Curious loop

Picking up where I left off nearly two years ago on the much misunderstood topic of 'money' (that commodity, sanctified by god, that you are kept A.) purposefully ignorant of and B.) in perpetual thrall to

What 'new' thing on this nightmarish topic can I share with you? Let's shift our focus for a moment to the 'stated purpose' of 'government' and how things really work.

Given 'A' is 'money' is a 'legal construct', originally intended to 'simplify' barter...but it grew beyond that. The thing to keep in mind is money has evolved with the times. Money didn't start off being what it has evolved into, it didn't start off as an 'instrument of debt.'

But we find ourselves in a world where everything has a price (even if that price is ridiculous) and if you need to survive in the current economic desert (along with 7 billion others) you are, unquestionably, a 'debtor'. Often a debtor living in abject poverty.

Which begs the question 'when does a system stop serving the greater good?'

And I, for one, would opine we passed that point a long time ago...but the self-interested, (the few the system benefits) actively support the 'status quo'.

How unfortunate for the vast majority of us those 'well-off few' have a stranglehold on political power in this nation?

Follow my reasoning, even if you disagree with it (and many, inexplicably, do)

Money is a legal construct that gains it's 'validity' from...government. Controlling 'legal tender' makes debts denominated in money prosecutable in government courts.

Sounds like a no-brainer but it seems the general public fails to consider the causality of this chain of circumstances. It is the backbone of our current debt-driven society.

Now back to my original assertion (which happen to be the facts) All money is 'funny'. Gold isn't money any more than seashells are.

Money serves the purpose of facilitating the 'division of labor' concept, making it possible for us to live in a world where we don't have to do EVERYTHING ourselves.

(Note to self-professed 'job creators', you don't do jack, Mother nature is the one and only job creator! Some don't differentiate between 'spirit in the sky' and Mother Nature and it works out to be the same difference.)

Like Time Travel, it appears we have a bigger problem on our hands than what strikes the eye.

Which is to express another 'unpopular' truth, we live in the perpetual NOW, time (like money) is a human construct. Just because we are aware of the passage of time doesn't make it 'navigable'.

The multiple inconsistencies inherent in the management of our global currency system has caused mammoth mismanagement of our ever more slender resources.

Which is to say, global warming be damned, if we fail to get a handle on population growth we won't be around to worry about environmental degradation!

Once again it is not my purpose/intent to tell you WHAT TO THINK, it is my intention to provide you with something to think about.

Whether you do or not is the difference between ignorance and stupidity...stupid is permanent and ignorance can be fixed.

Thanks for dropping by!

Today's headlines

The blogosphere as well as the corporate owned media is alive with the controversy over the new global trade agreements.

The blogosphere speculates that the latest round of 'secret' trans-oceanic 'trade negotiations' will result in a further erosion of workers leverage against the one tenth of one percent's stranglehold on the global economy.

The misstatement here is the fact that you are already held hostage to their money, what the criminals do after that you have zero control over.

What we're witnessing is the, er, gradual lifting of the longest held 'open secret' out there. They're going to do what they want and there isn't anything (short of revolution) that you can do about it.

Doesn't matter if you like, approve or condone, it's going to happen and if you want to fight about it, well, let's take a look at how it's going to go down.

First, we have the mechanism in place to, er, 're-institute' the Draft. When they start assembling a 'global peacekeeping force' they are going to draft YOUR sons and daughters and ship them halfway across the planet. In the meantime, if you get to 'uppity' over here, soldiers/peacekeepers from some third world hell hole will be deployed in your neighborhood to 'keep the peace'...puts the 'disturbance' in Baltimore yesterday in a whole different light, doesn't it?

Bad enough when the local PD drops civilians for no reason...these UN peacekeepers will be exempt from local laws (just as we exempt our soldiers/mercenaries from the laws of the lands we invade!)

Now imagine your kids stationed in foreign lands where they aren't familiar with local customs (like our soldiers in the Middle East...) When the body bags start coming home you'll be told you child died protecting our 'freedoms' (even if you have no idea what they're talking about because freedom is/has become an 'abstract concept'.)

