QUOTESSAYS

Sunday's computer generated quote from AI, because AI seems to be coming up with better quotes than humans these days. The best and most poetic definition of Consciousness I have run across, and yet from an entity with no consciousness. This quote is right up there with the best of meaningless, woo woo quotes from wise guy gurus, aka charlatans, from the Dalai Lama to Osho, and all the rest. AI has ya beat, time to close up the Ashram, pack up your saffron robes, and get a real job, swami......  

Of course I never argue. I simply explain why I am right and you are wrong using clarity of language, impeccable logic, and infinite patience and understanding. I speak slowly and try and not use too big of words, even resorting to simple to understand visual aids if need be. Dumb folk love their pictures. You would think all that effort would be appreciated. Think again. I get nothing back but snippy comments, blank looks, and questioning of my authority. I tell you, there is no end to the audacity of dumb people. Now, I can understand how awful and humiliating it must feel to always be wrong. Actually I can't, as I have never been wrong. Hey, but let's have a little sensitivity towards me too. Being right 100% of the time is no picnic either, plus I have to listen to you blathering ridiculous ideas and illogical conclusions. I don't even want to go to your parties anyway.....   

More AI wisdom generated by a computer courtesy of InspiroBot. AI seems to be coming up with all the best quotes lately. I find myself ignoring more of the world lately. There is so much chatter and noise as to be distracting. One experience that will always stick in my mind was the time immediately after the 89' Loma Prieta  Earthquake in Santa Cruz, CA. Everything was so quiet. It made me realize that we were normally surrounded by an electric hum all the time in addition to all the other noises of civilization. You could actually hear yourself think. It felt good. That stuck with me and was one of my major motivations of moving to the high desert where I could duplicate that environment easily. Peace and quiet is beginning to be a rare commodity. I know it makes a lot of people nervous to be without something being fed to them aurally all day long. I see people with the earbuds on my walks, oblivious to the beauty of the ambient sounds all around them. That is really the best mu

I notice the older I get, the less I listen to anybody. Seems like I have heard it all before. People really don't have a clue what they are talking about anyway. To be fair, I don't even listen to myself......  

 One of my favorite modern quotes. I always thought Huxley's 'Brave New World' was closer to our modern reality than Orwell's '1984' turned out to be. However, 'Brave New World' was written way before WW2 and '1984' after, so Orwell had the Nazi to use as a model that was fresh in everyone's mind. Technology has kind of swept Orwell's style of   totalitarianism into the dustbin of history. This quote is easy to understand. Social media provides us all with our own little media outlet now. We can become mini celebrities, akin to Warhol's idea that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes in our celebrity soaked culture. Everyone wants to feel relevant and connected in this existential void we call life, whether it be posting a "Which Dumbass Are You" type quiz, pictures of our precious kitties, or the latest meme of the week(currently Bernie Sanders wearing mittens). And the cost is light, delivering you to targeted advertisers

 I have seen this quote attributed to Groucho Marx, but it never sounded like him to me. I finally hunted it down to Earnest Benn, a British Classical Liberal writer and publisher and son of a lifelong politician. Groucho has enough great quotes, but this is about all poor Earnest will be remembered for. I personally am looking forward to a post political world where we all live under the rule of Walmart in peace and harmony. No more nation states, no more wars, no more inequality, just a beautiful united world under the bright blue flag with the single gold star. Lennon's 'Imagine' will finally come to fruition.....

I was cleaning up my bookcase awhile back and came upon my Michigan Real Estate and Florida CNA License prep books. I browsed through them briefly for old times sake before tossing them. It suddenly occurred to me that I hardly ever used any of the things these books taught me in my actual work in those two occupations. Almost everything was learned on the job. The most they provided was a general overview of the profession with some added legal delineations, which I transgressed regularly in the field. Book 'larnin' is only valuable if you then take what you have learned and go outside and roll it around in the mud to see what sticks. My life has told me anecdotally very little sticks. That is the issue with folks that are totally immersed in just the academic side of any profession. They know a hundred ways to fuck but have never met a woman......  

Most of the jobs I have had showed their ugly side right off the bat. That is the price one pays for having 'kid' jobs for most of your life. The main entrance requirement was having a discernable pulse. I was working in a carwash in my 30's as just one example of having possibly every crappy job in our society at one time or another. I gravitated to the ugly side as quickly as possible in the few adult jobs I did have. As a cabbie I soon learned there was little money in taking little old ladies to the grocery store once a week during the afternoon. As soon as I learned the ropes I switched to the night shift and started taking Johns to hookers for a much better income. And as a Real estate agent in Detroit the uglier it got, the more I made. I never felt comfortable driving families around the burbs looking at houses. The good neighborhoods were already controlled by the old time agents who lived there. I had to go South of 8 Mile and got addicted to the adrenaline rush o

Like so much Eastern philosophy it sounds so simple as to be obvious. That is what always bugs me about the stuff the Dalai Lama comes up with. His quips seem meaningless and banal to me, nothing to really chew one. He has been eclipsed by Hallmark Card writers. But this piece of Eastern wisdom is beautifully stated, yet pragmatic in a Western way. I lived my earlier life like a pile of leaves that was tossed into the wind. I never knew exactly where I would fall, but I did learn to readjust to my surroundings quickly. I always thought of it as a dance in my mind. No matter what crazy place I found myself, I always maintained a healthy respect for basic physics and psychology, no doubt the reason I am still alive. That and a little luck. So many people I knew through the years lived life in free fall, like crash test dummies. They were the canaries in the mineshaft and warned me when it was time to back up a little. Most are long dead now. Quite a few made some impressive splats that s

 On a related note a very wealthy man I once cared for that I called 'Rich Guy' gave me this advice: "There are only three things you need to know about truth. 1. If someone tells you they know what the ultimate truth and purpose of the Universe is, they are lying. Don't give them money.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      2. If someone is trying to sell you something, assume they are lying. From that baseline work your way up using reason and logic until you have a deal. 3. If someone tries to tell you that there are only three things you need to know about any subject, they are lying."

