QUOTESSAYS

 This quote may be outdated. I believe the majority of people today prefer to believe bad ideas, even if they are exposed to good ideas. Now with so many media outlets, bad ideas can actually provide an income stream in our boutique news environment. No matter what your political persuasion, there is a corporation custom designing pablum to feed you and create a demographic they can market to. Even the conspiracy theorists who don't quite fit the prevailing version of the left/right dichotomy have a cottage industry aimed at them. The problem is good ideas are usually free and can be pretty boring and appeal to a demographic difficult to define and sell to. Information has just become another capitalist marketplace. No better way to target advertising than directly to the exact demographic you can attract with specific content. Hence, after whatever this week's big fucking deal is, you will see the simplistic memes sprouting up like daisies after a Spring rain. Politics has jus

 This is one that gets truer with age and experience. Here's a toast to all my friends and the life lessons they taught me as I held their beers. 

 Whatever area of the brain that is responsible for processing mathematical equations was stillborn in me. Four years of flunking 'Intro to Algebra' in high school proved it. I finally got a D in 'Consumer Math', the class they had for mouth breathers to get their math requirement out of the way. The sad part is I was really applying myself too. I wanted to be good at math and science, but they just didn't find a fertile place to incubate between my ears. I originally wanted to be an Astronomer, but that dream was aborted early.  The other sad aspect was I had no aptitude for art or music either, even though I hid out in the art classes for easy grades. They only area I could bullshit my way through was social studies, the ultimate in subjective disciplines. I decided early on I would become a 'Generalist', knowing a little bit about everything, and not very much about anything. If I could not live a productive life, I would live an interesting one, emphasiz

  Funkenzwangsvorstellung n. the instinctive trance of a campfire in the dark, spending hours roasting and watching as it settles and sinks into the ground like a heap of shipwrecks whose sailors raise their flickering sails trying to signal that the prevailing winds of your life are about to shift, that the edge of the Earth is real and looming just a few years ahead, and that your marshmallow is on fire.

 Another one with a kernel of truth buried in the humor. I have noticed that many of the hard times past mates have helped me through disappeared during times of me being single. Kind of like someone pushing you off the dock, then throwing you a life preserver. 

  moriturism n. the insomnia-borne jolt of awareness that you will die, that these passing years aren’t just scenes from a dress rehearsal, rounds of an ongoing game or chapters in a story you’ll be telling later, but are footprints being lapped by the steadily gathering tide of an unfathomable abyss, which still wouldn’t wash out the aftertaste of all those baskets of Buffalo wings you devoured just before bedtime.

Actually, there is a kernel of truth in this quote. In looking back, I can recall several different times when life was going pretty well, and I was on track before I purposefully sabotaged myself. In retrospect they were all wise moves. I was not designed for long term goals and stability. Anything that brought me to where I am today, a very good place, was obviously the right decision.   

Oh Lordy, I fear any political opponents I faced would have a field day with my personal history. The only antidote to a questionable past is Kennedy/Trump kind of money. You can create the image of an upstanding candidate there for the common man for the right price. Money will always triumph over ethics and morality in politics. I might be able to win a dog catcher election somewhere in Idaho as a Libertarian if the wind is blowing just right.

  I actually hope all the conspiracy theories about a Deep State and a New World Order shadow government are true. I look at the politicians running the country these last few years and it makes me a little nervous. We have literally had two presidents in a row who were incapable of constructing a sentence you could diagram. The Trump and Biden debate was unwatchable, way too scary and disturbing. I would like to think someone is in charge. Now I realize politicians have never been our brightest and best, or do they really need to be. It is basically showbiz for ugly folks. Truly intelligent and creative people are usually drawn to different professions. Hopefully we can fill those roles with halfway capable bureaucrats with at least a room temperature IQ who won't fuck up too often. I will take a self-preserving sociopath over a dumb narcissist channeling Mussolini or a dead eyed, dazed and confused dementia patient any day. When we look back nostalgically upon Obama and Bush as g

  I have seen mountain lion scat on some of my hikes around here. I am getting a little older and slower now, and that concerns me a bit. I wonder if it might be prudent to become a member of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America and bring a few youngsters along with me on hikes? The kids will be able to run faster than me, but I figure the motion will just attract the cat more. Push comes to shove, and I can whack the kids with my hiking staff on their kneecaps to slow them down a might while I escape.

Scrubs were $14.95 at Walmart when I was a geriatric CNA. I had three, a blue, green, and red one. I soon learned the red one could agitate some of the dementia patients at the facility I worked, so I ditched that one. I used my scrubs with a stethoscope casually thrown around my neck to convince several dementia patients I was a doctor when we were faced with a situation where we needed to calm a patient down. Being the only white male in a workface of black Haitian women put me in that position a few times when things got sticky with rich, old white racists. I got very good at projecting authority and speaking mumbo jumbo while looking at 'charts', which were any I could grab. My favorite incident happened when a fill in doctor was making the rounds at the facility one weekend. He could not convince one of the patients to take his meds. Ironically, this patient had been a GP himself, but his dementia was fairly bad by then. The Haitian CNA went and got me, knowing my skill at

 Boy, could we use a little more good old fashioned Aristotelian Logic these days. People are so polarized that none of their positions end up being logical. It is difficult to stuff a whole logical argument onto a meme, no matter how clever or catchy it is. Every single political issue has many sides one must factor in. All positions contain kernels of truth among the turds of bullshit. But, that is the nature of the political system we have. The electorate is pushed and pulled around by illogical half arguments. It is a form of mob rule. We live in a political culture where we careen from one unintended consequence to another at the breakneck speed technology now provides us. We may be moving faster than our biological system is able to evolve.

In fact, I would say one learns more from dumb people than smart people, certainly in physical situations. Some of the most valuable life lessons I ever learned in applied physics was when holding the beers of intellectually challenged friends. They sacrificed their own bodies in stunning educational displays differentiating the difference between theory and certainty. The majority of them are no longer with us, having sacrificed their lives to scientific research. I salute you.....