Let me once again back up to the part where there isn't a single thing you can do about this, it's coming whether you think it's a wonderful idea or not.

Remember, the negotiations are 'secret' (because of the rioting centered on previous illegal trade agreements which usurped local autonomy and had law enforcement shrugging their shoulders and saying 'there's nothing I can do about it' when they could (and should have) arrested the judges who told them they were powerless!

Just a little something to ponder as sit back you wonder what all the hubbub is about.

Humility?

Greetings gentle reader, Kindle countdown deal starts tomorrow for, er, one of my two novels, get your exciting/action packed full length novel for .99 while they last! (One starts on the 28th and the other starts May 2nd so visit early and often, buy more than one, they make great gifts!

But on a more somber note it seems W. has finally (really, well fox news thinks he's been biting his tongue until now) taken the current administration to task for it's handling of the conflict HE created! (Tell me again what Iraq had to do with 9/11?)

This is the thanks the current (lapdog) administration gets for not prosecuting W and his accomplices for war crimes.

Not that many of us labor under the illusion that our vote does anything but give the majority of us the clear conscious of saying 'I didn't vote for him'...just like most of us didn't vote for W...either time. (Problem with a money driven media, it prints whatever it's customers want to hear, the truth be damned... and if you point that out well, you must be some sort of paranoid deviant!

This is Mureca, where the press exists to safeguard your freedom (not that they can name any.)

But I preach to the choir, Like Lenny Cohen says (sings) 'everybody knows'

Kindle countdown set to commence this week

Yes, gentle reader, I put both of my novels on the Kindle countdown plan, Edge of Eternity starting the 28th of April and Unplugged starts on May 2nd, 99 cents get 'em while they're hot!


Now for the piece I was contemplating but didn't get to yesterday, the topic near and dear to all of our hearts, Freedom.

Interesting word as the dictionary defines it as 'the state of being free'...and it stops...free from what? It doesn't say so we stupid humans 'imply' and make up our own (often quite fanciful) definitions, many of them overburdened with the shortest word in every language, 'I'.

Which brings us to the burning question; is 'personal freedom' even possible, considering human beings do extremely poorly when left to their own devices?

TV is filled with 'rugged individuals' taming the wilderness on their lonesome...or so the none too bright would think.

Which is to point out that we all want the 'freedom' to go about our affairs unmolested and in exchange for that 'freedom' we allow others to do likewise.

The problem begins when you live under a system that puts your well-being in direct conflict with your desire not to be molested. First we, since it was here when you/we got here and nobody had a choice in the matter, we have the work for pay, a swap that allows (other) individuals to profit from your labor...often making more off of your efforts than you do (and I don't mean that collectively, in extreme cases this happens individually...and these corporations are quite large! [where did you think billionaires come from?) The common thread here is, believe it or not, is the government.]}

Not to say this is a bad thing, it just means our/everybody's government is corrupt to the core, which extends to our/their justice system, which is also in the pockets of those who would let our civilization crash itself to pieces on the rocks of injustice...

Um naturally this is all tied together, making it difficult to address singular aspects, the cause and effect chains cascade throughout society, which is why the fabric of our civilization is being torn asunder with frightening regularity.

Not to poke the stick into the cage (too hard) but most of us would agree that total freedom is a bad thing, just as total truth is something our species is incapable of handling at this time.

Death to America!

On MSN's homepage they ran another of their famous 'top ten' lists and this time the topic was 'Five countries that hate America most.'

Naturally there are (many) more than five nations that don't share our exceptionalist point of view so they ran with 'Hates us most' followed by the 'stats'; which we have no way to verify.

In last place was our Drone training ground, Pakistan. Sort of a no-brainer but they like us more than the other four 'also rans' at a surprising 65% disapproval rate...guess you had to see the questions to better understand this comparatively lukewarm response.

Hating us more than our bombing buddies is Lebanon; now inundated with refugees from Syria and Iraq after US precipitated events in both countries. Now even there hatred isn't 'crazy bad' as it's only a percentage point higher than it is in Pakistan at 66%

Now we take a major leap in an unexpected direction, guess who hates us more than the Lebanese? Belarus!

