Found Objects: Seeing Eye Cat

Within my new home was a box of old magazine and newspaper clippings. Basically collage fodder for future craft projects. But this one clipping caught my attention.

Needless to say, it was a ridiculously cute story and one that verifies that the "cat meme" stretches long before the advent of the internet.

Oh, and I will finally be getting a kitten of my own. I'm thinking of naming him or her Melville. After one of Billings more colorful historical figures.

More ephemera to come in the next few days...

Dream a Little Dream...

Today's lesson is one of exhaustion and why falling asleep after reading comic book blogs and eating mediocre cajun food is a bad idea:

Someone decided to drain the 55,000 gallon swimming pool at the children's hospital/college dormitory, and Batman is on the case to investigate. Well, Batman and Me, both in broad daylight. And because of the flood and supernatural forces the 300 year old douglas fir has spontaneously started dying causing it to rot which will disturb the foundation of the children's hospital. Good thing Superman showed up and found the evil CEO who's suitcase surrounded him in a giant robot/bomb that started drilling into the side of the hospital as well planning to destroy that too. It was unfortunate, because thousands were gathered for their fundraiser event celebrating both Christmas and the raising of a million dollars, so many lives were at stake. And for some reason Superman and Batman couldn't diffuse the bomb in time. And the giant inflatable teddy bear that was brought in for the children, the one that was ten-stories tall, was mistakenly filled with hydrogen and propane gas instead of inert helium.

Of course the bomb exploded/CEO…and the douglas fir died…and the children's hospital was completely flooded. But the individual at the center of it all, a young white guy with no name and no history, was visited by a blue ghostly figure who told the young man not to drown himself today. And Batman and I were on the case to figure out who the blue ghost was.

And what we have is the worst pitch for the New 52's Brave and Bold straight from an exhausted nursing student deprived of comic books.

Consider this a teaser...

And without any explanations, I present the following:















And that is all for now...

Hawai`i Circa 1945

I know little about the history of the images I present here.

They appear to be images taken by a tourist to Hawai`i before the chain of islands officially became a state. 

Of course, it isn't the actual set of photographs that tells the story in this instance. 

This set of images along with a bunch of others were in my grandparent's collection. However, it is highly unlikely they would have spent time at a luau during stops in Hawai`i on their way to Japan. I believe these photos were from a trusted family friend, Bill, a former soldier of the 442nd. 

What brings me to this conclusion? Of the images not presented in this set, one has an inscription stating Italy 1945. Another has a hand written note stating simply "Mussolini's palace 1945." Also, pocket size images of pretty women would be a personal treasure for the deprived soldier of the era.

My guess is that after serving in the European Theater during the duration, he was granted some shore leave in Hawai`i. And while there was still tension over the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the islands of this  still had the largest Japanese population outside of Japan. It's hard to say though. My assumptions may be completely off base as this could be just another random photograph lost to time. 

Silliness Abounds...

Nuff said...

Just Words

Repeating phrases. Sometimes that is all that comes to me when I try to sit down and post to this wonderful little blog of clutter. Unfortunately for you, dear reader, that means that what you are exposed to is an inordinate amount of inane ramblings that are better fit on a cocktail napkin and then tossed after it has absorbed the bar's evening accumulations. But I digress.

Two days ago, I woke to the words of the greatest expository speech ever produced. The words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream," speech is widely known and often praised as one of the greatest works of contemporary oration. Perhaps it is the one of three pieces of the last century's only notable and quotable pieces of public speaking that the public can turn to and reflect upon and find some message in at any given time. While parts of the speech were scripted, other parts were spontaneous. The portion we have come to know was pieced together from previous works of Dr. King made into a new entity, the way proper oration and extemporaneous speaking should be done. While the message is powerful and the words significant, I am not going to post about that whatsoever.

Instead, I plan to post about tapeworms and toasts.

Yes. Tapeworms.

Bare with me now, it all has to do with extemporaneous speaking and the ability to take ideas from different places, form cohesive sentences, and then make a lasting impression. I will get to the tapeworm in just a moment.

Years ago, when I was a smart-ass freshman in college, fascinated with the determinist workings of sociobiology and the writings of Nietzsche, I was trapped in a colloquium course. For those unfamiliar with this pedagogic style, at my institution,  colloquium courses were attempts to combine writing composition, public speaking, humanities into one cohesive year-long course of study. In other words, "Everything you should have learned in high school, if your school had bothered to teach you, or you paid attention."Not to sound like an elitist, but the class was far beneath me, and I had little ability to leave. Instead, I went through the motions, wrote my "A" papers, played devil's advocate, and presented logical arguments in debates. I also played the roll of agitator.

