❧
It's not so odd that the group of people who subscribe to the Gospel of Thomas e-mail discussion group don't post their opinions about the sayings the way they did when I first subscribed. After all, there are only 114 sayings. Once upon a time the group was led by the old man who formed the group. Then, he stopped sending out the saying we expected each week, and wrote no more, and the group still doesn't know if it was because he died, but it seems likely.
After his contribution stopped, the Yahoo Groups people chose three of the members who had been subscribed the longest to run the group, and the activity carried on for a while pretty much like it had in his last days. Then, one of the chosen moderators stopped to become a UU preacher, another one quit and later became a regular member, and the last moderator seems to have lost interest in sending a saying out for discussion. She tried to reform the group in her own image, but participation lessened until nobody but me posts about some randomly chosen saying.
A few people write occasionally now, but the conversation is not so much about the sayings anymore, but write about mundane daily events. In the last week much of it has been about their personal problems, and indeed, my personal problems with rheumatoid arthritis. I don't care much for this subject. I guess I'm as much to blame as anybody. I asked another member who has RA if he used silver colloids and the present moderator took offense and ridiculed the notion. She ridicules a lot of notions. No blame.
It's difficult to know if the silver colloids I applied to the open lesions on my toes and hands is continuing the good work. I've written how treating my feet with Silverdene (the prescription salve), stopped the infection and instituted the healing process. It was the only medicine that's ever worked to make this happen. It led me to consider making my own silver colloids to use instead of the prescription medicine.
After I made the silver colloids with a simple battery-operated generator I put a part of the solution into a spray bottle that creates a fine, misty spray that I use to saturate my feet and hands. I stopped using the prescribed Silverdene to find out if what I'm doing with the colloids will work. The lesions haven't gotten infected again, and they do seem to continue to dry up and heal. Those spots are still red, but they seem to continue to heal.
Spraying the silver colloids up my nostrils into my sinuses also causes some of them to be sucked into my lungs. I tell myself that the antibiotic reaction the silver is noted for is helping to heal my lungs from all those decades I smoked cigarettes. Up until recently I've been coughing up phlegm from when I smoked, but over the last three years the phlegm has cleared up, but now I'm not coughing it up so much as I was. Whether that's an accurate indicator of healing is not easy to claim. It could be the result of the other supplements I'm taking.
I take a couple of supplements that have nothing to do with the RA, but with my aging process. They're supposed to help clear the cobwebs out of my brain, and they really seem to have done that to some degree. I'd be silly to make any claims. One of them especially provides indications that its doing something. The researchers say it gets past the brain blood barrier, and indeed, I can actually feel it's presence. For a while after I take it, I feel something that feels like a hatband around my head, and then it dissipated in the next hour or so. Now it doesn't do that anymore.
We're supposed to get the warm weather today. It's around nine-thirty and the temperature is already over 50° (10° C). I'm looking forward to laying out naked in the sun again today. It was a little chilly for that yesterday, but I still got a couple of hours in. The ultra-violet rays are supposed to be good for what ails me. '-)
❦
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The Curtain And The Final Call
❧
The suite of Hearts have a strange affect on me when I'm playing that card game on my computer. Not many people would deny that I seem obsessed with playing this game. Okay, so maybe I am. But, I'm obsessed by lots of participatory events and games. Especially ones that can be played from the inside of my house and ho-me.
I remember the exact moment the hook was set. Why would I not? It was an event that literally changed my life because it took an awful lot of time to play out that and other obsessions. There have been many days in the past that I've spent at least a couple of hours playing Hearts and MineSweeper.
If I spent that whimsical amount of time practicing piano I'd bet my bottom dollar I could make a comfortable playing piano and singing quaint songs for the rest of my life. But, did I practice the piano rather than playing card games and sech non-sense on my computer? No I did not! What a waste... eh?
I keep writing ridiculous comments like "What a waste" immediately followed by three dots (to represent "blah, blah, blah"), and then follow those blahs with an "eh". It's a deliberate affectation I deliberately. Forgive me if it offends you. The point of using this silly, repetitious addenda is to help me remember to do it in real time conversation some day and sound all natural-like when I mimic some French-Canadians to their face for the sake of humor... eh?
I like word games that employ regional accents that seem impossible to imitate. I cater to individual mannerisms that make people feel special, especially in their own backyard. From my perspective, my silly rhetorical efforts mean no more than chatty bird songs. It's my way of acknowledging their self-expression in order to talk to them in the same voice they use for self-conversation.
I guess its mildly perverse to enjoy watching my inadvertent victims do a double-take to understand what just happened to make them suddenly alert. All without them consciously understanding why. Slight-of-mouth as misdirection has a tendency to piss people off and cause them to question my motives. No blame. It also causes the unsolicited advice they unwisely use me as a tarnished mirror for gets lost in the shuffle.
This mojo is not to die for. It's only for petty tyrants. Sometime it causes some people to want to hurt you as if you've invaded their privacy at a level they ain't grokked yet. Granted, it's chancy to work that edge merely to get a glimpse of what it takes to get them to resort to instinct and ready to protect themselves at an animal level. I practice stuff like that mentally while I play mindless computer games as an aside. Nevertheless, I mourn my game losses if they're due to the lack of my concentration caused by abstractly engendered ecstasy. Fortunately, nobody knows.
I learned to play the computer game of Hearts because it was included with the Microsoft Windows Operating System that was included with the IBM computer I bought at their Raleigh Outlet before it was closed. It was one of their freebie games along with the game of MineSweeper. I became obsessed with both games because I'm a gullible fool.
A successful businessman who owned the company that subcontracted the mechanical portion of the barracks we were building (a virtual genius my brother worked for to apprentice his winning ways), stopped by my desk while I was playing Solitaire on my personal laptop. He watched for a moment, and then asked me, "Do you like playing that game on a computer?" I nodded.
His reaction to my enthusiasm (hypnotic state) was, "If you like that game, you'll become virtually addicted to playing Hearts.", and he left the room as if indifferent. He absolutely was indifferent. That's why he is such a successful businessman. He does what he wants to in the moment, and moves on to let his comments walk if they have legs. In the meantime I got addicted to a time-wasting pastime.