What have we ever done to them you might ask? Back when I was researching currency values I found that Belarus had the lowest value of any currency on the entire planet! Wanna make an enemy, devaluing their money is a great way to start!

Doesn't help that this was expressed as one belarus dollar being worth one two thousandth of a US dollar...so you know who exactly is responsible for turning your currency to trash (even if it was just to take advantage of the 'carry trade', that bizarre thing bankers do with the differences between currencies...which logic tells us doesn't exist;but who are we to tell the bankers they're wrong?)

Anyway 69% of Belarusians hate America or more precisely the US government! And the article fails to mention the example I cite but does point at currency trouble being a 'contributing factor' to Belarus's lack of love for the ol' USA.

Who hates us more than the Belarusians? Who do you think, the friend of my enemy is my enemy; so it should surprise no one that Palestine comes in SECOND at a whopping 72 % (and one has to wonder about the accuracy of that figure, are they really claiming 28% of Palestinians LIKE the US? Is it logical to believe that even ten percent of Palestinians are cool with what the US has done (Every UN vote to censure Israel is blocked by the US.))

While you have to give it to them regarding the 'most hated' list the implication that the list is much longer than five is present for the reader to observe or ignore.

We could make the same list using our so-called 'allies' and it wouldn't be wrong.

But who is 'leader of the pack'? Who in the world hates the USA the most? It's like taking a trip in the wayback machine, it isn't an Arab nation (the corporate owned media promises they all LOVE us...despite their involvement in 9/11) it's the republic that Old Ronnie Reagan slayed, the USSR!

Nixon gave us detente and now W's fourth term has turned the average Ivan on the street (a colossal 82%) into 'America Haters'.

This list might better be viewed as who is currently in the sights of the tail-gunning US media, an 'enemies list' if you would.

A simpler way of asking the same question is how many nations disapprove of the USA and the simple answer is how many nations are there?

If we were to ask how many nations approve of the USA, in all honesty, leaving 'compared to' out of the equation, the answer would be crickets chirping.

Even we don't approve of how things are done or where they're headed so it's self delusion to think any sane individual does...much less 'spirit in the sky'.

Malcontent

No one is particularly keen on politics these days, it seems nobody (in politics) is looking out for the 'working class' and we're sick & tired of hearing about the 'plight' of the middle class while the working poor are ignored.

Yes, we know we are supposed to 'assume' the middle class includes the 'working class' while the media pretends the only ones that matter are the ten percent that keep an eye on the one-tenth of a percent's 'interests'.

Again, the (corporate owned) media 'advertises' that we live in a 'classless' society but we all know the dirty admission that comes out when the sleazeballs start stumping for your vote: the only ones who matter are the 'Haves' and the 'Have mores.'

Um, there is a movement out there (among those who have to live on the minimum a 'willing buyer' will pay them) to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour...

Growing up the minimum wage was less than a dollar an hour but I was much better off then than now because my dollar bought more...which is to opine the problem isn't in how many dollars you earn but in how much your dollar buys! Having more dollars won't put a dent in poverty, it will only slow the drowning of the impoverished.

Yes, adding dollars to the economy only increases 'debt'...because all of those extra dollars will end up where the other have, in the pockets of those who already have more than they can spend. (Funny how 'purchasing power' isn't a problem when you control pricing power...)

What the average person has zero control over is how much they get paid.

Worse, if you can't live on what your employer pays you, it's not your employer's problem, it's YOURS!

Broken record, I know. I keep saying it but it seems nobody is paying attention. Worse, you all keep repeating the same actions hoping against hope that this time it will be different.

Which brings us to the next 'truism'...stupid is permanent, ignorance can be fixed. If you truly want a different outcome, logic dictates you MUST do 'something different'.

Just chew on that as the next presidential contest revs up with all the usual suspects.

R&R

Pardon my absence, I was busy over the long holiday weekend with spring related chores ['Patriot's Day'(originally called Bunker Hill Day) is a local holiday that few get off, even the trashman comes (but he's a little eccentric when it comes to holidays.)]