At one point in the year, it was decided that we were going to work on extemporaneous speeches. I thought this would be a great exercise. I had once been on my high school speech team and competed quite successfully. Extemporaneous speaking was a fun challenge, I loved having to riff on challenging ideas, literature, poetic thoughts, or obscure concepts. As a class we decided to come up with topics.

The first suggestion: What is your favorite color and why? I gagged. Immediately I protested, this isn't how extemporaneous, or, "On-the-Spot" as we were calling it, speeches should go...We need something timely, topical, challenging. The professor quieted me down and took another suggestion: If you were running out of your burning house what three things would you grab?

ARRRRRRGGGGH!

And so the class went on until they, not I, had decided upon fifteen topics. All of my suggestions were tossed out as too serious, too obscure, or too complex for a five minute impromptu speech. When I protested, I was met by blank stares. The discussion was over. Our little colloquium continued on.

A few weeks later, our professor offered students to try their hand at extemporaneous speaking. No one would take the chance on being the first to subject themselves to this experiment so I offered. The professor looked through a list of topics and picked one at random, "This will be good," he plainly stated, "Your topic is, 'What is your ideal pet?'"

I rolled my eyes and a woman in the class named after a sports car, no lie, chimed up, "Let's see him do something with this," hoping for a benign tale about kittens or puppies.

I cleared my throat and began my speech, "While many animals are warm and fuzzy, the cost and clean-up can be such a hassle to deal with. Do we really want to handle kitty litter? Or what about the expense of dog food? In this day and age when finances are tight for me as a lowly college student, few pets seem more practical than a tapeworm..."

For the next five minutes, I expounded the glories of the parasite; how the elite used to seek out certain types of tapeworms for diet control; the animal's extreme length; their little need for care; and never a need for walking. Logical, factual, fascinating, and captivating: It was everything an impromptu speech should be.

I came to my conclusion and ended with a simple, "Thank you." The people in the class sat somewhat aghast at what they had just listened to. It wasn't a tale about fluffy, it was and ode to the fish tank. It was a proudly hoisted middle finger to their mundane tiny world. When I reached my seat, I then stated, "Next time, ask me something serious."

After that speech, no more opportunities for impromptu speaking were offered. Whether that was my doing, I have no idea.

In the next few months, I have the opportunity to toast two of my best friends on their wedding days, though given the unconventional nature of things, I don't know whether the male-bride's maid will actually offer a toast of some sort. I have been debating for sometime on how I should properly handle this standard of the American wedding. Do I script out my ideas for a brief conversation on my friendship with these two individuals or do I speak with once the mic is handed to me with little preparation? The rambling toast is a trap at any wedding, and I am certain they would not want an ode giant squid or whatever fancies me a few months from now.

Full circle time. The great orators of the past all draw from their own previous speeches to create new works that transcend time. The mundane can be contorted into marvelous shapes and figures that perplex even the most unfazed if we can shape our language in just the right way. Now I have a mission, to accomplish this for two very special people on two separate occasions. And I can't talk about tapeworms.

Every Once In a While...

Ideas run flat...And while posts like this are better suited for the microblog world of Twitter, the figurative plate of life has suddenly become full.

Funny how that works. As the year comes to an end and winter officially drears in, I figure context and perspective is always needed.

So I leave you with a few random images from the Tulean Dispatch, the newspaper published from the interior of the former Japanese American prison camp, Tule Lake.

These pieces of poetry and images are from the Holiday edition of the Dispatch and can only reflect was Christmas and the New Year must have been like behind barbed wire on American soil.

Thinkin about Lincoln

I have no idea if  there is a count of presidential statues out there in the world, but I think there must be more depictions of Abraham Lincoln than any of other president of this country.

Portland has it's own statue of Lincoln, unfortunately not shown here in the series of images, showing the long, serious face of the country's leader. As local lore goes, someone once complained to the creator of the local Lincoln's sad look to which the sculptor responded, "He's fighting the civil war..." 

Even when the Gettysburg Address was read, it was generally ignored by the public due to a gentleman setting up equipment to take a photograph of the event. One of America's greatest speeches was upstaged by faddish technology of the era.

Just something to think about...