I became obsessed with MineSweeper because of sibling rivalry. The oldest rivalry in my life. My true nemesis, my older sister, two years older than me, sort of challenged me to struggle through the intimidating intricacies of learning to play the game. Once I got past the rudiments, and especially after I triumphantly won a game or two, my sister's challenge was meaningless. Soon, I was competing against my own best winning time, and I was a goner. Another obsession to get lost in and live my secret life unimpeded by the distractions of the external world.
I am is not the sort of person who can easily turn tail and walk away from what enchants me. I was born with the Sun and Moon in Taurus. Lucky for me, its the phase of the lunar cycle when the first sliver of a crescent moon appears. Experienced and wise astrologers (The Magi) say that the amount of light the Moon reflect upon the moment of a person's birth is the amount of conscious awareness they have to work with for their entire lifetime. Oh... shit! I got a very small piece of the consciousness pie. No wonder I'm always the last to know.
I am is lucky to have that much consciousness. For three days before the absolute conjunction of the Moon with the Sun (New Moon), and for three days after the absolute, dead-nut conjunction of the Sun and Moon, the Moon reflects no light at all. For 5-6 days a lunar month the people in the mid-latitudes don't see the Moon at all.
My finally realizing the simplest of astronomical facts encountered by my past obsession with learning astrology, are fun for me to contemplate as they pop in my mind in the here and now of my dotage. The Moon phases and their mythical connotations are some of my favorite things to remember when my brother and I go out walking for our health at night.
Honestly, I don't know what people do with themselves when they get too old to play golf or piddle around in their gardens or hire professional help to entertain them. I don't know what other old people do at all. I stay at home and mind my own business, because minding my own business is what I find to be the most amusing.
The Hearts game I play these days came on a CD full of card games. I bought the CD at the Apple Store not long after it opened in Raleigh. Maybe five years ago. I had to buy the game because practically nothing useful comes with the Mac operating system.
If you wanna use a Mac (and who in their right mind doesn't?), then there is what its users call The Mac Tax. It's like the pillows and blankets on the airlines anymore. You gotta pay handsomely for the extras. Not misers like me. I'm no fool, I buy a keyboard or mouse to keep me off their hit list, but it's not actually required that you go bat-shit crazy over Eyemages of Steve Jobs.
Just never forget you're playing with what a huge corporate, profit-making mentality decides what's good for their shareholder's bottom line, and you might survive and still use their stuff, without becoming a tofu-eating fanboi. Steve Jobs is not the magician behind the curtain. Steve Jobs is the curtain itself.
❦
The suite of Hearts have a strange affect on me when I'm playing that card game on my computer. Not many people would deny that I seem obsessed with playing this game. Okay, so maybe I am. But, I'm obsessed by lots of participatory events and games. Especially ones that can be played from the inside of my house and ho-me.
I remember the exact moment the hook was set. Why would I not? It was an event that literally changed my life because it took an awful lot of time to play out that and other obsessions. There have been many days in the past that I've spent at least a couple of hours playing Hearts and MineSweeper.
If I spent that whimsical amount of time practicing piano I'd bet my bottom dollar I could make a comfortable playing piano and singing quaint songs for the rest of my life. But, did I practice the piano rather than playing card games and sech non-sense on my computer? No I did not! What a waste... eh?
I keep writing ridiculous comments like "What a waste" immediately followed by three dots (to represent "blah, blah, blah"), and then follow those blahs with an "eh". It's a deliberate affectation I deliberately. Forgive me if it offends you. The point of using this silly, repetitious addenda is to help me remember to do it in real time conversation some day and sound all natural-like when I mimic some French-Canadians to their face for the sake of humor... eh?
I like word games that employ regional accents that seem impossible to imitate. I cater to individual mannerisms that make people feel special, especially in their own backyard. From my perspective, my silly rhetorical efforts mean no more than chatty bird songs. It's my way of acknowledging their self-expression in order to talk to them in the same voice they use for self-conversation.
I guess its mildly perverse to enjoy watching my inadvertent victims do a double-take to understand what just happened to make them suddenly alert. All without them consciously understanding why. Slight-of-mouth as misdirection has a tendency to piss people off and cause them to question my motives. No blame. It also causes the unsolicited advice they unwisely use me as a tarnished mirror for gets lost in the shuffle.
This mojo is not to die for. It's only for petty tyrants. Sometime it causes some people to want to hurt you as if you've invaded their privacy at a level they ain't grokked yet. Granted, it's chancy to work that edge merely to get a glimpse of what it takes to get them to resort to instinct and ready to protect themselves at an animal level. I practice stuff like that mentally while I play mindless computer games as an aside. Nevertheless, I mourn my game losses if they're due to the lack of my concentration caused by abstractly engendered ecstasy. Fortunately, nobody knows.
I learned to play the computer game of Hearts because it was included with the Microsoft Windows Operating System that was included with the IBM computer I bought at their Raleigh Outlet before it was closed. It was one of their freebie games along with the game of MineSweeper. I became obsessed with both games because I'm a gullible fool.
A successful businessman who owned the company that subcontracted the mechanical portion of the barracks we were building (a virtual genius my brother worked for to apprentice his winning ways), stopped by my desk while I was playing Solitaire on my personal laptop. He watched for a moment, and then asked me, "Do you like playing that game on a computer?" I nodded.
His reaction to my enthusiasm (hypnotic state) was, "If you like that game, you'll become virtually addicted to playing Hearts.", and he left the room as if indifferent. He absolutely was indifferent. That's why he is such a successful businessman. He does what he wants to in the moment, and moves on to let his comments walk if they have legs. In the meantime I got addicted to a time-wasting pastime.
I became obsessed with MineSweeper because of sibling rivalry. The oldest rivalry in my life. My true nemesis, my older sister, two years older than me, sort of challenged me to struggle through the intimidating intricacies of learning to play the game. Once I got past the rudiments, and especially after I triumphantly won a game or two, my sister's challenge was meaningless. Soon, I was competing against my own best winning time, and I was a goner. Another obsession to get lost in and live my secret life unimpeded by the distractions of the external world.
