I was sipping my coffee in the break room this morning, trying to have a sensible conversation with Abigail Greene, this hippy type who listens to Charlie Parker and writes poetry when she’s debugging software. She always has earphone wires dangling from her head, and when you want to ask her a question you’re better off emailing her than trying to get her attention in real time. She’s annoying, I’ll tell you. Anyway, this morning she did me the favor of removing the earphones so she could listen to what I was saying over coffee. But when I think about what she said to me I’m a little offended because, well, I don’t think I’m “controlling”. Yes, that’s what she told me. I mean right out of the blue she interrupted me and said: “You know, Armond, you’re very controlling.” Just like that. I can tell you it knocked me back a couple of steps. I mean maybe I did go on longer than I should have about pet ownership saving the world, but I don‘t think I was being controlling, for God’s sake. Maybe I talked over her once or twice when she tried to butt in, but I certainly wasn’t dictatorial or anything.

Although now that I’ve had a chance to sit back and think about it, maybe I do tend to be slightly overbearing—no, that’s too strong. Maybe I tend to be a little overly enthusiastic sometimes when I’m trying to make a point.  I mean when I think I’m right about something, really right, right in a moral or ethical sense (or both), where there really should be no question, no argument to the contrary. Well, then sometimes I may be a little more forceful—well, not forceful—that’s a slight overstatement. What I mean to say is that you have to have an opinion, right? And you have to support your opinion, right? And sometimes you have to defend your opinion, especially when someone challenges it or makes light of it or implies that you’re wrong. That’s what Abigail was doing, now that I think about it. Of course she really didn’t say much, maybe four or five words the whole time we were talking, but I definitely got the vibe that she disagreed with me. You can feel it when someone disagrees with you; you can read it in their body language and facial distortions, the way their eyes shift, the quivering upper lip, that twitch of the nostril. I sensed all that going on with Abigail while I was holding forth—no not “holding forth”, that’s too strong; I was simply making my point to her in no uncertain terms—no, that’s not true either; it sounds like I was refusing to consider both sides of the argument (not that we were arguing), which I was perfectly willing to do and am always perfectly willing to do—except of course when I know for sure that there’s no possibility that my point of view is wrong. Well, then I’ll go to the wall to defend myself—no, “go to the wall” is too extreme for what I’m trying to say. You see, I’m very committed to my ideas, which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t change my mind if someone came up with a valid argument against them. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t reevaluate and reconsider and even go the extra mile to see the other person’s point of view. It’s true. I’m a fair and objective person.

So, now, thinking about myself in that light—as someone willing to compromise when presented with incontrovertible proof that his ideas are wrong--I have to wonder where the bejesus Abigail was coming from this morning when she said I was “controlling”.

the unremarkable

in solitude

here

with everything

and nothing

beneath a brilliant sun

my breath the sound of silence

this I

alive

adrift upon the unremarkable

a yellow handkerchief

a bowl of gathered seashells

my uncle’s worn suitcase over there against the wall

within it everything that of his life remains:

three copper coins, some faded photographs

his army discharge papers

a family history

his mom’s obituary

a bookmark inscribed with the lord’s prayer

this of him

this of me

in this solitude

here with everything

and nothing

is what we come to

adrift forever

upon the great unremarkable

The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll

Bob Dylan
The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlw_qzefEaA

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.

William Zanzinger who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.

Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn't even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger
And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.

In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
And that ladder of law has no top and no bottom
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin' that way witout warnin'
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fearsv
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears.

Lens Dawson

Lens Dawson decided it was time to get down to business. He put on his imitation Persols and strolled out of Whitman’s Dream, the bookshop where he'd worked like a dog for nearly seven years. He said nothing to his fellow sales associates; in fact, not one of them saw Lens leave. When information about his disappearance was tallied later that day, there was precious little to speak of. Janet Daly had seen him arrive at 8:30 wearing his moth-eaten wool cardigan. Tim Cabluie remembered that Lens had arrived with coffee and a muffin in a bag from Leo's Pastries up the street. Mark Ruby, owner of Dream, thought he'd heard Lens mumble something about John Irving's cat, but as far as he knew it might have been more like where's that new book of John Irving's at? Dick Dicklin, a customer who browsed for hours and never bought a thing, thought he’d seen Lens in Banana Republic around lunch time, but all who knew Lens thought that unlikely. Lens was a notorious habitué of thrift shops and yard sales; he wouldn’t be seen dead in Gavin straight fit chinos, and besides, he didn’t make enough money at Dream to shop at Republica Bananal.  

