Entries tagged with hexagram 47

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OK, lots of folks ain’t gonna like this. But then a lot of folks don’t read this screed of mine. I am gonna call it a push.

We don’t have a chance in hell of winning a war with Russia. We are acting like we got the ball, the bat, and the rules, but in reality, we don’t have jack shit.

We have a military that is just as thoroughly broken as the one I served in. We are geared around fighting a poorly armed, third world insurgency and our equipment is really poorly designed, trying to be everything to everyone and not really serving any one function well. Our equipment is designed around getting a “C” in any particular mission but not getting an “A” in any.

Supply lines would be a nightmare. Europe has internal supply lines for the Russians. We would have to bring supplies across a hostile ocean. Even worse, mechanized warfare would require that we bring fuel. Because the whole problem that we are trying to solve (really, really badly) is all about energy supplies. Simply put, Europe doesn’t have any.

Our erstwhile allies in the petting zoo called Europe aren’t up to the task either. They have gutted their armies in order to do home renovation and generate the only PMC more silly and corrupt than ours.

So, if the current administration is silly enough to start a tussle, we will simply lose ignominiously. Simply put, we are picking a fight that we can’t win.

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hexagram 47

Christ's Weeds

Surrealism / Paul Nash/ Eclipse of the Sunflower

The one thing that was brought almost forcefully to my attention during the past couple of weeks is the hidden culture of American Christian Fundamentalism(ACF).

I suppose that the word hidden is not quite correct for this group. I think that the mass media, when it deigns to discuss them at all, goes far out of its way to present these folks in the most unflattering ways possible. There are channels and publications that cater to these folks, but they are considered anathema to “right thinking” folks on the left. From what I see, the left considers any notice, awareness, or familiarity to what is prejudicially seen as akin to fascism and naziism as proof of sin.

Look folks, I ain’t christian. But I most certainly ain’t a liberal. But what I have seen in the past couple of weeks is that the liberal end of the spectrum will desert you like a hot rock at the first sign of trouble and the folks of the christian right step up and help without even thinking about it.

I think that the issue is that folks seem to want to think that people aren’t a sum of parts. I cringe when I consider the idea of participating in a christian service, but I recognize that a group of christians is much more likely to walk the walk than other groups.

Hell, I even like some of them. Doesn’t mean I want to hang out with them every day. I don’t even mind when they try to proselyze, because I try to remember that they are actually sharing something that they consider precious.

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hexagram 47

Occupado

Transavantgarde / Francesco Clemente/ Fire

I have been dealing with family shit of late. I am getting a bit of psychic constipation by not having time to sit down and think and write every day. I will check in and do a piece now and again until after this process is over. Then I am hoping to get back into a semi-regular schedule of producing screeds.

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hexagram 47

Vacay

Romanticism / J.M.W. Turner/ Rain Steam and Speed, The Great Western Railway

Taking a week off to burn up some time and to help out as I can. Problem is that “as I can” becomes somewhat limited due to age and infirmity. Sigh. But today is planned as a straight rest day. I genuinely hope that it pans out that way. I am doing a distilling run today to get 500ml of “high test” (>85% EtOH). I now know the truth of why moonshining remains so popular among the non-striving. You can say that you are doing something when you really aren’t.

Today's subject and thought exercise is an extension of yesterday’s post. Ugo did a post over at his place concerning the nature of the nagging revulsion that seems to be the burden of those of us at this end of the blogosphere.

I think that with the increasing nastiness of the vaccine “debate” folks are beginning to sort themselves out into subtribes. I really have no problem with this phenomenon. The actual human reaction engendered by the inability to accept others is usually coercion and violence and that has to be taken into consideration. I think that this kind of thing will probably take a nasty turn in the none-too-distant future.

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hexagram 47

dun

Post-Impressionism / Constantin Piliuta/ Childhood Winter

Got Nothin’

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hexagram 47

Fall

Expressionism / Abraham Manievich/ House Workers in the Bronx

Lots of moving parts in my life right now. All of them point to the cold reality that there isn’t much in the way of “good solutions” available to us at the particular moment. It appears that with our growing access to what passes as the world’s knowledge and the exposure to and understanding of the breadth and depth of our fellow humans opinions, all we have is the chance at trying to choose the “least bad” option.

Helluva note.

Ugo, Mike, and others have been making me think far too much of late.