I am is not the sort of person who can easily turn tail and walk away from what enchants me. I was born with the Sun and Moon in Taurus. Lucky for me, its the phase of the lunar cycle when the first sliver of a crescent moon appears. Experienced and wise astrologers (The Magi) say that the amount of light the Moon reflect upon the moment of a person's birth is the amount of conscious awareness they have to work with for their entire lifetime. Oh... shit! I got a very small piece of the consciousness pie. No wonder I'm always the last to know.
I am is lucky to have that much consciousness. For three days before the absolute conjunction of the Moon with the Sun (New Moon), and for three days after the absolute, dead-nut conjunction of the Sun and Moon, the Moon reflects no light at all. For 5-6 days a lunar month the people in the mid-latitudes don't see the Moon at all.
My finally realizing the simplest of astronomical facts encountered by my past obsession with learning astrology, are fun for me to contemplate as they pop in my mind in the here and now of my dotage. The Moon phases and their mythical connotations are some of my favorite things to remember when my brother and I go out walking for our health at night.
Honestly, I don't know what people do with themselves when they get too old to play golf or piddle around in their gardens or hire professional help to entertain them. I don't know what other old people do at all. I stay at home and mind my own business, because minding my own business is what I find to be the most amusing.
The Hearts game I play these days came on a CD full of card games. I bought the CD at the Apple Store not long after it opened in Raleigh. Maybe five years ago. I had to buy the game because practically nothing useful comes with the Mac operating system.
If you wanna use a Mac (and who in their right mind doesn't?), then there is what its users call The Mac Tax. It's like the pillows and blankets on the airlines anymore. You gotta pay handsomely for the extras. Not misers like me. I'm no fool, I buy a keyboard or mouse to keep me off their hit list, but it's not actually required that you go bat-shit crazy over Eyemages of Steve Jobs.
Just never forget you're playing with what a huge corporate, profit-making mentality decides what's good for their shareholder's bottom line, and you might survive and still use their stuff, without becoming a tofu-eating fanboi. Steve Jobs is not the magician behind the curtain. Steve Jobs is the curtain itself.
❦
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Unexpected Insight
❧
The blog entry I wrote yesterday was not wonderful. It might be even worse than I think it is. It's difficult, as I understand it, for anybody to edit their own writing. It seems like most of the mistakes and typos I make during my editing, is caused in many ways by my editing itself.
I seem especially vulnerable to repeating words. "And" most often it seems. I'll be skim-reading along looking for obvious mistakes, and I run into two "ands" in a row. Like, "I did this and and that for a while...". And and that happens fairly often. "Dilbert!"
The way I use the term Dilbert has nothing to do with a comic strip careactor. When I get angry at myself for making really dumb errors I screech at myself, "Dilbert! Asshole!". There may be some subtle connection between the two expressions. What I was told a "Dilbert" was, was ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.
I get so full of myself sometime. I get over-inflated with the sheer joy of being me, and that's why I get careless and and make those redundant errors repetitiously.
If the simplest, most mundane tasks are the most difficult for me to describe in plain, unvarnished language, then revealing what gives me this stupendous rush of ecstasy and joy un-announced is three orders of magnitude beyond miraculous.
Most often, it might appear, these serendipitously encountered moments of ecstagony have payback written all over them from the git go, and and my signed and sealed deal with the devil printed right on them for the whole world to see.
I suspected all along that I must have done something like making a deal with the devil in some unremembered escapade of my youth. I've been lucky even in my despair. The despair I engendered by my youthful from an acute desire to understand life, and here it is, unexpectedly shoved right in my face. How can I describe how this process of confirmation emerging into consciousness at last, drives me weeping and puling straight into the throes of joy.
Sometime I am is claims that, "Nobody knows." Even I know that's not exactly true. If nobody knows and and I am is somebody, then it is an exception to the rule "Nobody knows." That's another story. I write that nobody knows because in my world view we all project our subjective idea of ourselves upon the world around us.
I can write descriptions of events in my life that are well-formed and satisfying to my criticism, but anybody who reads what I make public can only read into my finely honed efforts their own idea of what they would have meant if they had written the exact sa-me words.
That includes me most of the time. It's lonely being allone. Before I can even stop myself I'll make you into a somethingness that gives me comfort temporarily. You don't mind, do you? I'll be gone before you gnow it.
❦
The blog entry I wrote yesterday was not wonderful. It might be even worse than I think it is. It's difficult, as I understand it, for anybody to edit their own writing. It seems like most of the mistakes and typos I make during my editing, is caused in many ways by my editing itself.
I seem especially vulnerable to repeating words. "And" most often it seems. I'll be skim-reading along looking for obvious mistakes, and I run into two "ands" in a row. Like, "I did this and and that for a while...". And and that happens fairly often. "Dilbert!"
The way I use the term Dilbert has nothing to do with a comic strip careactor. When I get angry at myself for making really dumb errors I screech at myself, "Dilbert! Asshole!". There may be some subtle connection between the two expressions. What I was told a "Dilbert" was, was ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.
I get so full of myself sometime. I get over-inflated with the sheer joy of being me, and that's why I get careless and and make those redundant errors repetitiously.
If the simplest, most mundane tasks are the most difficult for me to describe in plain, unvarnished language, then revealing what gives me this stupendous rush of ecstasy and joy un-announced is three orders of magnitude beyond miraculous.
Most often, it might appear, these serendipitously encountered moments of ecstagony have payback written all over them from the git go, and and my signed and sealed deal with the devil printed right on them for the whole world to see.
I suspected all along that I must have done something like making a deal with the devil in some unremembered escapade of my youth. I've been lucky even in my despair. The despair I engendered by my youthful from an acute desire to understand life, and here it is, unexpectedly shoved right in my face. How can I describe how this process of confirmation emerging into consciousness at last, drives me weeping and puling straight into the throes of joy.
