, they are trying to get the Israelis to do things so horrible and deadly that the world will get so mad they will say "We don't give a damn about Hitler and what he did to the Jews, the Jews have to stop this genocide!" And in theory this is what Israel is doing... except for a minor problem. The Western world, especially America, doesn't like the Palestinians. There are no famous Palestinian entertainers in America, no famous physicists or doctors, no cute Palestinian children on television shows. But there are Jewish examples of funny, smart and tender people in American culture. Besides which, the Israelis are using American tools and bombs to kill the Palestinians. We can't protest too loudly that the Israelis are using the weapons we sold them for exactly the kind of uses they are designed for. We'd look like hypocrites. Again.

So from a market standpoint this is a win-win for American military suppliers. By keeping the Mideast unstable we also keep gas prices at a rich level. Plenty of profits in war, we all know that. If ever there was a moral aspect to American policies we could argue that supplying the means to conduct a genocide is a violation of our moral principles. But our "moral principles" went the way of habeas corpus and truth in advertising. So aside from so-called "International Laws" and "U.N. Charter" there is no good reason for the American government to stop or slow down the genocide of the Palestinians. They won't just fold up and take their punishment, they won't embrace their Jewish landlords and they refuse to ignore the deaths of their families. They demand vengeance or at least justice. They won't pool their money and donate to the American political system. So they're just not trying.

I had a boss once who called me into his office to stare at me for a minute or too and then declare "Bill, you're just not trying." This was because after rupturing my disc, breaking my back on the job because I obeyed orders from my supervisor I continued to come to work, eating codeine 4's and Flexeril so I could walk and sit without screaming in pain. I tried to use the calculator but my mind was fuzzy and confused and distracted by the shooting pains down my legs. So my boss reminded me that I just wasn't trying. And I wanted to climb up onto the hillside with a high powered rifle and shoot my supervisors as they emerged at the end of the work day. Instead I walked away and did not come back. But I had a place to go, I went home. The Palestinians can't go home because Israel is there now and is raining bombs down upon the Palestinian people in revenge for dozens of toy rockets raining down on the Israelis.

I think perhaps it's time to agree that the Middle east is not conducive to human life. Something in the hot sun, the white sands, something makes people go crazy and want to kill children. Read the Various Holy Books to come out of the Middle East and you will find lots of instructions on killing women and children, raping them, burning them, dismembering them. It's not a happy place, it's the sort of place Charles Manson would like to live. So I suggest we shut it down, make it a psychic brown field and don't allow anybody to live there. Surround the area with mazes that always lead back out. Prohibit airplane flights over it. Pave the region. Paint it orange with a black skull and crossed bones on it.

Let's start a religion where killing babies is never permitted, and define a baby as a person who has been born, not just conceived. If we could recall that we are all of us children of the Deity and as such we are all of us brothers and sisters, or sisters and brothers and it is a bad thing to kill your siblings, a terrible thing. My sisters gave me grief lots of times and we fought like pigs, but never to the death. Never did I drop a 2 ton bomb on their part of the house, because that would be insane. But the Prime Minister of Israel is killing his brothers and sisters for threatening to kill other siblings. Where's Mom when you need her? Melting the ice caps, that's where! She will take care of this whole thing sooner or later. We'll be so distracted by the loss of billions of people we might forget to kill the surviving children for being part of a different religion. We might even drop the whole "Kill a *fill in the blank* for Christ" concept.

Mom!! He's touching me! He won't stop touching me!

Drop a cluster bomb on his bedroom and shoot him as he runs out! Handle it yourself.

New Year Murmerings

It took a couple of hours to start the car today thanks to the deep freeze of an upstate New York winter. Here it is January 2009 and I'm still not living in a city on Mars. Little Billy Shirley would be so disappointed. But on the brighter side I never expected to live this long, either, so I got that going for me. It's hard for me and the car getting started in the cold mornings. My fibromyalgia doesn't seem to like it either, my arms feel like somebody held them behind me all night and squeezed the biceps. Kinda sucks. One of the chickens looks like she's on her last legs, too. They get sick sometimes in the winter and sometimes they get over it and sometimes not. Big Red stayed in her nest for weeks, hardly moving and looking bad. A couple of times I had to poke her to see if she was alive. But she got over it and survived until summer and then dropped dead.

