Tuesday, December 22, 2015

'Finding Sanity' the blog is called.



So be it, a good topic, ain't it?
I think i am pretty sane, but I'm still having a hard time reconciling anything i consider sane to what is going on 'out there', anywhere outside my safe(?) and secure(?) apt.

The US runs massive federal deficits... who knows where that will go.
'Obamacare' is a maze of paperwork... that never gets to the best solution (nationalized/universal care), thanks to lobbyists and special interests. 
I must say though, that the ACA lowered my med. insurance from 700+/mo to $50/mo. Not bad, I'll take it.

Apple dodges who knows many gazillion dollars in taxes?
(yes, I am writing on a Mac Mini!)
This might be legal... but is it ethical, for a company that's made a ton of bucks to dodge their contribution to the common good?
C'mon, time to get real. 'Them that's done (really)well' should be willing to contribute to the common good. Enough greed in the world. After a couple of $mil., what fucking good does it do you?

Is Marijuana legal... medically speaking, or otherwise?
Here in Northern California, it's so easily and commonly available, i dunno why there are even any laws about this anymore, it's just a big fucking waste of time, breath, and bandwidth.
And an incredible amount of tax dollars for enforcement and incarceration.
But people are still arguing, aren't they? Over a plant?? That you can grow on your windowsill? ( yes, i have done this, most successfully!)

Israel threatens Syria, and Syria threatens Israel. And Iran threatens Israel:


And now there's this 'ISIS' thing - just a band of lunatics who want to kill anyone who doesn't agree w/ them. What kind of agenda for a 'state' is this?
This people are like little children, who can't stand that someone disagrees with them. Get over it, grow up already, will ya?

And Iraq? ...Everyone wants to kill anyone who's not their Islamic sect.

The entire mid-east seems to be exploding... or is it imploding? Is there any difference??

India? China? Russia? Pakistan? Iran? they all seem to have their fingers on the nuclear trigger, their hands on someone else's throats.
N. Korea? ... hey, they are wacko, who knows what they might do.
The latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine has a long article about the state of the state of Texas, where it seems everyone has a gun, and wants to have it with them at all times.

And then tornados strike all over the midwest.
'Act of God' you say? What kind of 'God' does this?? Should anyone believe in him?

As if all that wasn't enough, some people in SF have a problem w/ the smell of bacon.


Un-fucking-believable. Ok, maybe Jews and muslims have a problem w/ it...but really, once it's a-sizzlin' on the pan, who in their right mind wouldn't drop their silly beliefs for this taste?
With eggs, hash browns or refried beans?
Religion can cloud even the best of minds, wouldn't you say?
Grow up you'all, and learn to live with and tolerate your neighbors, maybe they will do the same.

(Bacon-Bacon has since reopened - Hallelujah!)

My background is parents who were church-going old school traditionalists who grew up thru the Depression, and pounded those values into me, all three kids had to say prayers before we went to bed, all did chores, all helped tend the yard and the garden, planting, weeding, watering, raking leaves in the fall too... though we had some fun w/ that - when we piled all the leaves at the side of the street, and Dad set them on fire, we would throw horse chestnuts into the fire... and they would explode like a small firecracker.
None of the work was voluntary, it was mandatory - we were going to eat the garden all winter, frozen in a second freezer in a back room, so if we wanted to eat?... we had to work.
Then at 10 I went to a ivy-covered brick-walled boarding school, studied (sort of) latin and greek, wore a jacket and tie to all classes... and went to church 6 days a week, and twice on Sunday.
Discipline, Discipline, Discipline, and mo' Discipline.
And the notion that if you did your part, you would be rewarded, quid pro quo. Sanity, some sense of order in the world.

So i started writing for this blog, months ago... and then put it aside, thinking "i am nuts to be writing this".

And then the inexplicable happened, and I put it back on the front burner:

The Folly of Thinking We Know
The Painful Hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

By PICO IYER   MARCH 20, 2014



Yes, the 'folly of thinking that we know', or should know, or have any right to know.
No, we don't. What happened to Emelia Earhart? We don't know.
Sanity? WTF is that, and where can I find it, what does it cost? And...Will my credit card ( or my health insurance) cover that?

We know what happened to a flight over the Atlantic a few years ago, but we got lucky w/ that one, we knew the flight path pretty precisely, and it still took a couple of years to get the black box.