Sometime I am is claims that, "Nobody knows." Even I know that's not exactly true. If nobody knows and and I am is somebody, then it is an exception to the rule "Nobody knows." That's another story. I write that nobody knows because in my world view we all project our subjective idea of ourselves upon the world around us.
I can write descriptions of events in my life that are well-formed and satisfying to my criticism, but anybody who reads what I make public can only read into my finely honed efforts their own idea of what they would have meant if they had written the exact sa-me words.
That includes me most of the time. It's lonely being allone. Before I can even stop myself I'll make you into a somethingness that gives me comfort temporarily. You don't mind, do you? I'll be gone before you gnow it.
❦
Friday, February 11, 2011
Percival
❧
The weather is better today, and is forecast to be the average winter temperatures for the next week. That's just wonderful. The cold weather has not helped my arthritis, but since there's nothing I can do about the weather, and not much I can do about my RA, then making lemonade is my best hope for comfort.
My sinuses have been clearing up since I started spraying them with the silver colloids. This is much less painful than the salt water method I've been using the last forty years. Of course, my cessation of smoking tobacco has had to help a lot, but I stopped smoking over three years ago, and this is the best condition my sinuses has been in for a long time.
It's really evident when my youngest brother and I go out walking at night. There is a small hill we have to climb as we approach his house and go around behind it to start the next round, and it's the toughest physical part of our walk.
The "hills" are not really hills to most folks who live in other parts of the State. They're just the other side of the low areas and swamps create where there are rivers and streams. The river that runs through our family property has a flood plain that extends for a few hundred yards on either side of it.
This condition is easy to observe on the roads that pass through this bottom land. Between here and Fayettenam there are numerous creeks and streams, and the Cape Fear River where the road suddenly drops down into the flood plain, then, after you cross the water course and the flood plain on the other side of it, rising to the flat coastal plains causes the road to look like it's a hill.
It seems silly for me to attempt to describe something that any fool can perceive without getting confused by it. This sort of description is what is the most difficult for me to write about. It's difficult because of my perspective readers.
Anybody of any educational level or none at all can readily observe the flatness of the coastal plains. The flatness of the coastal plains is not any different than the flatness of any kinds of plains. That's why the flatlands are called "plains".
It truly surprised me to hear my American Indian friend naymed Billy say that he had never actually seen a mountain in his entire life. I feel a little privileged to have been the person who was in his company when he did garner his initial experience of being on top of a mountain for the first time in his life.
It's not like we climbed up there hand over fist. There is a National Park on top of Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, and a long winding, curvy paved road upon which anybody can drive a car to the uttermost crest of this medium-sized Appalachian mountain.
People do it all the time. there was a fair crowd inside the Park itself for the whole time we were there. There might have been even more people milling around the souvenir shops near the entrance to the Park. In all due respect, particularly for Tennessee, this historical spot is a neat and tidy community. Lots of family types with kids running wild. People seem to feel safe there.
Like I said, it was strange to be in Billy's company when he walked around up there in the Park. There were lots of fenced in areas around the rim of the mountain. Especially where there were clear views of the Tennessee River and the city of Chattanooga.
It was the first time I'd actually been atop Lookout Mountain. I've driven around it or walked by it a thousand times. It's on an ancient Indian trade route on the western side of the Appalachian mountain range from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi up to the Great Lakes.
Chattanooga is a crazy place geographically. Why it's crazy can been seen from the Park on Lookout Mountain. There is a huge bend in the Tennessee River, and Chattanooga is located on this bend. From the looks of it on Google Maps, it appears to be about as far eastward into the Appalachians a cargo boat could go via the Mississippi and Ohio river systems.
I would have to look it up, but I think the Natchez Trace goes to Chattanooga. Highway 64 goes through the Smoky Mountains to Murphy, North Carolina and thus the Atlantic seaboard regions from Chattanooga.
That took second place to observing Billy's enchantment, but it's newness, to me too, sure made it easier to empathize with his visible excitement. I think he had felt a little deprived to be an Indian and never seen a mountain before too. This visit remedied any of that non-sense.
I wrote the stuff below earlier today. I liked the way I wrote it and wanna save it someplace to read it when I get old, so I'm putting it here.
*
You appear to be projecting some hurtful wound of your own upon me. Why would you attempt to rain on my charade over a topic you seem to care less about?
You know more than I do of the Grail myth in which Percival failed the Grail king's test of his worthiness. He didn't get the Grail Cup because he chose to react out a knightly Code of Chivalry over humane compassion when the Fisher King was brought before him in a litter.
So tell me, great priestess. Where does it hurt? What insensitive bastard has lain you up and made you feel helpless. With nothing more to do in your present state than to fish in the shallows of a minor stream instead of a mighty river?
You can tell even me. Despite the Pope's latest edict, you CAN confess over the internet, and to anybody you damn well please. Go big or go home.
*
❦
The weather is better today, and is forecast to be the average winter temperatures for the next week. That's just wonderful. The cold weather has not helped my arthritis, but since there's nothing I can do about the weather, and not much I can do about my RA, then making lemonade is my best hope for comfort.
My sinuses have been clearing up since I started spraying them with the silver colloids. This is much less painful than the salt water method I've been using the last forty years. Of course, my cessation of smoking tobacco has had to help a lot, but I stopped smoking over three years ago, and this is the best condition my sinuses has been in for a long time.
It's really evident when my youngest brother and I go out walking at night. There is a small hill we have to climb as we approach his house and go around behind it to start the next round, and it's the toughest physical part of our walk.
The "hills" are not really hills to most folks who live in other parts of the State. They're just the other side of the low areas and swamps create where there are rivers and streams. The river that runs through our family property has a flood plain that extends for a few hundred yards on either side of it.
This condition is easy to observe on the roads that pass through this bottom land. Between here and Fayettenam there are numerous creeks and streams, and the Cape Fear River where the road suddenly drops down into the flood plain, then, after you cross the water course and the flood plain on the other side of it, rising to the flat coastal plains causes the road to look like it's a hill.
It seems silly for me to attempt to describe something that any fool can perceive without getting confused by it. This sort of description is what is the most difficult for me to write about. It's difficult because of my perspective readers.