I am coming around to the idea that we are looking at a period of time that won’t allow us the luxuries that we have come to require. We are coming into the era of consequences.

I for one am not looking forward to this.

Current Location: Baked in the kitchen
Current Music: who knows

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hexagram 47

(no subject)

Na�ve Art (Primitivism) / Niko Pirosmani/ Healer on a Donkey

Home on a Naïve Art (Primitivism) / Niko Pirosmani/ Healer on a Donkey

Home on Friday, night. I'm a little baked, so I am just giving you a howdy ho. Nothing to tell you of any real note. Tried in "telework" today and I can tell you for a fact that ain't gonna happen again. I hate that shit.

Staying at home (surprise) and listening to Jazz on the local college station. Can't tell you what it is, I am just listening to free music on the FM. Replete with static. I am still quite happy. I guess that I just haven't gone all that far after all.

Memories are in Sunset, Utah, with a crystal radio and surreptitiously listening to KCPX AM play the Rolling Stones.

Current Location: Happy Lamp and Coffee
Current Music: Derek and the Dominos: Little Wing

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hexagram 47

I'm Getting the Idea

Romanticism / Franz Richard Unterberger/ Figures in a Village in the Dolomites

One of the things that I hate about fall is the re-emergence of "Old Man Stink". Apartment gets sealed up for warmth and dry, so the not all that subtle smell of old man creeps in. Yuck. So mornings are the fan in the door blowing in fresh air and coolness. Luckily here in mild mannered Portlandia, the weather cooperates to a certain degree and at least it isn't freezing outside for this little ritual.

Screed:

I have always been amazed at the ineptness of the Democratic Party. Even in it's salad days back during the Roosevelt/Truman years, it was still kind of a mess. It managed as it always does by spending more than it takes in and passing the debt down unnoticed to another generation. It got so used to this modus operandi that it considers it to be the way of things.

Now, don't think for a moment that I am coming to the defense of the Republicans. Once Lincoln got offed, there has been a steady decline downwards for those fuckwads. Sometimes I wonder if there will ever be another candidate for the Presidency put up by one of the two parties that I will be able to vote for, rather than choosing the "lesser of two evils".

I sometimes wonder if the actual structure of a Democratically elected Republic such as ours is able to maintain itself long term. We have managed to hang on this long because of the simple fact that there has always been some form of plunder that can be shared out among the elite and the Hoi Polloi. Well, I am getting the feeling that sort of thing is coming to an end and sharing seems to be out of the question for those who rule.

So the fuckwad in chief that currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania is working at a sharing plan that doesn't meet with the plans of the other party or the entrenched elites of the alphabet agencies. Now this isn't a endorsement of the political opponents of the fuckwad, they are venal and corrupt as the orangeman. But they want control of the resources that are the gateway to their power, because power in America is garnered by bribes and largesse. Who gets rewarded and who is told to suck it is both the means of gaining that power and the reward for obtaining it.

Current Location: In front of the happy lamp

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hexagram 47

Daily Double

Spending time yesterday just pondering the world. Didn't get very far. I am coming to the conclusion that one cannot make sense of what the combined and conflicting desires of a couple of billion folks seem to put out. I tend to look at the human process as a biology type thing. We have created, through the flim-flammery of burning through a couple of billion years of stored energy, a meta economy that allows the population to far outstrip the actual carrying capacity of the planet. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a refilling station anywhere handy.

So, I am working out the details of decline, both personal and societal. Now, everyone here is going to go all atwitter by my non-positive spin, but I still am going to probably live out my life just fine. Truth be told, my kids will probably get through fine as well. But our lives will be different in the none-too-distant future, stuff and play will become less important. Work and frugality will become more important. I suppose that is the driving force behind my actions of late, getting used to what the world will present me.

Mikes take on Brain Cell Harvests

Post-Bake Existence:

Imagine your brain is a harbor and all the cells of your brain are the water in the harbor. Some of the cells are hardy go-getters while some, for any number of reasons, are weak and lazy and basically no good. Maybe those cells have just not aged well, or maybe they are copies from some crazy relation who died in jail.

Anyway, when you dose the harbor with THC, the weak, lazy cells will show their true nature and end up floating like turds on the surface. Over a few days, the tides will wash the turds away and not only will you feel better, you will be smarter.

With regards to the discussion of capitalism, because my take has been non-rosy so far, I do want to go ahead and write one or two on the positive aspects. I do think there are several and then there is always the question about viable alternatives.

