About Blogging

I just posted a new blog at Myspace. Here's another. I was finally able to get the password changed and get back in. As far as I can tell, there has still been no change to my profile page. I did not "upgrade" it to either 2.0 or 3.0, so my html programming with the scroll boxes, etc., is still there. You might let me know if it shows up for you. The blogs are a different question. The text area is tiny (only about 4 inches), there is zero ability to customize. Apparently the ability to reply individually to comments is back, but there is probably still a length limit. That ability to reply to a comment left for you, then to reply to that, etc., is what creates conversation and that's what creates friendship. It's because of this that I have moved to Friendburst This has been described by some as Myspace 1.0 and 2.0, with some Facebook thrown in, and it uses the Wordpress blogging platform. That's what allows the comments to comment, etc. Here's a look at my friendburst blogs.

Having a Picasso-esque blog is fine as long as the blogger intended that. But I suspect Leonardo would be highly pissed if Picasso Picassoed up the Mona Lisa. That seems like what happened at the Spazz. Obviously, no one in charge at Myspace recently has had any interest in even trying to satisfy real bloggers. I suspect it will fade away completely at least as a place for bloggers. Those of you still hanging on there, you really should pick somewhere else to go if you really want to continue blogging and hold on to at least a few of your friends...you can also find new ones too, yanno; some who haven't heard yer rant yet, lol.

One of my favorite places for blogging is blogspot; several friends have found me there. But that conversational element in the comments is not there. That is, for sure, one of the places though, that I will always post. There is a permanent link section at my blogger blog that has links to all the other places I post, which some may like better. Then there is myboomerplace. This is a sample of my myboomerplace blog. I don't really know why I like Xanga... I just try to post a copy of my blogs there. Like this one. For you folk at Facebook, who might get notices of my blog postings, I will try hard to not post more than one notice...otherwise, please just ignore any duplicates.

So... my for sure blog is always at blogger, I will try to develop both Myboomerplace and especially Friendburst - because of the conversational element in the comments. Y'all come on over and pick one and let's get our little clicks back together...meet new friends...continue bitching about the price of gas and saving the world one blog at a time.

A political note

I LOVE wikileaks. I have two complaints at this point; 1) There should be a hundred more like them, 2) the "leaks" should be of a much more substantial nature...tell the "real" secrets, that matter much more than snide or catty remarks by diplomats about other diplomats. The most important reason I have for this position is that I consider myself a patriot. I love my country. I would love to see my country known globally as a beacon of moral virtue. This is not rocket science. If you don't want other people knowing about something "bad" you said about someone else...then don't say such things. If you have nothing good and truthful to say, then keep silent. Most of what I have heard "exposed" in these leaks are things most everyone already knew anyway. It's surprising that Saudi Arabia would encourage the US to bomb Iran and stop their nuclear ambitions? Not hardly. Karzai is a paranoid character? HA!, no shit Sherlock. Just say what you mean and mean what you say. This is the way to take the moral high ground. This is the way to build honest trust. Alas, the result of wiki will likely be a clamping down on information; heightened secrecy; a lot more people than Karzai being paranoid. Guilt breeds a lot of paranoia.

TRB

Just Stuff 11/29/10

I have an actual blog that I wrote, but have been unable to post. The technical problems are within me, not the computer or web sites. There is a feeling that I sometimes get, which is very hard to describe. In some ways it may be a kind or degree of depression, in others an odd sort of near-paralysis, a deep sluggishness, like trying to get somewhere slogging through waist-deep molasses. It's a bit like having some trash in your gas lines, making your car spit and sputter, rather than running smoothly. Consider this the trash. Funny though, some might consider this the blog and what follows the trash. *sigh* I feel like I am being dragged from poor, which was perfectly adequate, back toward poverty...which is not. It feels a little like a metaphorical death by a thousand cuts. I'm starting to wonder, just how metaphorical. Things continue to go wrong, no one of them, so far, of a genuine emergency nature. But collectively...

