If you haven’t enjoyed any apocalyptic scenarios lately, here are three you might have missed, one recently released: Sunday 3/1/2020.
This one is about a super volcano that has and will erupt again in the Taupo district in New Zealand. Here.
In this one we have another play on the CME that is coming and will definitely destroy humanity’s electrical capacity. Here.
And our final one is about the eventual collapse of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, including what climate change is doing to all coral island nations in the Pacific. Here.
Oy, indeed. Drawing the curtain on unanswerable existential questions is just what the doctor ordered. But I wouldn’t know where to fish for the monkey-faced eel and despite my former status as a hallucinogenic connoisseur, I’ve never been able to get my hands on peyote.
Tuition is paid and I’m enrolled in the Santa Fe Community College veterinary tech program. However, the online curriculum is rather useless until I receive my textbooks in the mail, so I have another day or two of exquisite inactivity to enjoy.
Yesterday, I filled some of that time by watching a few episodes of The Sarah Silverman Program. This is what I learned:
Aside from a deeper understanding of canine and feline anatomy, this might represent the sum total of acquired knowledge needed to see me through the rest of my life.
I’m also hoping that it may serve to compensate for my lack of substantive commentary about food in my last post.
Only years later did I understand my mother’s words when she told me—all throughout my childhood, “You’d cut off your nose to spite your face.”
Huh?
Oh, you mean I’m a self-righteous fool who would rather fall on his sword than give you the benefit of a false victory over this obvious injustice? Well, yeah, pretty much.
I mentioned a while back about certain challenging circumstances at work. Let’s just say there’s this person, we’ll call him Prick, who was hired about the same time as I, but, for whatever reason, (certainly not his technical skills) hired two company levels above me. Prick and I never got along, still don’t; we never say good morning; never even allow our eyes to meet during uncomfortable juxtaposing hallway encounters. Prick gets twice my salary, and can’t even deign to acknowledge one of the company’s critical software developers? Maybe it’s my strong opinions contradicting his own? Maybe its the fact that he forced a number of good people to leave, people with whom I worked and valued.
So, in the secrecy of night I… No, no that’s not what I meant to tell you.
Last week the whole IT department was rearranged, by Prick and others, regarding seating. You know the drill: this cube vs that one, that office vs this one, who has to sit close to to the noisy printer, who gets a view out the windows into the attractive grounds around the building—petty shit like that that represents the pecking order of a corporate office. The software team was reorganized as well, all except me. The other six programmers were nested together in a cube row while I, who has maintained the same Amsterdam whore-on-display seat since I started, gets to remain where I am. (I’ve petitioned to be moved and have been quashed at every attempt.)
So be it, Prick.
A great place for deep mental activity like programming.
I’m not sure where this capacity to endure discomfort came from. I will say that I tend to gravitate toward isolation, attracting scorn and self-deprecation. Why? I truly don’t know. My mother recognized it early on. It may be hubris but I’m certain I can identify injustice more often than most. But to intentionally endure an injustice, perhaps in an attempt to call it out, hoping *someone* might acknowledge the situation and correct it? That’s one strange behavior.
~~~
Regarding the attempt to leximize “leximize” and the recent realized recognition of your bizarre feat of digital flagellation, aka Notes from the Avalon, I have to point out that both seem to be indications of the need to leave a mark on the world.
I Exist and Here is Evidence.
I submit that such endeavors are ever more evidence that DNA controls our destiny. For in such a world as ours, social notoriety is culture cash. This admission chaffs at my purposefully distant and haughty sensibilities, but you have to agree, receiving those NFTA emails and notifications felt pretty good, no?
The more we delve into this Absurd Universe the more absurd it becomes.
Chin held firmly up, nose directed into the shit-smelling breeze,
‘Mole
Listen, I’m going to tell this tale. But you need to understand something… Hold on, I’ve got a primitive alert system rigged across this hillside and one of my alarms is jiggling something bigger than a ground squirrel.
Denton breaks open his double-barrel and drops in a pair of blood-red #6 duck-shot, the only type of shell that remains in his collection. He pockets two more, clamps the ammo can shut and slips out the uphill door of the cabin.
This time of the season, corn fit to reach the sky, squash and beans resting while they wait for first frost, I see vandals come up the valley from that cesspit of a town. I hate to waste shot, but if I don’t, they think they can come back with a mob.
He heads across the slope avoiding the sight of anyone trekking across his fields toward his house. His gardens are below in a broad swale that stays naturally moist throughout the summer; the dry heat elsewhere burns crops to desert bones. His wide descending arc brings him to his plot, this end showing rows of peppers, deep green, crimson and gold. A woman is walking oblivious, straight through his gardens.
Would you look at that. Talk about brazen disregard for your own safety. She’s not stopping to steal or to even marvel at my work. What she going on…
The corptocracy hijacked holiday, Thanksgiving, is nearly upon us. Is Black Friday now the celebration and not the humble acknowledgment that our prosperity stems from both luck and the hard work of ourselves and those around us? Do we now give thanks for Amazon Prime? One of conscience must feel sickened by such cultist display: the tribe of greed and avarice. How to combat this distasteful trend? More on that below.
Oh, ‘Mudge, politics & religion are two subjects that are rarely discussed here. I’ll admit, I have recently been watching Rachel Maddow and delight in her delight. She just can’t stop smiling these days. But the way of things, the indefensible, dogmatic loyalty to that reprehensible IBI (incoherent bloviating imbecile) In Chief, and the backward-thinking, blind-eye behavior of that ancient tortoise leading the Senate makes me feel like I’m witnessing an agonizingly slow train wreck: the demise of democracy.
All things pass. I suspect this one will too. What the U.S. will look like on the other side of being shat through the ass of that Asshole, who’s to know.
~~~
I’m learning about Thumos. It’s an ancient Greek term which has no equivalent in the English language. I’d relate it as being the spirit of pursuing self-honor, where head and heart align. I’d qualify the discussion of such terms in that they can only now be freely debated as we’ve identified the N-1 philosophical belief layer and have decided to exist here, at least for the time being. I’d care to know your feelings on this assumption.
In your appeal to choose a pursuit post-fantasy, and having lit upon delivering kindness, I say, why the hell not. There’s so much godawful misery in this world, if you pull-off a Valentine Smith and succeed? (Even in attempting to be kind, would you not also succeed?) At least you’d have found your Thumos and that, in and of itself, is a noble feat.
How can I help?
I leave you with this: Sans stone, silicon is a metalloid into which, I would submit, we are etching our legacy. So, with keyboard-hammer and chisel-like wit we’ll leave our marks upon the box canyon walls of the internet.
Were you to enjoin your altruistic ideal and spread compassion, and this coming Thursday may provide you an initial step, volunteering at some banquet supporting the disenfranchised and dispossessed, you may also leave a legacy of kindness. And that would be an honorable pursuit, indeed.