Anyway, the Boston Marathon keeps historic Bunker Hill Day on the calendar and I was, er, coerced into planting grass. Being a longtime homeowner one tires of mowing grass...so when the local scourges (japanese beetle grubs and ants) wipe out portions of the lawn it is considered (by those who have to cut it) a 'win'. Sadly, the Mrs. doesn't agree and we all know who is going to win THAT argument, don't we?

Which is to opine that we are the victims of what 'The Eye that Never Blinks' says is expected of us. Most of us (especially golfers) thank our lucky stars when the town declares a water ban! Lawns are thirsty (and this is a major contributing factor to the current sorry state of my carpet of dirt) but when there isn't sufficient water/rainfall, the theory is your lawn will go 'dormant' until mother nature revives it later on in the year with rain.

Either way, the only way to combat the pests that make their home under your lawn is by watering in pest control products and fertilizer to keep your lawn 'healthy'.

Yet, if we take but a short trip in the 'Wayback machine' we'd find that lawns were rare outside the estates of the, er, 'Well-to--do'. Truth be told, acreage in general was rare back in the day for folks not living on a farm and then all that grass had a different name, it was called 'pasture' and it was highly 'functional'.

You didn't grow grass because it was 'pretty', you grew it to feed your livestock...but that's not what the eye that never blinks tells us.

In fact this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to, er, 'marketing' (read manufactured need) the huckster in your living room/den 'shows' you in the idealized world of the Hollywood (soon to be Bollywood) sit-com.

Filling your head with unrealistic ideas is what the corporate owned media does best.

Telling how you should live your life is also a task willingly borne by the corporate 'nanny state', which is also behind the corporate police state popularized by the eye that never blinks.

300 channels and there's still nothing on...but that's mostly due to the corporate blinders the media is shackled with...can't be sending mixed messages, the 'customers' (read the one percent) will complain!

The 'gilded lily' held up as an example of 'how things should be' is the product of the few who can afford it and blame YOU for not achieving it!

Time to take a long, hard look at how our society is (mis)managed and to start discussing how to put a stop to it.

Time to end the paradigm of 'he who cuts the paychecks is A.) a job creator...that's nonsense! and B.) gets to have their 'fantasy' projected onto all of us because they're paying for it, they aren't YOU ARE!

Once again, thanks for letting me inside your head...

Sun's out, time to go water the grass...

Say Something

Platitudes echo in our minds, my Mom used to be fond of saying, " you can only kill a brave man once, a coward dies a thousand deaths." (Which, for some reason, unbidden, would come the reminder "better to be a live chicken than a dead hero"...)

It is indeed the old 'fish or cut bait' debate. If the brave die defending their convictions then who will remain to fight tyranny?

If not us, who and if not now, when?

Worse, there has never been a real 'consensus' on how human affairs should be managed. Our civilization is circling the drain yet few think there is a reason to panic let alone complain.

Which is to point out that there are always those who don't want the apple cart upset, which resurrects another platitude, "better the Devil you know" (which may be okay for Murphy but it's killing the rest of us!) My own kids are curious examples of this last attitude...seems like Peter Pan is everywhere!

Yet denial won't save what currently passes for a functioning society. How sad is it trigger happy policing isn't a 'new' problem?

Again belaboring the obvious is all discussion of 'rights' and 'freedoms' take place after the old regime is vanquished and the new regime moves into it's rotting corpse...bringing us to the deeply disturbing reality that most 'revolutions' are 'hijacked' almost immediately after they 'succeed'...leading us to that inevitable conundrum of the names have changed but nothing else has.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!

Um, writing is a solitary occupation and while one is composing, Silence is indeed 'golden', but this is a public forum and YOU are invited to share what you think.

The path forward is one we must share...let's try to flourish together rather than perish fighting over what is 'ours' in the first place...

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Thrilling news!

Amazon sent me a advertisement this morning and my title, 'Unplugged' was first on the list of works I might find interesting...

Now I know their marketing department tracks what you do on the Amazon site but I didn't go in via the retail side to look at my own products so I'm somewhat excited by the prospects that more than just myself received this e-mail!