The microwave died some time back, but luckily we still had a little money left, so we replaced it. Melinda feels VERY strongly about not letting go of the burial insurance...so, for now, that is off the table again. We have been able to reduce the power bill by about $30 from last month. Whether that holds will depend largely on how cold it gets, and so how much we have to run the electric heater. We were able to redo the "bundle" deal with AT&T and reduce that bill by maybe $20. Netflix suddenly increased the rate, but only by $1 so it won't make much difference. The whole thing is still less than $10, so it's not a biggie in our cost/benefit analysis.

The fan in the living room has now died. Another cut...small, but still a cut. I need that for both air circulation and for the "white noise" of the droning motor to drown out other sounds like a dripping faucet, wheezing breathing, creaks and pops of the walls, sound of heartbeat. There is no money to replace it. There is no choice but to endure the other sounds. Suddenly the car speedometer only works intermittently. Another cut...small, but still a cut. No way to fix that.
For some unknown reason we have no hot water in the bathroom. It's a small thing...added to the collection. It's another bit of psychological drain. Luckily we still have hot water in the kitchen. Yes, that's the landlady's problem, but when your rent is $200, you don't make complaints except for the truly intolerable things. We are almost out of cigarettes again...and four more days till money. Most would reasonably say this is a good thing. To choose to stop smoking, and successfully do it, is a good thing. To be unable to smoke because you cannot get a cigarette is not at all a good thing. Whatever physical benefits may accrue as far as there not being smoke and all those chemicals in your body are much more than offset by the psychological damage; humiliation, building anger.

I have already vowed that we will NOT have such a problem next month. We will have cigarettes, no matter what. Plus, we will need other things Food Stamps cannot buy, such as paper products, laundry products, dog food, gas for the car, money to pay what medicare doesn't cover on my meds, etc. One more week... now maybe I can get the blog out.

TRB

Just Stuff

Remember the old spiritual song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot? What's swinging low in modern times seems to be the buckets for scooping up all the wealth from those who have the least in order to cushion the lives of the rich. There's this trend, you see, globally, to apply reverse Robin Hood ethics. Now it's Ireland which is applying "austerity measures", but not to worry, this doesn't apply to corporations, only the rabble... people who want things like minimum wages, health care, etc. Ireland corporate tax rate.

Speaking of health care, didja see what Arizona's new plan about that is? Seems to be basically, "if they get sick, fuggum, let 'em die". Jan Brewer says the state has to save money...naturally it's all Obama's fault. Keith Olberman tells you about Jan Brewer's real "death panels". Tex Shelters has a good letter to Jan.

It is true that some people, formerly rich became...eh, less so, for being just plain stupid. Here's a classic example... an Aston Martin... really? I had to look up the story again just to spell that right. But between now and May, millions more Americans will run out of unemployment benefits, through no fault of their own, unless Congress passes another extension. Will that happen? How many extensions can there be? How many Americans have to be below the poverty line and destitute before something Really Big happens? Too bad Wall Street bankers don't jump out windows any more.

Some take it as good sign that former House Majority Leader Tom Delay was found guilty of money laundering, etc. It's off to San Quentin for him! Riiiight. Wait for the sentencing. Sentencing? Well, at least he was convicted...but that was only for money crimes. Genocidal mass murder? No biggie. Some make a lot of the fact that Dubya continues his lies about Iraq in his new book, and even the Mayor of London insinuates that Dubya might get arrested if he comes there. There have been calls for the arrest of Bush/Cheney at least since 2003. Heh...amazing how they never seem to get that such things happen only in the fantasies of folk who have a moral sense.

It ain't just Dubya though. You should read about Obama's Wars. As far as these wars are concerned it is truly irrelevant who is in the White House. Whoever that person is, they MUST follow the plan...or they will be removed. Now it's Obama...before him, Dubya, before him, Clinton, before him, the elder Bush. Same repertoire, different players.