I quote from this wikipedia entry:

Significance of the accident:

In May 2011, Wil S. Hylton of The New York Times commented that the crash "was easy to bend into myth" because "no other passenger jet in modern history had disappeared so completely – without a Mayday call or a witness or even a trace on radar." Hylton explained that the A330 "was considered to be among the safest" of the passenger aircraft. Hylton added that when the aircraft disappeared, "Flight 447 seemed to disappear from the sky, it was tempting to deliver a tidy narrative about the hubris of building a self-flying aircraft, Icarus falling from the sky. Or maybe Flight 447 was the Titanic, an uncrashable ship at the bottom of the sea."[141] Dr. Guy Gratton, an aviation expert from the Flight Safety Laboratory at Brunel University, said, "This is an air accident the like of which we haven't seen before. Half the accident investigators in the Western world – and in Russia too – are waiting for these results. This has been the biggest investigation since Lockerbie. Put bluntly, big passenger planes do not just fall out of the sky."

Well, this one sure as hell did. Did the pilots definitely screwed up big time? I don't know shit about airplanes, but i do now that if one is losing lift, you point the nose down, not up, to 'correct', get some lift. Against all due process, the pilots did exactly the WRONG thing. Who knows why?

In searching, a lot of new things were discovered, great side affects, indeed:



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So now, a few months after writing all the above, and setting it aside, i put this one back on the front burner.
WTF, i can rant and rave a bit... can't I?
I will continue at irregular intervals, when the mood strikes me. Or the world takes a turn for the worse. Or the better.
A few images to ponder RE all the above? Here ya go:

Thoughts are like pebbles in the sand - always rolling and tumbling.
Always being tossed and turned.


Secret - the answers are there, but sometimes shrouded in mystery

Take a seat - we need to think more, pay less attention to the material world.

Unbound - Discipline can lead to freedom.



The earth is still bubbling, warming, and then cooling, over many of thousands or millions of year.
It has never been constant, ever. Never.
That's a dream we choose to believe, because that's what we see, day to day.
Our days are short - earth time is long, very long. Very, VERY long.
We live in a dream world - a very lucky batch, we are.
We live on 'thin ice'... which may crack soon. Where will we be then?

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Last line in "Zero Dark 30" - This is one marvelous film!
Said to Maya: 
'You're the only one on the manifest, where would you like to go?'

My question is... 
What happens next, to Maya?
An obviously extremely talented, perceptive, intuitive & driven individual.
Is there a sequel??

________________________
11/21, 5:35 AM
DREAMS

I never used to remember them, my whole life, 'til after my first major surgery, August 2005.
At first i woke up in the middle of the night, terrified, screaming, by what was going on in my head. Many different people from many times in my life, none of them appearing at the same time, all coalesced in the same dream. I was always lost, very lost, trying to find my way to someplace familiar, and never getting there. The more i tried, the more lost i became.
Of course whenever i drift into consciousness briefly, i realize i am just asleep in bed in my apartment, safe and sound.

Last night was the first dream in which i was still lost, but not freaked out by it. Somehow the places i passed thru were familiar enough that i thought i would find my way home. I was in Pacifica, or Daly City. Or the central valley. Not in Europe or Asia.
I guess i will consider this to be an improvement of sorts, i am less lost than before.
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Silicon Valley Suicides - Atlantic monthly mag.

When i saw this cover, i already knew the territory it would discuss, quite well. I had a younger brother who committed suicide in 1970 after his junior year at a most prestigious NE boarding school we both went to. Too many expectations - peers, parents, the school and his teachers. A pressure cooker that he couldn't handle.

I have been a photographer for over 40 years, I loved wandering the streets of Old Town Alexandria Va. on sunday morning circa 75-76 with an old Nikon, shooting the quaint city it was before it was yuppified.
I shot architecture on a 4x5 from '81 thru '91 - loved being on location - no cell phone, no interruptions, just focused on the work. I also did montage photo-illustration in a darkroom, once again just focused on the work, no interruptions... 'til photoshop took over, circa 1998 or so. At which point, i bailed out.

Once the world is broken down into 1's and 0's there's no end to it. It can be tweaked indefinitely.

A few somewhat relevant/related thoughts?

Now i work w/ photoshop on images all day, and i am constantly anxious in a way i never was before. Never.
I am very confident of my abilities/talents, but nonetheless i am constantly nervous. 
I fucking hate it, i don't deserve it. No one does. 
It can always be done another way, every pixel is up for grabs. Every client can complain bitch and moan about how 'it just doesn't look right' on their screen. Which opens up a can of worms about monitor display, software & hardware. There are constant upgrades to software to supposedly keep up with, never ending 'progress'. 
Which sounds like a good idea on the face of it. But the pressure to keep up? 
That's what makes people crack. 

And i haven't even opened the magazine yet.
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One thing i have come to know about any book publishing? (or any publishing, blog, whatever) is "edit, edit... and then edit some mo'."  Make it lean and mean. Make it a slap in the face to the reader. 

A clarion call, that's the ticket!!


Some words have deeper implied meanings, this is one such word.
It says 'get off your ass, DO something!'

If I made you think a bit? That's the whole fucking point.