Anybody of any educational level or none at all can readily observe the flatness of the coastal plains. The flatness of the coastal plains is not any different than the flatness of any kinds of plains. That's why the flatlands are called "plains".
It truly surprised me to hear my American Indian friend naymed Billy say that he had never actually seen a mountain in his entire life. I feel a little privileged to have been the person who was in his company when he did garner his initial experience of being on top of a mountain for the first time in his life.
It's not like we climbed up there hand over fist. There is a National Park on top of Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, and a long winding, curvy paved road upon which anybody can drive a car to the uttermost crest of this medium-sized Appalachian mountain.
People do it all the time. there was a fair crowd inside the Park itself for the whole time we were there. There might have been even more people milling around the souvenir shops near the entrance to the Park. In all due respect, particularly for Tennessee, this historical spot is a neat and tidy community. Lots of family types with kids running wild. People seem to feel safe there.
Like I said, it was strange to be in Billy's company when he walked around up there in the Park. There were lots of fenced in areas around the rim of the mountain. Especially where there were clear views of the Tennessee River and the city of Chattanooga.
It was the first time I'd actually been atop Lookout Mountain. I've driven around it or walked by it a thousand times. It's on an ancient Indian trade route on the western side of the Appalachian mountain range from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi up to the Great Lakes.
Chattanooga is a crazy place geographically. Why it's crazy can been seen from the Park on Lookout Mountain. There is a huge bend in the Tennessee River, and Chattanooga is located on this bend. From the looks of it on Google Maps, it appears to be about as far eastward into the Appalachians a cargo boat could go via the Mississippi and Ohio river systems.
I would have to look it up, but I think the Natchez Trace goes to Chattanooga. Highway 64 goes through the Smoky Mountains to Murphy, North Carolina and thus the Atlantic seaboard regions from Chattanooga.
That took second place to observing Billy's enchantment, but it's newness, to me too, sure made it easier to empathize with his visible excitement. I think he had felt a little deprived to be an Indian and never seen a mountain before too. This visit remedied any of that non-sense.
I wrote the stuff below earlier today. I liked the way I wrote it and wanna save it someplace to read it when I get old, so I'm putting it here.
*
You appear to be projecting some hurtful wound of your own upon me. Why would you attempt to rain on my charade over a topic you seem to care less about?
You know more than I do of the Grail myth in which Percival failed the Grail king's test of his worthiness. He didn't get the Grail Cup because he chose to react out a knightly Code of Chivalry over humane compassion when the Fisher King was brought before him in a litter.
So tell me, great priestess. Where does it hurt? What insensitive bastard has lain you up and made you feel helpless. With nothing more to do in your present state than to fish in the shallows of a minor stream instead of a mighty river?
You can tell even me. Despite the Pope's latest edict, you CAN confess over the internet, and to anybody you damn well please. Go big or go home.
*
❦
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Assurancewireless.com Is A Fail
❧
Yesterday was a lousy day. This Assurancewireless.com free telephone offer is a rip-off as far as I'm concerned. It's owned by Virgin Mobile and apparently they get money from the American government to provide a wireless phone to poor people like me.
I applied for it and they sent me this phone and a Quick Start booklet that indicates that it can be activated in 8 easy steps. I performed each task as recommended and it didn't work. Then, I went to their web site and attempted to activate it over the web.
When I entered the information to activate the phone, the web site said the information didn't get through and to try it again. I tried again and the website rejected my submittal again, and said I should call a number.
I called the number and none of their stated options fit my situation because I needed a phone number to get an answer, but I couldn't get a phone number until the cell phone was activated, so they provided a number to some place where English is not their primary language.
I politely tried to talk to the guy and he tried to instruct me on what I needed to do to activate the phone, but I couldn't understand him and kept asking him to repeat what he said. Finally, he hung up on me, and left me holding my reliable touch-tone home phone disconcerted and angry with frustration.
Then, when I tried to activate again via the web site, and they shut me down and I couldn't even find them with Google search. I literally got a message saying the web site was presently unavailable. I did this again several hours later, and Google couldn't find them again after I tried to activate the phone.
I sent an e-mail to a Contact Us point I found at the web site after I got there through their hundreds of advertisements, and got an automated response saying they would be in touch within 24 hours. A few hours later they sent an e-mail that said I had to go through one of their "advisers" again in India (I suppose) to get my 250 free minutes.
This time, after a fairly long wait on hold, a woman finally spoke English well enough for us to communicate at some primitive level. The first thing she told me to do was to take the back off the phone, take the battery the Quick Start booklet had instructed me to install, and find the serial number of the phone behind where the battery was. That wasn't easy, but I finally got it for her.
Then, she asked me for the numbers on my approval letter I got from Assurance Wireless and she warned me to keep the numbers handy, and then she gave me the telephone number for the phone. I asked her if the phone was activated now, and she told me it was, but I'd have to wait four hours for it to take effect.
This happened late yesterday afternoon and I still can't activate the phone and I keep getting the same message I got initially: Service not available. It's beginning to dawn on me what's going on here.
Virgin Mobile, a British billionaire's company is getting money from the American taxpayers for a cheap Asian wireless phone maintained by mindless, unintelligible Indian outsourcing for a service Assurancewireless.com knows perfectly well doesn't work.
I complained in another e-mail that will bring another robotic, automated response that will tell me it's my fault their system don't work in my neighborhood, but I'd bet my bottom dollar they still get the money from the government because they assigned me a useless phone number. How do I know it's useless. I called the telephone number they assigned me and an operator told me it was "out of service".
I drove to several locations in and around the little town I live in and never got any receptivity bars anywhere within ten miles. What good is that? It's Virgin Mobile's company. They know they don't have the towers for receptivity here.
I would write to the Better Business Bureau to complain, and I still might. Apparently I love to torture myself thinking there is some sort of natural system of justice in the world, but the BBB is operated by capitalists who have their own agenda in mind. God bless America.