Appropriately, the disappearance of Lens Dawson was a much discussed mystery all afternoon, but by closing time salesfolk and customers who knew Lens Dawson by name agreed that the young man had always been a bit eccentric, that he'd often demonstrated mildly queer behavior (like the time he hid Maurice Modicum's aluminum walking stick on a low shelf between Religion and Anthropology), and that he'd no doubt return the following morning offering a less than plausible excuse at which all would momentarily roll their eyes and then get dutifully back to bidness. Lens worked hard, but there was nothing special about him as a sales associate, nothing really memorable about his personality. And, in fact, no one mentioned Lens again that day, or ever, although Mark made a note on Lens' time card that he'd left work around 11:00 without asking permission. Then he wrote: "AWOL. No pay for the day." with a bright red grease stick. So much for Lens Dawson. 

(To be continued...)

jellyfish

we hardly brush the surface--
in this thimble-housed existence--
losing all to custom and convention
to law and dread and consternation

yielding up the truth to God--
we seek the great approving nod
from people who mean beans to us--
yet beg them to preside

giving over what we are
to forms and forces never seen--
to bogus rules and patent lies--
we die before we learn to dream

what is it in our nature then
that makes such jellyfish of men?

Memo from the Chairman

Man macht musik

2 guys at Lupita's

As to how or why we come to life, I know not, and in a lifetime of examining my own and others’ experiences, I’ve found no person who does. These are among the eternal mysteries with which we are condemned to wrangle, and I imagine we’ll wrangle with them forever.

But I do know a few things for certain.  I know that we come to this earth well prepared for dealing with our time here. We are endowed with an admirable set of senses that allows us to appreciate this world and to protect ourselves from it. The beautiful but indifferent natural world we encounter has no interest in our survival. Yet we have brains and bodies miraculously well adapted to meeting the challenges of the physical world. If in the course of our time here all we were to ask of ourselves was to survive with a few comforts and to pass our genes to our progeny, I’m sure we could go about our business happy and satisfied, content with smelling the wild flowers on the wind and the passage of cumulous clouds across a cerulean blue sky.

So, given our prodigious physical and mental gifts and a world of endless beauty in which to apply them, how is it that so many are so unhappy? How is it that we have come to a point where the very talents we use to love and appreciate the world have carried us to the point of destroying it? The answer, I think, is boredom.

So, man macht musik.

Prescience

At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, — when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road; and walking over the surface of God’s earth, shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities then before the evil days come.

From “Walking” 

Henry David Thoreau 1862

U R U R

look here
look now

buddha say

not outside
not inside

you special

you yourself

you pure

you nice

you lost

you good as gold

you all you can be

you OK
look here

look now

buddha say

Where the beejesus

I was sipping my coffee in the break room this morning, trying to have a sensible conversation with Abigail Greene, this hippy type who listens to Charlie Parker and writes poetry when she’s supposed to be debugging software. She always has earphone wires dangling from her head, and when you want to ask her a question you’re better off emailing her than trying to get her attention in real time. She’s annoying, I’ll tell you. Anyway, this morning she did me the favor of removing the earphones so she could listen to what I was saying over coffee. But when I think about what she said to me I’m a little offended because, well, I don’t think I’m “controlling”. Yes, that’s what she told me. I mean right out of the blue she interrupted me and said: “You know, Armond, you’re very controlling.” Just like that. I can tell you it knocked me back a couple of steps. I mean maybe I did go on longer than I should have about pet ownership saving the world, but I don‘t think I was being controlling, for God’s sake. Maybe I talked over her once or twice when she tried to butt in, but I certainly wasn’t dictatorial or anything.