Current Location: Kitchen
Current Music: Chuck Barry: Johnnie Be Good

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hexagram 47

A Taste of Mammon

Just chopping wood and carrying water. Gonna spend the weekend getting ready for a vacation, gonna get the van into the shop. I have to stop dithering about getting up and leaving the current gig. It is over there, I am just hanging on out of sheer cussedness.

Screed

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

Michael has got me a pondering about the way that our society has been structured. Because, even though we claim a democracy, and we assiduously maintain the trappings of the fictitious beast, I can't really say that we are any such thing anymore. With the outsized corporate power and the reach and societal worship of the uber-wealthy, we have become something else. I am trying to figure out exactly what we have become.

It doesn't look pretty. S.I. Hayakawa was required reading assigned to me in the summer by folks long ago. Took me down the primrose path to the genteel poverty where I currently reside. He coined the term "snarl words". One could also take the time to go through and look up "purr words" and kind of think hard about how the language is used of by the panjandrums. What I find especially telling is the way that all descriptions of any political structure that doesn't pay lip service and support to the decidedly non-democratic system that we so heatedly espouse as being the end of history have been converted to snarl words.

Seriously, think about it. Think of the words that label means of political control in the world. If anything pull out any what you can think of them and examine their true definitions and compare the definitions of these "snarl words" to the description of the current state of affairs here in the "Land of the Free(TM)" and tell me about cognitive dissonance

Current Mood: 衰竭
Current Location: In front of the happy lamp
Current Music: Not feeling it today

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hexagram 47

Kale

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Hunters in the Snow

You would think that for as long as I have been doing this (Between the Blogger, Wordpress, and now Dreamwidth sites, there are posts going back thirteen years!) I would have settled on a system for writing. I kind of get a mental constipation unless I sit down and write every day. For a while, I was obsessed with the idea that someone read what I write, but even that has passed. Oh, don't get me wrong gentle readers, I do want your company here in this opening in the forest, but I am pretty much over worrying about the number of guests that drop by. I am going to write every day, and should someone drop by to read it, all the better.

Most of the time, subjects are mundane. Day-to-day drivel written while I drink my coffee and wait for the ibuprofen to kick in. My hair is drying and the world outside is dark and quiet. Overall, not a bad way to start a day. But I usually have something bigger on my mind, and those subjects are what I want to write about, but they require lots of work and polish to create, so I don't get to publish meaningful every day.

For a while, I thought that I would go to a weekly format like JMG, but that didn't seem to relieve the mental constipation. So I think that I will write some babble here every day to keep the mind a churning, then once a week I will post a bigger piece of substantive work.

So I will probably write on the little screen editor for the day to day, and write the substantive pieces on the laptop with a word processor.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Kitchen Table

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hexagram 47

Before we start on the creative minority

I want to talk about channeling your inner Ahab.

Look, here in the good old USA we think that everything is for sale and everything is a service that can be purchased. Need to get in shape? Join a gym (for a fee), need to lose weight? Join one of the services that watch you and rag you (for a fee), need to improve yourself? Go to a class of some type (for a fee).

Yet all of those things will require, at the end of the day, simple self-discipline on your part. Nothing else.

The idea that everything requires a cheering section and a trophy is a recent occurrence here in the USA. I cannot remember anyone other than the occasional outlier bored suburban housewife thinking this way in the deep park past. Nope, this is a recent poison and it has flooded the system.

All that hoohooraw about the Gillette "Toxic Masculinity" commercial is a case of this kind of nonsense taken to the extreme. The replies are equally childish and in the other direction.

Nope, the reason that I am writing this is that I want to remind someone of a fictional character that has gotten a uniquely bad rap here in the land o' the free.

Captain Ahab.

Look, everyone who reads the book starts out thinking of Ahab as a caricature, all they see is the obsession. But as you get older, I really think that it becomes more complex than that. Yes, Ahab is obsessed. No getting around that. An oversized fish biting off your leg tends to do that to a man.

But he is a man about his profession. He is a whaler after a specific whale. He is focused on his task and he will do it. Granted, he did go a little bit overboard, but that is the nature of focus, it can get out of hand if you don't keep a weather eye on it.

Look, people don't need a cheering section. You don't need someone else to tell you what to do to get to your goal. You need to focus on the prize, you need to finish the task. Nothing else will work.

What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do!