TRB

Black Friday

Black Friday, eh? Not really black here, but dark enough you can't see very well inside without a light at ten am. As for that other meaning of "being in the black", I doubt we'll get there unless we drive into a tar pit somewhere.

I had an appointment with my heart doc Wednesday morning. I was told his office was no longer where I have been going in the doctor's park section next to the hospital, but he now had his office in what used to be a Winn Dixie before it went out of business. I was quite excited and planned to check and see if they still had the frozen food isle...perhaps for storage of implantable organs. Turned out he had moved his office into the same building with my other doc, and several others. It was a Winn Dixie, but at least 5 years ago, so it officially counts as ancient history in America. Nothing changed as far as doc instructions, meds, etc., though the billing office was harassing about money. Said I must pay something every month or risk having it turned over to collections. HA! Like this something that would worry me...I moved out of that world many years ago.

Looks like I'm going to have to drop the burial insurance coverage. Since I truly don't give a rodent's anal orifice what happens to me after I'm dead, that is, in Wall Street lingo, no longer financially viable. It's the before dead part I care more about. That's $60 a month we can use for cigarettes. Those are far more beneficial to both of us in the here and now...mostly for the purpose of staving off early death due to physical assault brought on by deprivation. Had to beg for money at the Thanksgiving meeting in order to get some. Won't do that again. Some folks say having no burial insurance would leave "the family" with problems after you die. No. It doesn't. Arrange things so that no living person is responsible for any debts of a dead person. If there is no money for a casket, funeral, plot, etc., you just let whatever local government has jurisdiction over that, deal with it however they normally do. They won't leave a stiff in your house very long at all. They will either bury it or burn it somewhere.

Someone wrote a blog about a very small town in Michigan and how half the people there were related to them and they knew most of the rest. I lived in a similar tiny town called Ariton, Alabama. A rich local family had something called Christmas City, which was a seasonal holiday attraction, with the lights and shops, etc. Christmas City actually was bigger than Ariton...had more business, and people too, at least between Thanksgiving and New Years. Ariton has no red light, just a couple of flashing caution lights. It had a bank branch but it went out of business. One gas station, unless you counted the pumps in front of the ancient hardware store. I lived there for about ten years or so. I actually learned the name of the neighbor on one side...his house wall was only about 20 feet from ours. I didn't seek him out, but was out in the yard one day and he called me over and wanted to chat a bit.

The folks who lived straight across the driveway on the other side of us...I never knew anything about them except they mostly kept to themselves, which I greatly appreciated. They had an obnoxious kid or two who would often fire up the 4-wheelers they got one Christmas, and ruin any chance of continuing to sleep.

I knew the postmaster's name was Debra, because one year, she went all civic minded on us and orchestrated a production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof from local talent. It played in what was once the Universal Universalist church, long since abandoned by church folk...they had new multi-million dollars churches outside of town, the Baptists and the Methodists, anyway. Apparently the Universalist ideas had gone long before we came to town. I did enjoy the play though and, had a spark of hope, there for a while, that something might come of it...but nothing ever did.

I suppose the community relations tone was set shortly after we moved there, when my wife at the time, answered the door to find someone taking up donations for floral arrangements for a town resident who had recently died. Philis was pissed and aghast! Can't you see we are poor as dirt, and how amazingly stupid and inconsiderate of you to be asking for money for DEAD PEOPLE, of all things! Who bought her flowers BEFORE she died!? Why the hell should anyone buy flowers for her now, she won't know a thing about it! Why aren't you taking donations to fill the local food pantry!? Far as I know they never visited again. Maybe just as well Philis never tried for a career in diplomacy...she never was very good with lies. Far as I know, no one from Ariton brought her any flowers either, before or after she died.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this blog, I just thought it was cool weirdly...
He had a camera installed in the back of his head. For the easily amused, here is a link to the countdown to the time when we, supposedly will see what he's been missing. 3rdi.