Some day there might be a statue of Bush the Lesser. And that day will be sad day on which all of the statues of Lincoln will cry copper tears. 

350 and Counting...

Dang...

Well, for a year-and-a-half, the Wonderful World of Clutter has been plugging away at that thing it does best. No one is quite certain of what that thing exactly is, but who cares! We have reached a milestone of sorts with a 350th post. Kind of special when you think about it. That means that you could read one post per day for almost an entire year, that is, if you skipped reading on important holidays like Arbor Day or Flag Day or Pearl Harbor Day.

But enough with the accolades and introspection. Today, dear readers, I plan to write about the act of creative writing. A friend of mine taking a beginning creative writing course found herself struggling with creating a story. This is something that happens to all writers at some point in their career. I recall a period when I felt stifled by the act of writing after reading Joe Gould's Secret by Joseph Mitchell. Joe Gould had perpetrated perhaps one of the greatest tragic literary hoaxes of his day and it devastated Mitchell when he discovered the story behind the fraud. What struck a cord with me and why did it cause me to put down my pen from sketching out ideas into my notebooks and eventually force me away from typing out my tales and yarns? It was the inability to tell the grand story that we had believed was out there.

There is a misconception that all beginning writers hold as a golden truth--that a writer should write what they know. Let's face it, most of our lives are pretty boring and only punctuated with mildly interesting anecdotes here and there, if we were to write what we knew from this, we would have very boring stories. Hints and incidents don't amount to a good read. However, when we stretch out experience out to the uncomfortable boundaries, itches we won't scratch in public, or other unsightly messes, we end up with something far more interesting.

Another reason why I advise people against fictionalizing their own experience is the risk of writing for  therapy. Writing for therapy is a wonderful thing, if used for therapy. But when brought to the public audience it reads like a therapy session and is ultimately an unenjoyable and tedious experience. For example, I recall a course I took while working on my master's degree in which a woman wrote exclusively about the suicide of her lover. In three separate stories we had three different tellings of the guilt she over a loved one's purposeful death. This was very cathartic for her, but almost impossible to critique or criticize because it was her own experience put under a creative lacquer. No matter what we would say to try and help her improve the craft of her tale, everything was going to have a gloss giving it a tacky shine. One of the worst books of nonfiction I have ever read was a 224-page exercise in therapeutic writing by Jo Ann Beard titled, Boys of My Youth. I will summarize the book for you as thus: Whine whine whine...poor me...divorce...whine whine...my ex....my ex...my ex...Whine whine school shooting...whine...my ex...poor me...I wrote a book...Look at me! Not too enjoyable.

But if a beginning writer is unable to write about their own lives and draw from their own experiences, how can they learn to create vivid experiences and convey them to the reader? This question was presented to me many times over and over in the course of my conversation with my highly opinionated yet prose-challenged friend. Imagination. HA! Simple, I know, we always are creating narratives about other people and those narratives whether accurate or not is the basis of a story. We see a man at a bus stop with a can of beer in a paper bag--immediately a story forms in your head. How did he get there?why is he there? is the beer warm? is he homeless? et cetera, ad infinitum. Translating line of questioning and assigning answers those questions to paper is the challenge.

Do I write what I know? Yes, sometimes...But I try to keep my blog from being an emotive diary. Blog literature, be it nonfiction narrative or something else has a tendency to be, well, ill-conceived and mean-spirited. People use these online forums as a public diary, sometimes as a pubic diary as well, and yes, the typo is intentional. Blogs are filled with either therapeutic writing or an even more annoying form of text, what I refer to as the snark. Snarky writing can be fun, but the mean spirit of it gets old. Wit, satire, and well crafted irony is great, however, few people know how to execute these things in a artful manner; often it just comes off as rude and ill-informed. Writing humor is more challenging that one might think. A crack fall or a sight gag doesn't always work when spelled out. That is why people revert to childish name calling and the dick and fart jokes we see to often. I too am guilty of these things because they are easy fruit to pick.

So what is the point of this little diatribe on the act of writing? I do not profess to be a skilled writer. But over the years of study I have invested in the craft, I have picked up a few bits of knowledge of what works and what doesn't work. Often, very little of it works--so you throw it all away and you start over with a new idea. Words are impermanent. It is the wonderful thing about writing when you create something like this. Unless it is published or made public, no one needs to see it again. All of your drafts can be thrown away, burned, pulped. Kafka wanted all of his unpublished works destroyed...they weren't. But who remembers most all of them; we remember Gregor Samsa.