 This brings up another story of when I returned to college in my forties after being away from academia for over twenty years. The University of California at Santa Cruz had a reputation as the official college where 'Trustafarians', the offspring of the wealthy from Southern California, would go to play hippie radical for a couple of years before settling down to become fulltime capitalists. The closest they got to being a 'Working Class Hero' was listening to a John Lennon song. The majority had very little life experience down in the trenches. Their class prejudice was always simmering just beneath the surface no matter how egalitarian their rap was. I had one discussion group with a useless TA and a handful of students as part of a political philosophy course. I could never understand half the stuff being discussed in this group. I figured either I was pretty dumb or there was a lot of empty rhetoric being tossed around. I was doing well in the class as far as writ

 This quote is the real deal from a speech, instead of the bogus 'death bed' quote that made the round a few years ago on social media. I remember when I first read that one and immediately looked it up because it just didn't jive with how Jobs would have sounded to my mind. Sure enough, it was something someone made up. It was the usual stuff about how wealth doesn't matter and all that really matters is friends and family, etc., etc., etc. It was way to cute and cuddly for a persona like Jobs. According to his sister Jobs's real last words were "OH WOW, OH WOW, OH WOW!" Somehow I find that way more comforting than some deathbed oratory that read like a bad Hallmark card. Now this one is the real quote taken from Job's commencement address to the graduating class of Stanford in 2005 and one of my favorites. Usually it takes a lifetime to learn this lesson and it is often too late to put it into practice by then. Death is the great equalizer. 

 I was a huge McLuhan fan when he was all the rage in the early 70's. True, there was much bullshit pontificating on his themes, as college students and professors are wont to do, but there was a lot of substance to his work too. He even made a cameo in Woody Allen's 'Annie Hall' telling a pompous ass who was discussing McLuhan's theories that he "knew nothing of my work." He kind of dropped out of favor a little later on, as academic fads often do. He had somewhat of a rebirth when the internet got really rolling in the late 90's, as so much of what he was originally writing about was suddenly unfolding in front of our eyes.  So many people stake out a belief and then only seek out the biased informational sources that support that belief. The internet and social media is perfect for that approach too. What should be a vehicle to open up to other people's perspective seems to instead have become a place where we can wrap ourselves up in cozy virtu

 The 'Catch 22' of all political systems in reality. The U.S. Constitution does about as good a job in dealing with this problem as possible with term limits and the balancing of power between three distinct branches of government. But we are still left with the problem of the deviant psychologically of the kind of people who desire to be president. Not to mention the crippling  stress and addictive power of the office itself once they get elected. That is the juice they are after. That is why politicians always campaign as just being 'one of the people'. They are never really 'one the people' and don't believe it for a moment. They know they are superior to the people and that is why they are boss. Some are better actors than others for sure, but how anyone can get through listening to any presidential speech without getting a little queasy is a mystery to me. As another old saying goes: "Politics is just showbiz for ugly people." 

 Noticed quite a few Franklin quotes popping up lately on social media relating to the storming of the capital a few days back. As a quote collector I can tell you, Ben had a million of em'! This is one of my favorites I will dedicate to FB political commentary. The one I am seeing a lot is the famous quote from Franklin when exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787 when asked do we have a republic or a monarchy? His reply was "A republic, if you can keep it." He had some serious doubts. What we have today is not a republic, at least not one Franklin would recognize. The constitution is clearly a document expressing Libertarian principles and is far removed from the political philosophies and practices of either the modern Republican or Democratic Party. The reality is what worked for a couple of million homogeneous white males in an agrarian society with unlimited natural resources and an endless Western frontier may not work today. We have really been living in a t

 As a Solipsist I only regard myself as being corrupt. Now a lot of you, my mental constructs, might be corrupt simply because I need you to play that role in my personal simulation. If you find yourself being an asshole, I apologize......

Hey, I already have lost all respect for humanity. Where's my money?  

 This would be related to 'Theory vs. Practice', 'The Devil is in the Details.', and 'It looks good on paper.' It particularly fits the subject of politics.  I remember when I was first a college student at the University of California at Santa Cruz as a Political Science major. The university just shortened the major to Politics, which was not a bad idea, as politics has very little to do with science. As a 20 year old I was in awe of all the PhDs after my teachers' names. I figured they surely must know a shitload about politics. I didn't return to college for another 20 years. When I did I noticed an amazing thing. The professors sounded dumber to me now that I was in my early 40's. I finally figured out why. While I had spent 20 years working a slew of crappy jobs where the only entry requirement was to make fog on a mirror, these professors had been holed up in their ivory towers, jumping through whatever hoops they must to gain tenure. I was ro

 Though in my autumn years I am not so sure if this is true. Many of the people I probably should have avoided along the way were the very same ones who catapulted me from adventure to adventure. I lived my life like a pinball game and they were the flippers that enabled me light up the backboard once in awhile. I learned inches and seconds can change one's life trajectory dramatically. I needed everyone, assholes and all, to get me to the place I am right now, and it is a very good place......

 I do believe this is he first year I have never even thought about making a New Year's resolution. Historically I have always jotted down a few things that I would forget about by January 3rd. On the cusp of 70 I think this is about as good as I am probably going to get. From here on out I will just devote myself to staving off my bodily disintegration as best as I can and dancing away from the Grim Reaper's scythe's swings as long as possible. All the rest is academic at this point.....