❦
Yesterday was a lousy day. This Assurancewireless.com free telephone offer is a rip-off as far as I'm concerned. It's owned by Virgin Mobile and apparently they get money from the American government to provide a wireless phone to poor people like me.
I applied for it and they sent me this phone and a Quick Start booklet that indicates that it can be activated in 8 easy steps. I performed each task as recommended and it didn't work. Then, I went to their web site and attempted to activate it over the web.
When I entered the information to activate the phone, the web site said the information didn't get through and to try it again. I tried again and the website rejected my submittal again, and said I should call a number.
I called the number and none of their stated options fit my situation because I needed a phone number to get an answer, but I couldn't get a phone number until the cell phone was activated, so they provided a number to some place where English is not their primary language.
I politely tried to talk to the guy and he tried to instruct me on what I needed to do to activate the phone, but I couldn't understand him and kept asking him to repeat what he said. Finally, he hung up on me, and left me holding my reliable touch-tone home phone disconcerted and angry with frustration.
Then, when I tried to activate again via the web site, and they shut me down and I couldn't even find them with Google search. I literally got a message saying the web site was presently unavailable. I did this again several hours later, and Google couldn't find them again after I tried to activate the phone.
I sent an e-mail to a Contact Us point I found at the web site after I got there through their hundreds of advertisements, and got an automated response saying they would be in touch within 24 hours. A few hours later they sent an e-mail that said I had to go through one of their "advisers" again in India (I suppose) to get my 250 free minutes.
This time, after a fairly long wait on hold, a woman finally spoke English well enough for us to communicate at some primitive level. The first thing she told me to do was to take the back off the phone, take the battery the Quick Start booklet had instructed me to install, and find the serial number of the phone behind where the battery was. That wasn't easy, but I finally got it for her.
Then, she asked me for the numbers on my approval letter I got from Assurance Wireless and she warned me to keep the numbers handy, and then she gave me the telephone number for the phone. I asked her if the phone was activated now, and she told me it was, but I'd have to wait four hours for it to take effect.
This happened late yesterday afternoon and I still can't activate the phone and I keep getting the same message I got initially: Service not available. It's beginning to dawn on me what's going on here.
Virgin Mobile, a British billionaire's company is getting money from the American taxpayers for a cheap Asian wireless phone maintained by mindless, unintelligible Indian outsourcing for a service Assurancewireless.com knows perfectly well doesn't work.
I complained in another e-mail that will bring another robotic, automated response that will tell me it's my fault their system don't work in my neighborhood, but I'd bet my bottom dollar they still get the money from the government because they assigned me a useless phone number. How do I know it's useless. I called the telephone number they assigned me and an operator told me it was "out of service".
I drove to several locations in and around the little town I live in and never got any receptivity bars anywhere within ten miles. What good is that? It's Virgin Mobile's company. They know they don't have the towers for receptivity here.
I would write to the Better Business Bureau to complain, and I still might. Apparently I love to torture myself thinking there is some sort of natural system of justice in the world, but the BBB is operated by capitalists who have their own agenda in mind. God bless America.
❦
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Will The Memristor Come Out To Play Today?
❧
It will be another hour and a half before the Hewlett Packard unveiling of their new stuff. I am very interested to see if they will bring out their memristor memory on their new equipment. It's probably too good to be true. According to the hype it will change everything because of it's small footprint. IBM has a new form of teeny tiny memory also.
There is no telling how long it will take to get these technologies to the average consumer. After all, they're big corporations with only one thing on their mind. Money and profits. I guess there is no blame in their reticence since that is what corporations were created for originally.
It was nearly eleven o'clock before my youngest brother got through with doing what makes him feel important last night. He called to see if I still wanted to go on our almost nightly walk around the farm for a couple of miles. Why would I not go? I didn't have to get up and go to work. I don't have a job.
The temperatures were quite chilly, and I didn't bundle up enough to allay the initial penetration of the cold through my inadequate layers. It didn't last long once we got a rhythm going. Before I got back to the house my clothes were damp with perspiration.
Dressing for our walk is the most difficult skill to muster these days. I've worn four different pairs of shoes to find the right ones. "The right ones" being the shoes that hurt my feet the least. It's finally come down to the Crocs his brother-in-law suggested by buying a pair and giving them to me. Thin socks and Crocs. That's the ticket!
Odd thing is that the silver colloids I spray on my feet seems to keep them warmer. My feet actually got quite toasty from what seemed like the friction of my feet against the soles of my Crocs during our walk. It's the same thing with my other shoes and sandals.
Might be the conductivity of the nano-sized silver particles gets the heat of the blood running through my feet mo' bettah. Any way I look at it, this has got to be a good thing. Old people suffer most from cold feet. Especially arthritic cold feet. Socrates claimed his forced self-murder rose from his feet.
The silver colloids I've started using is like a ga-me to me. Mostly from using a spray bottle as the delivery system. I would almost swear that it's killing the tiny little warts on my hands that have plagued me forever. Nobody has ever noticed them enough to say something, and they're no bother to me otherwise. It's just that I've never been able to get rid of them by any method I adopted to get shed of them.
My old friend with all the medical training pointed out a spot on the calf of my leg and told me it was a cancer I oughta have removed, but when I pointed it out to two different doctors on two different occasions they told me not to worry about it, and they ignored it like it was unimportant.
The doctors' lack of concern made the spot less threatening, but it irked me simply by being there. I spray it with the silver colloids just to see what will happen. Like with the little warts, I don't expect great success in it making them go away.
The most obvious place using these silver colloids is making a difference is in my nasal and sinus passages, and in my lungs. I spritz a good squirt of mist up each nostril while clamping off the other in order to get the colloids in each nare coated with the silver particles and hopefully deep into my lungs.
When I took the proscription pills to deal with the fungi on my feet years ago (it really worked marvelously, again, after years of trying), I looked up the medicine on the internet, and the articles I read there stated that this medicine was originally designed to address the fungus that gets in people's lungs who live in swampy areas.
The Everglades in southern Florida are probably the only place in the continental United States that is swampier than the southeast Atlantic seaboard where I live. The internet articles stated that people who live in places like this have a constant problem with the fungi they can't not breathe in, and most of them don't know it.