We'll see if I receive a sales bump.

In more disturbing news, the hats are assembling in the 2016 presidential race and it's looking even more desperate than in previous years.

The only one running as a Democrat (and that's not saying she is one) is Hillary and if that's the best they can do they deserve to lose.

That said, it's no mystery that a majority of the voting public self-identifies as 'Independent'...not that this is true either.

As long as the process is dominated by R or D, it doesn't matter what you call yourself. Worse, there hasn't been a real Republican in politics since Eisenhower.

So who are these pretenders and how did they win political power?

They are the 'meat-puppets' of the one tenth of one percent and they want to re-establish monarchy! We all heard W when he declared (publicly no less) that this all would be 'easier' if he were 'dictator'...well good citizen, what's 'synonym' for dictator...starts with a K, come on, you can get this.

What I'd like to 'remind' you of is failure to obey the dictates of your 'king' results in 'death:personal'.

So, as I asked in this morning's comment on 'Some Assembly Required', there doesn't seem to be a nickels worth of difference between our so-called 'world leaders' and the criminally insane.

For today's rhetorical question, 'Choice, I wish we had one...'

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fumbling & Bumbling is humbling....

Three weeks in now and I still haven't found an effective approach to this blogging thing (at least as far as promoting my books is concerned, I had quite a following under my alter ego when I blogged about politics.)

The average reader isn't much interested in the writing process so writing about the nuts and bolts of writing isn't gaining me much of a following, but I tend to doubt I can turn the politically disenfranchised into readers of my prose (despite it being laced with alternatives to the current fiasco we're saddled with.)

Which is to address the elephant in the room, if we don't actively discuss alternatives we won't be able to effect the changes we all desperately need.

Our civilization is colossally mismanaged and we, the victims of this mismanagement, are powerless to change it.

While those with the wherewithal to run for political office feign ignorance of what their constituents want (justifying their unpopular support for the agenda of their campaign's major donors...) The rest of us wonder aloud about how we can repair an obviously broken system, while ignoring that the first step towards addressing our problems is being denied to us by the profit driven wingnut (emphasis on the 'nut'!)

How we fix this without a rallying point is obvious...we don't. Those who bar rational discussion ferment revolt!

Which is to ask just how much of our current ride on the 'crazy train' is intentional?

The inability to organize leads to our collective doom at the hands of those who would take it all for themselves.

The premise of my first novel is what would happen if our government was seized by criminals and they decided to push us into our own sewer to cement their rule?

Understand, good citizen. You have already had your right to peacefully assemble revoked. Long ago your ability to petition your government was 'delegated' to 'aides' (whose job it is to placate you.)

More interestingly, YOU (nor your forebearers) asked for a 'representative' government...they thought they would have a 'voice' and it was only after the fact that they learned they had voted to let someone else speak for them without ever consulting them.

Problem is good citizen, we have no way to 'fix' this little 'unexpected' bit of treachery.

Will we sit helplessly as we watch the last vestiges of what used to be our freedoms snatched away from us in the name of 'national security?'

Remember good citizen, only rogues and scoundrels require the cloak of secrecy. Small wonder that conservatives are zealous defenders not of freedom but of 'privacy'...there's mostly...you can't be trusted.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

(Gegner)

Setting

Greetings gentle reader, this installment takes on the topic of settings, which, like your characters, calls for differing levels of specificity.

Setting, in most cases, is driven by the main premise. Some stories unfold entirely inside the main character's head and can be as fantastical as the writer's ability to express such fanciful places.

Otherwise we arrive at the question that devil's most writers and that is 'how much is too much?' If you have taken pains to establish the story takes place in the fall do you need to tell the reader that the leaves rustled (fill-in-the-blank) every time there is a whisper of wind?

Exposition is the art of timing when you tell a reader something pertinent to the storyline. Often what you share descriptively pertains to where the character is in the story.

Which brings us to the other side of it...is it necessary to tell the reader about the howling wind and the creaks and groans the shelter makes once you have established there is a storm?