Just a few ideas to think about...

Tomorrow more clutter...and poorly edited sentences...

On rainy days and windy storms...



Image from http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october112007/columbus_day_storm_101207.php

 Growing up in Oregon, there are certain legends that become so common place that we tend to overlook them as we get older. One of those being the Columbus Day Storm of 1962.

My grade school teachers would tell stories about this cyclone blowing through Portland and the massive damage it created. People would be driving down roads as powerpoles toppled, dumpsters were pushed across parking lots by massive gusts of winds.

That event was almost fifty years ago. My "storm story" involves the Floods of 96. The Willamette was two three inches from going over the sea wall down town, basements in SE were filling with the backflow of the sewers, and many places lost power as mudslides brought down powerlines across town. By no means was it a massive storm, but just a constant rain that kept piling upon itself.

We have had wind storms since and the coastal towns and and mountain streams still flood. But each prediction of end-of-days type weather around Oregon has failed to arrive. That is what I love about this city and this state. An inch of snow will cause people to abandon cars on a highway and walk home. A hail storm will draw everyone to the window to watch the pelting of cars with ice. We want sunny weather but when we have three days of weather warmer than 76 degrees, we have a heatwave and we start to complain. And we all want to see the wind blow.

And of course there is this great gloom that will hit people in about three more weeks as the sun goes into complete hiding and the rainy season comes in full force. You can tell who the natives are and who are the newcomers by who uses umbrellas and who is truly depressed by the weather...

Sigh...

This is Portland weather...sort of...kind of...sometimes...

Well, maybe...

Those Impish Ideas...

Luckily right now, better judgement has taken hold. Because for a fleeting headache inducing moment I thought it would be really brilliant to run through my office chanting:

SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL Swiss Miss Swiss Miss SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL SPIDERMAN MUSICAL Swiss Miss Swiss Miss.

Over and over until I collapsed into a quivering pool of stupity. I would also be halled off by the police then heavily sedated. And well, who knows.

Why did this impulse come over me? Perhaps it was because I saw the horrid images of the new Broadway production. Perhaps I have this impish desire to through a monkey wrench into the stiff workings of my office's dynamics. Maybe I was to annoy all the people who see on my growing poo list.

But alas, better judgement has taken hold.

And I am not jumping through the office chanting about a musical production very likely to bomb, with music courtessy of U2...If only Casey Kasem were present to tell Bono that this was a terrible idea for his British Band.

Presented for your entertainment and education is a basic chart of the evolution of intelligent blobby things. While red or pink Jell-O would have been the most appropriate pick, I do believe we would not have the wealth of soft masses of blobs if it were not for the advent of this gelatin snack.

Be proud.

And to be honest, this is just a simple list. It only covers a few basic points of the evolutionary chain. The classic Blob Monster is out, the bloated and weird looking Pez Man is excluded, as well as Apros of the Green Lantern Corps because, well he looks like a blob mixed with a Walla Walla onion. Even the pixelated slimes from teh Dragon Warrior  game would have been appropriate.

But alas, space was limited.

So be kind to your sentient blob.

Dawn of Boredom

Has it almost been ten years? Years ago, I worked at a camp in Upstate New York. I always thought of the place as a mix between Lord of the Flies and Fame, but that is completely unrelated. You see, years ago, I used to also have really long, thick black hair.

So why is 2001 so important? Well, at said camp, with said long hair, I wore a gorilla outfit, and with my hair pulled over my chin, I decided to re-enact this scene from the film with a live 15 piece kazoo and tympani orchestra. The Dawn of Man was impressive enough that my primordial man impersonation became the back-cover for that year's camp yearbook.

Kind of ridiculous...

So why is this important nearly ten years down the road? Well, to be honest, it has nothing to do with anything. I have been working on PowerPoint presentations and OP manuals most of the week and I wanted to see what I could accomplish with just the rudimentary tools for in the Office suite of software.

ergo...I present The Dawn of Boredom, or, How I Do What I Do on PowerPoint.

Enjoy

Miracle of America

In my adventures to Montana, I happened across this roadside billboard. Nothing could be more mysterious or more astounding than to name itself the "Miracle of America Museum." Unfortunately due to time constraints and given that I spotted this sign in the dead of winter, me travel companion convinced me it was unwise to head toward Polson to find out what this "miracle" really was.