I do, but only because I was made aware of it through my individual research. I'd never heard of such a thing before. Once I became aware that such is so, however, it crosses my mind with every little cough or cold symptom that arises. The silver colloids should help.
The old, worn lines in my old palms suggest that another intimate relationship is coming my way that will last until I croak. Maybe it will happen before it's too late.
❦
It will be another hour and a half before the Hewlett Packard unveiling of their new stuff. I am very interested to see if they will bring out their memristor memory on their new equipment. It's probably too good to be true. According to the hype it will change everything because of it's small footprint. IBM has a new form of teeny tiny memory also.
There is no telling how long it will take to get these technologies to the average consumer. After all, they're big corporations with only one thing on their mind. Money and profits. I guess there is no blame in their reticence since that is what corporations were created for originally.
It was nearly eleven o'clock before my youngest brother got through with doing what makes him feel important last night. He called to see if I still wanted to go on our almost nightly walk around the farm for a couple of miles. Why would I not go? I didn't have to get up and go to work. I don't have a job.
The temperatures were quite chilly, and I didn't bundle up enough to allay the initial penetration of the cold through my inadequate layers. It didn't last long once we got a rhythm going. Before I got back to the house my clothes were damp with perspiration.
Dressing for our walk is the most difficult skill to muster these days. I've worn four different pairs of shoes to find the right ones. "The right ones" being the shoes that hurt my feet the least. It's finally come down to the Crocs his brother-in-law suggested by buying a pair and giving them to me. Thin socks and Crocs. That's the ticket!
Odd thing is that the silver colloids I spray on my feet seems to keep them warmer. My feet actually got quite toasty from what seemed like the friction of my feet against the soles of my Crocs during our walk. It's the same thing with my other shoes and sandals.
Might be the conductivity of the nano-sized silver particles gets the heat of the blood running through my feet mo' bettah. Any way I look at it, this has got to be a good thing. Old people suffer most from cold feet. Especially arthritic cold feet. Socrates claimed his forced self-murder rose from his feet.
The silver colloids I've started using is like a ga-me to me. Mostly from using a spray bottle as the delivery system. I would almost swear that it's killing the tiny little warts on my hands that have plagued me forever. Nobody has ever noticed them enough to say something, and they're no bother to me otherwise. It's just that I've never been able to get rid of them by any method I adopted to get shed of them.
My old friend with all the medical training pointed out a spot on the calf of my leg and told me it was a cancer I oughta have removed, but when I pointed it out to two different doctors on two different occasions they told me not to worry about it, and they ignored it like it was unimportant.
The doctors' lack of concern made the spot less threatening, but it irked me simply by being there. I spray it with the silver colloids just to see what will happen. Like with the little warts, I don't expect great success in it making them go away.
The most obvious place using these silver colloids is making a difference is in my nasal and sinus passages, and in my lungs. I spritz a good squirt of mist up each nostril while clamping off the other in order to get the colloids in each nare coated with the silver particles and hopefully deep into my lungs.
When I took the proscription pills to deal with the fungi on my feet years ago (it really worked marvelously, again, after years of trying), I looked up the medicine on the internet, and the articles I read there stated that this medicine was originally designed to address the fungus that gets in people's lungs who live in swampy areas.
The Everglades in southern Florida are probably the only place in the continental United States that is swampier than the southeast Atlantic seaboard where I live. The internet articles stated that people who live in places like this have a constant problem with the fungi they can't not breathe in, and most of them don't know it.
I do, but only because I was made aware of it through my individual research. I'd never heard of such a thing before. Once I became aware that such is so, however, it crosses my mind with every little cough or cold symptom that arises. The silver colloids should help.
The old, worn lines in my old palms suggest that another intimate relationship is coming my way that will last until I croak. Maybe it will happen before it's too late.
❦
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Burning My Burning Desire For Life
I woke up after a weird dream. It didn't seem like I'd go back to sleep for a while. I lay in bed thinking about identity. Individuation. I've been emptying my house of the possessions that identify me as my parent's son, my sibling's brother, my ex-wive's husband and then ex-husband. When I began recollecting the time in my life when I was my children's father, as lousy as I've been at all that, I got up outta bed because I can't stand it.
I've burned stuff that I wrote in the past all along. Stacks of spiral-bound notebooks full of my journals. Ten years at a time. I burned all the questions I asked the I Ching for thirty years. I burned all the report cards my mother born in Cancer saved for me from first grade on. All the papers that say I went to college. All the letters I wrote to my parents from all over the world. All the licenses and certifications I acquired over the years.
It's getting hard for somebody to steal my cursed identity that made me this or that. I'm not stupid or at least try to give that appearance. i haven't burned my drivers license or my VA ID card or my expired Passport so I can prove to the man I am is a never-was, but with a house to live in and a checking account to pay my own way.
I guess I am doing what upset my daughter when I sent her all the stuff her mother left here when she took them away to California. I am preparing to die by cleaning up my act. Soon, the only way I'll be able to prove I'm somebody will be gone, and I'll be back to possessing only my wit and grit again, if that.
If the sacrifices I've made ain't good enough to save me from a tasteless death, I'll just have to go down hard in some weird institution like other friends over the years who died not even knowing we were once friends. I suspect that ere long I won't know who's dreaming the nightmares I wake up frightened from with nobody else here to calm my fears and tell me it was only a dream.
*
4 Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.
For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one."
http://www.gape.org/gapes/prispevki/atranslationofthegospelofthomas.htm
*
I interpret #4 to mean that there are homo sapiens, and contrarily, there are those who originated the process of life here on earth that includes all the other species of life, that have the appearance of being homo sapiens presently, but they're not really human, they are the "first" mentioned in the Gospel of Thomas saying above.
When the "first" swarm of pearl-like entities get through populating the earth as assigned, they will reunite, "and be-co-me a single One" in order to conveniently move to the next exoplanet and do it all over again. '-)
This ongoing assessment I make of the gods is no more than what I make it up to be. Each reader will read into what I've carelessly written what they personally think is sot before them. I don't write so much to discover the truth. That is because the truth itself to me is ongoing in the same way I speculate about in the specious present.