You definitely go there if the character is being stalked by something (often being chased by personal demons can be more terrifying than a real life threat!) but choosing when and where to use the landscape as a vehicle to move the story forward is a tough call.

I'm sure I'm not the only one driven to distraction by Tolkien's endless description of the trek through the forbidden forest but it achieved the desired effect, by the time the spiders captured the company you were glad he stopped describing the ceaselessly falling and rustling leaves!

(I don't have a copy of 'The Hobbit' handy or I'd look up it's proper name and since Tolkien employed a lot of similar sounding place/character names, I don't dare guess.)

Which is to opine that Tolkien took a chance when he purposefully stretched the trek through trackless forest letting the reader become as nauseated as his characters were, trapped in an endless, unchanging landscape.

I'd advise against using a similar device (unless, like Tolkien, you're writing fantasy...just saying.)

But I digress, when setting up a scene you want to be sure the reader has enough information so they aren't left wondering 'how'd they manage that' because you forgot to include a specific item your character had access to.

But this is part of the 'loose threads' factor authors also combat routinely. (You can't include anything in a story that you don't 'pay-off'!)

When writing, one must be careful not to 'lose' the reader and you definitely don't want to raise more questions than you answer! (A very good indication something is tragically wrong...like your memory is shot!)

All of that said, I preach to the choir...

Thanks for stopping by!

The Embodiment of Evil....

As writers, we are all tasked to create 'believable' characters...even when they allegedly have ice-water in their veins. Your dialog is based on the characters inner compass. From there we encounter the first obstacle and that is how well do YOU read people? Can you channel your inner wimp or are your characters all over the map? (Let's not to lose sight of the fact that many stories 'track' a character's development but this is another factor entirely! I'm pointing at question 'are your characters multi-dimensional or are they monochrome reflections of one another?')

With that in mind, have you noticed the trend in 'unbelievable' characters populating screens both large and small? Or have you? (I once again allude to the tendency to simply absorb what the screen feeds us rather than thinking about what we're witnessing.)

This isn't so much a critique of an industry that has minimal time to develop and effectively transmit plot devices, we all laugh at sitcoms precisely because we don't personally know anybody who behaves like that! Perhaps it's funny because we all know someone we suspect would act like, that given a similar situation.

In writing your 'customer' only has a mental picture of the characters you create, their personality comes across through their words and deeds.

How effectively you flesh out the character is demonstrated in how 'memorable' they are in the reader's mind.

Some would opine that keeping your characters 'real' minimizes their memorability but to that I leave you with something to chew upon (al-la Kaiser Sozay) "The Devils greatest achievement is convincing everyone it is he and not they, themselves who are the embodiment of all evil!"

Thanks for letting me inside your head!

The power of Marketing

One day I came upon a plastic figurine of an Native American among my son's playthings and I immediately marveled over the fact that it had never once occurred to my son to murder that redskin!

I spent my youth playing cowboys/settlers and Indians and the poor natives NEVER won. To be fair, I also spent countless hours hunting Nazis and Japs but I was (not that I was consciously aware of it, especially at the time) a victim of my environment. We'd play all day and watch Rawhide, Gunsmoke, McHales Navy and Twelve O'clock High/Rat Patrol/Hogan's Heroes at night.

Ironically, when Star Trek/Lost in Space came along, didn't we channel our energy into killing aliens just as zealously.

So when I see how this phenomenon has been 'adapted' to our current cultural soup, I am alarmed to note the 're-imagining' of the past, where the facts are being 'massaged' to protect the guilty. (Perhaps the most glaring example of this is 'Morning in America', also known as the Reagan years (the worst presidency ever!) The only ones saying otherwise are those too young to remember what it was really like!

But I digress, the topic is how easily your perceptions are altered. Now what does this have to do with writing?

Everything, it all begins with ideas on paper!

One of my 'alter ego's' favorite questions is 'How can you be expected to make correct decisions without accurate information?'

Well, good citizen, this applies to you as well. How will we save ourselves/our children from those who control the eye that never blinks?

Maybe you should have a word with your congressman next time you bump into him/her...oh, that's right, they live in Washington, you NEVER bump into them! (and they've been re-elected how many times?)