But since today is Dependence Day, the day before Independence Day. I figure we might as well speculate what types of miracles we could associate with America.

Is it the semi-virginal birth of that third generation of Palins? Is it that Lord of the Rings swept the Oscars? Or maybe that the Cubs haven't won a World Series in lord only knows how long? Perhaps our first African-American President is our miracle of America, just like JFK being the first Catholic President was a miracle for America (and the Vatican). Another miracle could be the time that Jesus spent with the Native Americans before he ascended into heaven. Or that L. Ron Hubbard had a bad experience with a psychologist and decided to create his own religion.

That is what makes America great, so many little miracles. All of which are dependent on each other and all of which we depend on for our independence. So tomorrow, when you are firing off explosives and eating too much barbecue, remember what this holiday is really about...

One day God told George Washington to cut down a giant cherry tree, the largest cherry tree in all of America and to build an Ark. When George's father asked about what the boy had done, he simply stated, "I cannot lie, I am on a mission from God, and I am building an Ark to kick some British ass." So George got his friend Paul Revere, and John Adams together and they decided they were going to make this country. George, John, and Paul, and their giant Ark killed ten thousand British People, and they all drank tea, because Oregon and Washington were not invented yet so good coffee didn't exist. And they said, "Fuck you, we're going to get Ben Franklin to make us something really cool that uses electricity and cocaine, and then we are going to write a constitution." So once they wrote the constitution and divided the country up into thirteen states, they called this country The United States of America...You can Suck it Britain. Unfortunately the last part of official title could not fit onto the dollar bill so they had to remove the "suck it Britain" part. Now that they were independent, George, John, and Paul, used an ancient Masonic ritual to move the giant Ark to a hidden dimension where presided by future president Polk. When America is in its greatest moment of turmoil, the Ark will come from its outer dimension and save the country because Angels and Abraham Lincoln will be navigating the helm.

Seriously...

Look at the small print in the constitution. It is all there. 

Happy Dependence Day.

Wonderful World of Clutter Year Two

Welcome to the second year of this blessed thing called a blog.
Presented for you today is the Minority Triangle of the B-Side.

And the wonderful fun of Sharpie Knuck-Tats...

It is with these fists that I shall punch through injustice and shatter glass ceilings. 

In other news...I name dropped the Judgement Soundtrack in my last post, but I realized that many of you will not download this album, even though it is awesome. So I thought I would find a video from it and present it for you in all of its early nineties Rap-Rock glory. 

Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.'s song, Another Body Murdered ranks high on the meowable song scale at 5 meows of 5. And that ain't bad. However, it also led to one of the worst genres of music ever of rap-metal featuring the douchiest of bands such as Limp-Bizkit, Korn, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the early nineties at its finest.

Antiversary

Image by yotambientengosuperpoderes via Flickr

Well, the one year anniversary of the Wonderful World of Clutter was supposed to be a crowning moment of glory and achievement. But instead I am filled with piss, vinegar, bile, and a certain type of acid that corrodes the corners of the mouth when I spit.

However, there are lessons to be learned, some from the past week, some from the past year's worth of entries.

• Lesson 1: Never piss off a resourceful minority, especially when he has a handlebar mustache.
• Lesson 2: Don't imply that I am incapable of critical thinking.
• Lesson 3: Never question the power of the NAACP.
• Lesson 4: The Judgement Night Soundtrack is great anger management music, even if it gave birth to the worst genre of music ever conceived.
• Lesson 5: When in doubt, ask "What Would Lobo Do?"
• Lesson 6: Dignity is always found on a bronze statue.
• Lesson 7: Wash, Rinse, Retreat.
• Lesson 8: Bigots are not the only evil thing out there, for monkeys are always evil.
• Lesson 9: Hey I joined Twitter...You should add me...there is a link to the side of this page.
• Lesson 10: Furries are a scary. Nuff said. 
• Lesson 11: Never overlook the significance of a discarded scrap of paper.
• Lesson 12: If all else fails there is always taxidermy school.

So in closing this the first year of Wonderful World of Clutter, I feel it best to leave behind some of the vitriol while retaining the fire that keeps me motivated.  Thus I present two of my inspirations in life, Sifl and Olly. And while they sing the praises of Laser Eyes, I will keep my Laser Vision burning. Burning like 103 really hot suns. So there.

History of the Buffalo

Ah, the American Bison, or more commonly known as the buffalo. What a magnificent creature.