TRB

Thanksgiving

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant. There is truth in the old saw about ignorance being bliss. Yet, one cannot unring a bell. Once the silence has been shattered by the clanging, the echos resound forever...or until Alzheimer's. Prepare for a cacophony.

There are many things for which I'm thankful, and I have no problem saying so...even directly to the people to whom and for whom I am thankful. But this alleged holiday, like all the others, really pisses me off. How do I detest thee (with apologies to Ms. Browning), let me count the ways;

The first way is that this, like most other things in history, is based on total lies all the way up and down, from the non-existent being most people supposedly "give thanks" to (instead of the actual people who did the work), to the other mythologies surrounding the origin of the holiday. Maybe it's a flaw, a personality quirk, a form of illness...I just don't really like lies. You know that "holiday" is a shortened form of Holy Day, right? What is supposed to be "Holy" about this day? You can begin your study of the origins of Thanksgiving at wikipedia. Is it "Holy" because of the theft of lands from natives...because of the slaughter of natives? Here is more about it.

In the US, the two most vile of these so-called holidays, in my perception, is this one and Christmas. Aside from all the lies, what makes it even worse, to me, are the expectations that have evolved over time. Expectations of behavior, of traditions, of acts that might otherwise be good, being reduced to mindless religious and social ritual; get the gifts, wrap the the gifts, cook hugely unnecessary amounts of food, and of course, the greatest ritual of all, spend the money...even if you don't have any. The meeting of family...why these times as opposed to other times? What is all that great about meeting with family anyway? For many people, family simply means a bunch of people with whom you sometimes socialize, but whom you would otherwise never wish to associate, were it not for a familial connection. For others, these are the saddest of times, stark reminders of their loneliness and vulnerability. Some make a spectacle of giving to the "less fortunate" at these times...and they can starve the rest of the year and live under cardboard boxes, in the sewers, and very few ever care. Of course most don't truly care at these times either, it is rather, opportunities for a bit of pageantry and martyrdom...perhaps to secure a bit more funding for the group.

Mark Twain's 70th birthday fell on Thanksgiving in 1905. He said;

"The original reason for a Thanksgiving Day has long ago ceased to exist—the Indians have long ago been comprehensively and satisfactorily exterminated and the account closed with Heaven, with the thanks due." Source.

Personally, I am thankful for and to my wife who loves me and takes care of me. Thankful for and to friends online and off, who treat me well, and with whom I can share laughs, information and ideas. I am thankful that I have adequate food (because of SNAP), shelter from the elements, etc. I wish I could be thankful for living in a world in which humans did not war against each other; a world in which a single murder...or death from starvation or lack of health care, would be cause for global alarm and sadness...a world in which no one ever died except by choice. No one is more of a transhumanist than I, no one would more like to live forever in good health and comfort and happiness, and would love the same for all others who want it.

Knowing that no such world can ever be possible unless or until the animal programming of humans is replaced with better things, I have only the balm of eternal oblivion for which to be truly and ultimately thankful. I think it very sad that so few people seem able to grasp such a simple and fundamental reality. Many wise people do... Mr. Twain said:
"I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit."

Isaac Asimov said:

"Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism." — Isaac Asimov, "On Religiosity".

And Albert Einstein said:

"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

Perhaps we would do well to not take current events so seriously...they are both eternal and temporary...
"The Earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer mind their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching." — Assyrian Stone Tablet, c.2800BCE

Soon it will be 2012 and even now, perhaps the Koreans are preparing a nice toasty end for us all. Until our particular door to that eternal realm opens, we do have laughter. I would hope we use it more.

"Q: What do a coffin and a condom have in common?

A: They're both filled with stiffs — except one's coming and one's going."

Oh yeah...I'm also thankful I can sit on the couch in me drawers and attend Harvard.