Here's an idea, maybe you can write to them (not that they'll read what you communicate, they have 'people' for that...)

But once again I digress, let us return to that plastic figurine and how it never occurred to my son to kill it? (A decidedly good thing.)

Now reflect for a moment on how the 'eye that never blinks' is molding our children's tomorrow.

Can you say (anything but) "reality TV' But those young, impressionable minds don't know that, what, you kids watch Anime?

Now be afraid, be very afraid (because they're raising a bunch of 'Pollyannas' and we can only wonder why?)

Drop the pencil and nobody gets hurt...

I've been on a tear these last few posts about 'responsibility in writing.' What the author writes and what the editor publishes. The beauty of the net is it's the wild, wild west all over again. No rules (should say few rules, spew enough vile content and somebody, somewhere will take it upon themselves to land on you with both feet so writers beware!)

While it has calmed somewhat since the early days, there is still a 'divide' between the 'brick & mortar' world of publishing and the, er, 'independents' who are largely self-sufficient.

That said, let us direct our attention to that bought and paid for guardian of 'free speech', the Editor. He decides which projects get the green light and which ones get sent back for re-write until they meet his/her 'journalistic standards.'

Which is to shine a light on one of the many elephants on the room, the severe and persistent lack of attention being given to 'executive privilege'. This is not a shot at the President because he has no control over those who use their office to 'shield' their activities from scrutiny.

Our current 'can't get out of their own way' government is the result of this appalling 'lack of transparency'.

So how do we fix this? As long as we allow 'private ownership' of the media (with the one cutting the paychecks determining what you can and can't see) we can't. These are the same people who have 'muzzled' our representatives by making the revelation of their treachery...treason.

Since sanity is defined as what 'the majority of the public' regards as 'normal', you can see the Chinese handcuffs but you can't get them off!

I read in an online news source today that said the 'average citizen' should be, er, 'deeply concerned' about the billion dollar price tag attached to running for the Oval Office.

Logic dictates that ONLY people [read: sock puppets] owned by the One Percent (actually the one hundredth of one percent) can run for the nation's highest office (largely because of the artificially high cost of media coverage...go figure? Isn't the media considered a public utility?)

But we are once again faced with the question of 'what are YOU gonna do about it?'...(if you don't like it?)

Naturally, much more disturbing is the fact that ALL money is 'funny' (as well as being terribly mis-managed.)

Which is to point out that it's 'all on paper' for those pulling the strings and call the shots...shots YOU have to live with.

To paraphrase a famous quote, If not now, when and if not us, who? Yeah, Reagan said it but he didn't say it first, I believe it was most famously cited by Churchill.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

What was the question?

Greetings gentle reader, I encountered two articles yesterday that gave me pause...one, responsibly labeled itself 'speculation' on the topic that extra-terestial lifeforms might be, er, gi-normous. (The rational being, larger creatures have longer lifespans, thereby encouraging the development of the brain.

Elephants (when not being hunted to an early grave) have/had for a long time a longer average lifespan than most humans but this is speculation. Whales, turtles and parrots also enjoy long lifespans but there are no recognizably sentient beings among any of them...using our understanding of sentience...

The second, and again, using our critical reasoning skills we have to 'assume' the average viewer knows the question was posed for 'entertainment purposes' (It was some producer's idea that people would be interested in knowing if poverty was 'hereditary.'

What rankles about this is the fact that the one percent truly believes they are 'exceptional' (and they desperately want YOU to believe that too!)

If we remove the 'stop-think' factor a rational person employs when viewing 'entertainment', you find the not particularly bright taking this rhetorical question to heart, and believing their less than stellar economic prospects were their parent's fault.

While it is 'true' that a child born to wealth has a better chance of enjoying a prosperous life than a child born to poverty (and in this, Morgan Freeman uses himself as an exception to the episode's 'genetic inheritance' meme.) left unbroken is the general perception that people with money are 'smarter' than the rest of us, which isn't true at all.

If 'smarts = prosperity' then where is Einstien Inc? There is no such place/company, conversely where are the intellectual works of JP Morgan (whose major accomplishment in life was to bankroll Thomas Edison.) They too do not exist.