It has a history of slightly ominous origin. One that can be tied to some kooky religious ideas as I found during my diggings into the cryptozoological origins of this megafauna of the American West.

During my recent jaunt to Montana, my good friend Ali and I made a treck to the Bison Range to see this animal. But given that the bison are much smarter than out of town visitors such as myself, there none to be seen in this vast preserve.

However, once we left the property of this wonderful wild range, we found a nice farm with plenty of acreage and enough bison for me to photograph.

But these beasts look so timid, like calm wooly cows munching on the grasses of the valleys of Montana.  However, the Europeans had a much different take on this animal. The mythical beast the bonnacon is probably based on early descriptions of bison. Essentially, it was a large bull with curved horns that shot caustic fire and fumes out of its rear. Think of it like a fire-breathing dragon in reverse.

Speaking of dragons, I strolled across an interesting rational for dragons while looking up the history of the bonnacon. Since creationists are often looking for some explanation for how the bible is right about everything including even though they can't get over the whole dinosaur deal, they figure that dragons, especially the fire-breathing types, can be explained by the same methane gasses produced by cattle. This link is comical at best, completely earnest at worst, and a worthwhile read nonetheless

So I present the picture and a subtle flaw with the image. The smoke snorting bison/bonnacon probably is harmless on this end of the beast. If we went with a European interpretation, this poor man would be running from a giant beast with its ass raised to the air spraying caustic poo and hellfire in his direction like a septic tank hooked up to a sprinkler system. And fiery poo and noxious fumes are something you always must run away from.

On a slightly more serious note...

While the Wonderful World of Clutter is typically filled with jovial musings on the world around us, every once in a while, it serves me well to approach something more critical. So for once, I plan to get escape beyond the "Clutter" voice and present some outside writing by presenting a brief answer to an essay question for a nursing school application.

At this point I firmly put one foot on a soapbox and loudly shout...

Application essays such as these fall firmly into the realm of ephemera in my mind. Lost pieces of text, scraps of paper that will be shuffled, collated, and eventually discarded. Sometimes these remnants will be held as unique examples of writing. Most become boilerplate responses tailored for an intended audience.

Race and social injustice are a difficult subject to tackle--And to ask someone how they were a shining beacon of righteous behavior is not only naive, it is ignorant and often it asks an individual to be dishonest about their own actions. I can only hope that my expression of indignity toward this question was firmly expressed in a respectful way, a  way that critiques and forces more introspection instead of the faulty finger pointing that frays relations instead of fostering some form of raised awareness.

Stepping off soapbox....

5.  Handling systemic challenges:  Describe your experiences facing or witnessing discrimination or an injustice. Tell us how you responded and what you learned from those experiences and how they have prepared you to contribute to the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx School of Nursing.

There is an inherent flaw to this question, because almost all people will respond that they stood up against a wrong, that they were bold in the face of adversity, that they protected the weak. But in reality, as a minority who has been on the receiving end of bias, discrimination, bigotry, or whatever term you want to use, when faced with such a challenged I only want to maintain my dignity through the process. Each time I travel, I am shuffled off to the side to be frisked, have my bags unpacked and swabbed down, and given more attention than the average traveler because I have dark complexion, I have to endure the process. Do I protest and say this is unjust? While I would like to, I can’t. I don’t have the power to. But I can maintain my dignity, go through the ordeal, and eventually air my grievance until enough people will listen. While my experience may be different from others, I can empathize with those who have been shunned, who have been called outcasts, and who have been targeted. I am not naïve to the existence of racism in today’s society and can lend a sympathetic and empathetic ear to those who have experienced whatever wrong they faced. If I can help them maintain their dignity in the process then there is some success. 

Philosophy and Idleness

Image via Wikipedia

Minoring in ethics and having studied philosophy many educational lifetimes ago, I find myself pondering some of the greater conundrums of the world. For example:

If Bertrand Russell decided to be a wrestler, would he have chosen the name Bertrand the Muscle? As a wrestler would his finishing move be called The Bertrand Tussle? 

Many people consider Nietzsche to be a genius; those same people often attribute his genius to his insanity. Nietzsche's insanity was caused by a case of untreated syphilis. Ergo, to attain genius, one must contract syphilis.

Why is the phrase "Kant predicted the existence of Uranus, " always funny despite being a statement of fact?

Perfection...

Perfection...

That is about all I can say about this picture of a jackalope. 

Now I am going to listen to Boston and hoist a giant a middle finger to the rest of society for the evening.