TRB

Death quotes

Two-Dollar Bill

"I got a hot-rod Ford and a two-dollar bill
And I know a spot right over the hill." Hank Williams

I don't have a Ford, hot-rod or otherwise. We have a Dodge Neon. I HAD a two-dollar bill. Been in my wallet for at least a year. One reason I kept it, aside from it being a two-dollar bill, was that it said 1976 on it...the year my dad died. Added another dollar in change to it and sent Melinda down the road to the gas station to get a pack of cigarettes. The last pack we are likely to have for the foreseeable future. This causes me much anger and depression. Not smoking is a good thing for your health. Choosing to stop smoking and then doing it is cool. Being forced to not smoke because you have no ability get any cigarettes is not cool. It is to be imprisoned as a slave.

Before this we had some money. We could have bought bottles and bottles of booze, cases of beer. Melinda had a problem with alcohol and she chose to stop drinking totally. I like an occasional rum and cola but I chose to not drink so that she would not see it and smell it; to make it maybe a little less hard for her to deal with. Choosing is good. Choosing is the act of a free person with options.

Lloyd Blankfein is the current CEO of Goldman Sach Group, Inc. He's a little pissed that he got only $9 million in bonuses. That's understandable, when you remember that he is the guy who made the (in)famous comment about bankers doing "God's work". Also, it is a drastic hit for him since he got $67.9 million for 2007. Can you imagine how horrible it would have been if he got no bonus at all and had to squeak by with only his base salary...of $600K!? Poor guy. The stock is up at Sachs though, going for $154.16 per share on Friday. Source. Some asswipe left a comment on the site telling those of us who don't like this we should "work for it". Perhaps there will be blood. JPMorgan Chase is not doing as well though...their stock on Friday was only $39.41 per share. Geez...they may be on Food Stamps soon. No, wait...they ARE Food Stamps.

I was checking on how you check your food stamp balance online. I googled that and expected to get a link to food stamps or snap dot gov or something like that. The actual link is http://www.ebtaccount.jpmorgan.com/ Don't see anything about government in there any where, do you? ABC News says we have "one in four Americans now enrolled in one of the 15 federal feeding programs. Forty-two million people currently receive monthly benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps. That's up by 10 million from a year ago." "Federal feeding programs"!? What are we, livestock!? Does it make you wonder...how long will owners keep livestock that doesn't do anything but eat? Soylent green, anyone?

Well, my doc said I would not be eligible for a heart transplant as long as I was smoking. Okay, so since I can't smoke and since I got approved for Medicaid in addition to the Medicare, maybe I'll get on a list for a new heart. Maybe if I had one of those I wouldn't be disabled any more...maybe then I... wait. Oh no, no, no, I ain't going to work till I got a guarantee I get at least my base salary of $600K a year.

TRB

Information Age

The Information Age. Many people say that is where we are now. Ok. How 'bout this...in some cases there is a lot of information going on...but no actual attempt to help. Most recent case in point. Bill Nye the Science Guy collapses at a talk he was giving at USC. Eventually, "paramedics and safety officers responded", but no students sitting in the audience made any attempt to help him or find out what was wrong. Instead there was a second by second account - several different ones, actually - being Tweeted. Source.

Here's something...in the US, if there are plans to build a 15-story hotel, there are truckloads of information about it involved, from blueprints to building permits to insurance coverage, maybe a feasability study, and after many months, someone may actually break ground to start building. With luck, in maybe a couple of years you might see a completed hotel. These people put up a 15-story hotel in 6 days. A "a soundproofed, thermal-insulated structure reportedly built to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake", building. SIX DAYS, start to finish. If anyone wonders why China will very soon overtake the US and all other nations as far as actually DOING things instead of having information about doing things...this is why. Source.

Information is cool...vital...absolutely necessary. But until/unless someone uses the information at some point to DO something, all the information in the universe isn't worth a fart in the wind.

By the way, does anyone other than Shelli read these things any more? Just checking. Does anyone know of an equivalent of kudos over here....anything at all to say I was here?

TRB