(Why the average dummy thinks Einstien founded GE [a wholly owned subsidiary of the Morgan Guaranty Trust] is, er, baffling.)

It is NOT 'speculation' that poverty is directly proportional to the corruption/mismanagement of the civilization you live in.

Poverty, like money, is a human invention...therefore poverty is the by-product of money being 'mis-managed'. But this isn't particularly 'entertaining' considering the history of the impoverished has a rather murderous track record.

I share this because it rarely occurs to the young to question their circumstances...and they usually believe what their elders tell them, even if these elders are severely misinformed...(as the scientists on this particular episode of 'Through the Wormhole' were and most modern economists are as well!)

That said, it all starts with 'writing', the first step in sharing knowledge.

How unfortunate is it that those who control your 'perception' keep you and by extension yours, ignorant of the fact that poverty is NOT a 'natural state of affairs'.

Now I will return to my long time signature catch phrase,

Thank you for letting me inside your head.

Fact, fiction and that blurry line in between

Greetings gentle reader, I read something yesterday that truly blew my mind (and I've been avoiding those 'easily mis-understood and purposefully divisive' articles for some time now...but wasn't on the renowned MSN homepage an AP article (you could see this drivel coming out of Fox but AP, they're supposed to vet their stuff more vigorously...except when it comes to, er, propagandizing the extraordinarily gullible public.

Yes, I take heart in the fact that most people retain a modicum of critical reasoning skills so yesterday's, er, 'poll' citing white people are 'cool' (read sympathetic) to police violence I sort of stopped short and wondered what kind of, er, editor would greenlight such an irresponsible opinion piece...and it wasn't run as an op/ed, it was run as a 'most people think', an 'informational article' on the scale of did you know?

Well, coincidentally or otherwise, the article went on to cite the 'usual suspects', the 25% of the public that identify themselves as conservatives. While the article didn't specifically say conservatives, it's where the coincidence kicks in...it said 25% of white people could see a situation where a law enforcement could assault an average citizen during the performance of their, er, job.

Um, understand, it is NEVER okay for ANYBODY to use physical force to control you. NEVER. Not a cop, not a judge, hell not even a prison guard! It's NEVER okay so where and it doesn't matter who's 'cool' with the idea...so the entire article was...pointed.

Yes, gentle reader, the purpose of article slike that one is to plant in YOUR MIND that it's 'okay' for law enforcement to use physical force when they feel it is 'warranted'.

Naturally the factor that makes the average citizen's mind recoil in horror is these guys ROUTINELY exercise poor judgement with lethal force, now we are being told it's 'okay' for them to put a beating on you...if they feel threatened.

US police have KILLED more people LAST MONTH than UK police have killed since 1900...a hundred and fifteen years, something's wrong with this 'police state' we find ourselves in.

It's time to start demanding editorial accountability.

The Reviewer's dilemmna

Writers are very defensive of their works so why are reviewers surprised when authors go off on them for what they perceive to be 'unflattering' reviews of their works? (Which begs the question;why do most authors refuse to review the work of others? (because it is a totally thankless task... unless you write flattering puffery which aids no-one. And we've all read those reviews too...worse, we bought the product and asked ourselves afterwards what book did knothead read because it certainly bears no resemblance the one you have in your hands!)

Authors are correct, the reviewer (often) doesn't understand what the author is trying to communicate, but who's fault is that?

If the author had done a better job of explaining themselves, mayhaps the reviewer would have been kinder...or maybe not because dreck is dreck. You can't put lipstick on a pig, thereby magically turning it into art!

Don't misunderstand, it is possible to breathe new life into old stories but simply re-hashing badly over-trodden ground serves no-one.

Unsurprisingly, many fall short of the mark...and succeed despite the lack of logic (plot holes large enough to fly commercial airliners through) so perhaps that is why some authors write drivel and expect to be heaped with praise, sort of a self-inflicted wound, the talentless bilking the clueless is one of the oldest cons there is.

So I've got this here sharp stick, now, who wants it right in the ol' eyeball?