In other words, the present is damned specious. Very iffy. It could be this or that, but since it take both this and that to make up that which is it, speculation, in my opinion, is all we have to comfort ourselves with because our purpose for being here is "assigned".
"Assigned"? That's a poser, ain't it?
I employ the term "assigned" due to one event (of a myriad of continuous time-distorted events) that showed up or transpired during my remembering vision that came to me unexpectedly and un-summoned forty years ago at the completion of my first Saturn Return:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_return
During this unique "vision" things moved along progressively, telling the story of all my previous existences since arriving on Earth, until something spectacular happened, and the progression I just mentioned did not proceed as usual from the moment of this happening, as far as I gnow, to this very day.
Something... SOMETHING... moved through the Earth and every earthly object created by the pearls through imitation and mimicry was split into two parts. However (I'm opining lately without any hard facts to go on; nobody knows), not the pearls themselves. This SOMETHINGness swished through Earth only momentarily. Zing!!.
Whatever it was didn't hang around. It's difficult to find the proper descriptor. There was only one small, almost insignificant indication that the occupants of the Earth had been affected. The moment was like the slightly ripping sound of a very sharp knife or sword cutting through paper. There might have even been a metallic "ping/swish" to indicate that was all there was to it.
Whatever it was might or might not have been that which assigned us pearls to come here and incrementally populate the earth. My only point is that it did what it did to the occupants of Earth, both the pearls and their abandoned products of me-me-cry (mimicry) could not resist the results it's lightening-like strike evoked. BOOM!
Afterward, when all the forms of life the pearls had created by imitating each other's mutual handiwork were split into by what Mother Shipton called the Dragon's Tail, the creatures the pearls created stopped seeking to be re-united with their creators, and began seeking instead their other half.
In their responding in that predetermined manner, they became as gods themselves, and their creator's original assignment was completed.
Read the header at the top of my blog again to remind yourself, if needed, that I make this shit up as I go along. It's not meant to be the God's own truth, but rather to make ti-me fly. What else? '-)
I've burned stuff that I wrote in the past all along. Stacks of spiral-bound notebooks full of my journals. Ten years at a time. I burned all the questions I asked the I Ching for thirty years. I burned all the report cards my mother born in Cancer saved for me from first grade on. All the papers that say I went to college. All the letters I wrote to my parents from all over the world. All the licenses and certifications I acquired over the years.
It's getting hard for somebody to steal my cursed identity that made me this or that. I'm not stupid or at least try to give that appearance. i haven't burned my drivers license or my VA ID card or my expired Passport so I can prove to the man I am is a never-was, but with a house to live in and a checking account to pay my own way.
I guess I am doing what upset my daughter when I sent her all the stuff her mother left here when she took them away to California. I am preparing to die by cleaning up my act. Soon, the only way I'll be able to prove I'm somebody will be gone, and I'll be back to possessing only my wit and grit again, if that.
If the sacrifices I've made ain't good enough to save me from a tasteless death, I'll just have to go down hard in some weird institution like other friends over the years who died not even knowing we were once friends. I suspect that ere long I won't know who's dreaming the nightmares I wake up frightened from with nobody else here to calm my fears and tell me it was only a dream.
*
4 Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.
For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one."
http://www.gape.org/gapes/prispevki/atranslationofthegospelofthomas.htm
*
I interpret #4 to mean that there are homo sapiens, and contrarily, there are those who originated the process of life here on earth that includes all the other species of life, that have the appearance of being homo sapiens presently, but they're not really human, they are the "first" mentioned in the Gospel of Thomas saying above.
When the "first" swarm of pearl-like entities get through populating the earth as assigned, they will reunite, "and be-co-me a single One" in order to conveniently move to the next exoplanet and do it all over again. '-)
This ongoing assessment I make of the gods is no more than what I make it up to be. Each reader will read into what I've carelessly written what they personally think is sot before them. I don't write so much to discover the truth. That is because the truth itself to me is ongoing in the same way I speculate about in the specious present.
In other words, the present is damned specious. Very iffy. It could be this or that, but since it take both this and that to make up that which is it, speculation, in my opinion, is all we have to comfort ourselves with because our purpose for being here is "assigned".
"Assigned"? That's a poser, ain't it?
I employ the term "assigned" due to one event (of a myriad of continuous time-distorted events) that showed up or transpired during my remembering vision that came to me unexpectedly and un-summoned forty years ago at the completion of my first Saturn Return:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_return
During this unique "vision" things moved along progressively, telling the story of all my previous existences since arriving on Earth, until something spectacular happened, and the progression I just mentioned did not proceed as usual from the moment of this happening, as far as I gnow, to this very day.
Something... SOMETHING... moved through the Earth and every earthly object created by the pearls through imitation and mimicry was split into two parts. However (I'm opining lately without any hard facts to go on; nobody knows), not the pearls themselves. This SOMETHINGness swished through Earth only momentarily. Zing!!.
Whatever it was didn't hang around. It's difficult to find the proper descriptor. There was only one small, almost insignificant indication that the occupants of the Earth had been affected. The moment was like the slightly ripping sound of a very sharp knife or sword cutting through paper. There might have even been a metallic "ping/swish" to indicate that was all there was to it.
Whatever it was might or might not have been that which assigned us pearls to come here and incrementally populate the earth. My only point is that it did what it did to the occupants of Earth, both the pearls and their abandoned products of me-me-cry (mimicry) could not resist the results it's lightening-like strike evoked. BOOM!
Afterward, when all the forms of life the pearls had created by imitating each other's mutual handiwork were split into by what Mother Shipton called the Dragon's Tail, the creatures the pearls created stopped seeking to be re-united with their creators, and began seeking instead their other half.
In their responding in that predetermined manner, they became as gods themselves, and their creator's original assignment was completed.
Read the header at the top of my blog again to remind yourself, if needed, that I make this shit up as I go along. It's not meant to be the God's own truth, but rather to make ti-me fly. What else? '-)
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