The charger was on the battery for about two hours, grinding away. Then I sat and pumped the gas, begged and pleaded and then Freya suddenly started. We still don't seem to have much in the way of a heater though and that's a problem, but since she's due for the shop to check the "check engine" light issue we should be able to deal with it. My mechanic is in a bad way, he tried to start a motorcycle business just before the recession got real shitty and lost his shirt. So now I'm letting him fix those annoying little things like red warning lights and no rear wiper.

The little birds are all puffed up and round, like they all turned into chickadees. Even the blue jays have breasts today. They are diving and landing, knocking each other off the perches on the feeders. The way they dive off the branches on the chestnut reminds me of cliff divers on a tropical island. Except for the icicles and piles of snow, the technique is similar. Instead of pearls they end up with a sunflower seed.

Back in Phoenix, where it is warm in the winter, when the car didn't start I would call up Larry and he'd come over with his tools and make it work. Never failed to start my cars and explain exactly why I screwed up. This morning I asked Larry for a manifestation or something and then the car started. I'm pretty sure it was just a coincidence because Larry would have explained why the car didn't start and how to prevent this problem. Nobody told me nothing this morning so I guess I am on my own.

A friend is asking me to pick a camera out for her. She likes my photos and wants to own a digital. I'm temped to give her my old one, the one Larry gave me when I wanted to work in digital, but it's an antique with a memory card they don't even make anymore. The real problem is that my friend doesn't own a computer and doesn't want one. When means she'll have to view her pictures at the drug store when she prints them. I told her this and she didn't mind, just so she gets nice prints. I like being known for having knowledge. It's not like I'm another Larry but there are a couple of things I know well. If somebody wanted to use a kiln or build one I could help. I've taught Jess how to brew and a few other things like that, so I am something of a teacher, not as far up the ladder as Larry got, but not bad.

We're putting together our family tree here, using MyHeritage.com and their Family Tree Builder. It's great stuff, you can have pictures, sound clips, all kinds of information about the members of your tree. Then you publish the thing at their web site and anybody who happens to be connected can find the rest of the information, like some long lost cousin might discover that there are several William Shirleys and by comparing some details they can link to our tree and the thing gets bigger. My great grandfather was a William and he moved from Tennessee to Erie New York where he was a peace officer and an herbalist. They called him Doc Shirley and his obit described him as a big man. So I can really relate since I too an into herbs and my pappy was a big man. I'd be a big man, the doctors say, except something went wrong as a baby and although my spinal parts are for a man over six feet tall, like Pappy, I am only 5'-10" minus two inches for shrinking bones and ending up at 5'-8". But Doc Shirley had kids and if they ever build a family tree online they would discover ours and the thing would grow. Eventually, if everybody with family tree knowledge did this eventually we'd have this single huge family tree online for everybody to see that they are related to everybody else.

We are a huge family with all kinds of skin tone, height, occupations and interests. Things don't always go well in families and people sometimes drop out, but unless they die in a lonely grave in the desert they continue on with their lives somewhere. Their children may come to wonder about their great-great grandparents and do a search online, and when they do they will discover that we've been growing a nice one. I just wish Mom could see it, she loved to talk about family members, ancient uncles and cousins and what they did when. My grandfather Tate saved people from a flood, going out to collect them from their houses in a rowboat. He got a cold, it turned into pneumonia and he died. The stories mom told about her brothers were delightful and protected under the 5th amendment.

--- How time flies. I started this a couple days ago and now Margaret has added numerous names to our family tree and one chicken has passed on. Poor Tweedle Dum died, most likely of old age. She is survived by her sister, Tweedle Dee and her friends and room mates, Audrey Beardsly, Sharon and Biddie. Instead of flowers please treat birds kindly.