Although now that I’ve has a chance to sit back and think about it, maybe I do tend to be slightly overbearing—no, that’s too strong—maybe I tend to be a little overly enthusiastic sometimes when I’m trying to make a point.  I mean when I think I’m right about something, really right, right in a moral or ethical sense (or both), where there really should be no question, no argument to the contrary, well then sometimes I may be a little more forceful—well, not forceful—that’s a slight overstatement. What I mean to say is that you have to have an opinion, right? And you have to support your opinion, right? And sometimes you have to defend your opinion, especially when someone challenges it or makes light of it or implies that you’re wrong. That’s what Abigail was doing, now that I think about it. Of course she really didn’t say much, maybe four or five words the whole time we were talking, but I definitely got the vibe that she disagreed with me. You can feel it when someone disagrees with you; you can read it in their body language and their facial distortions, the way their eyes shift and their upper lip quivers and that tell-tale twitch of the nostril. I sensed all that going on with Abigail while I was holding forth—no not “holding forth”—that’s too strong; I was simply making my point to her in no uncertain terms—no, that’s not true either; it sounds like I was refusing to consider both sides of the argument (not that we were arguing), which I was perfectly willing to do and am always perfectly willing to do—except of course when I know for sure that there’s no possibility that my viewpoint is wrong. Well, then I’ll go to the wall to defend myself—no, “go to the wall” is too extreme for what I’m trying to say. You see, I’m very committed to my ideas, which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t change my mind if someone came up with a good argument against them. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t reevaluate and reconsider and even go the extra mile to see the other person’s point of view. It’s true. I’m a fair and objective person.

So, now, thinking about myself in that light—as someone willing to compromise when presented with incontrovertible proof that his ideas are wrong--I have to wonder where the beejesus Abigail was coming from this morning when she said I was “controlling”.

The one who woke up

 

It was quite something. I am reluctant to describe it as life-changing, as out of body experiences real and imagined tend to lend themselves to hyperbole, wishful thinking and exaggerated memories, especially in the near term. Best to wait till the luster wears off. In any case I can tell you it was an amazing journey, from beginning to end, each experiential component building on the realizations and self-knowledge gained from preceding components, until the lines between episodes blurred and became one (yeah, very Buddhist). Up there it is huge, just huge, and you couldn't help but see the absolute insignificance of your self and your overblown self-perception. Unlike down here where we've built vast systems of interference between who we are and the real, up there there's nothing to block it out. It's right there in front of you all the time you're passing through it, and, at least in my case, it became fully manifest that the world I perceive is not the world that is, and neither am I the person I take myself to be.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of-the-1-percent.html?smid=pl-share

Crotchwood

Cyberattacks on Banks Threaten 1st World Security :-)

By NICOLE PERLROTH, 
 New York Times 9/30/12

Six major American banks were hit in a wave of computer attacks last week, by a group claiming Middle Eastern ties, that caused Internet blackouts and delays in online banking.
The group said it had attacked the banks in retaliation for an anti-Islam video that mocks the Prophet Muhammad. It also pledged to continue to attack American credit and financial institutions daily, and possibly institutions in France, Israel and Britain, until the video is taken offline. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq were also targeted.

Security researchers said the attack methods were too basic to have taken so many American bank sites offline. The hackers appeared to be enlisting volunteers for the attacks with messages on various sites. On one blog, they called on people to visit two Web addresses that would cause their computers to flood banks with hundreds of data requests a second. They asked volunteers to attack banks according to a timetable: Wells Fargo on Tuesday, U.S. Bancorp on Wednesday and PNC on Thursday.

But experts said it seemed implausible that this method would create an attack of this scale. “The number of users you need to break those targets is very high,” said Jaime Blasco, a security researcher at AlienVault who has been investigating the attacks. “They must have had help from other sources.”

Those sources, Mr. Blasco said, would have to be a group with money, like a nation, or botnets — networks of infected computers that do the bidding of criminals. Botnets can be rented through black market schemes that are common in the Internet underground, or lent out by criminals or governments.

Information is power

Tillich’s War

Pine Cone

Ich war on the mountain top waitin fer nirvanha

Along appear a girl all dress in whyte

To me she says whats you worry bout dady

I says nothing cep my bodys outta sight

wat? yer bodys turning loose yer me-my funkie

It wanna wrestle down you donkey kong

But tommy u as dervish as a monkey

Everthing u thought was right was wrong 

I aint nuts so dryup greasy momma

Aint no more nuts than all that perple blood

If some of us is nuts its cuz all greasy sluts
an wristy cutdogs bunck n chewin mud

Yep an den did I ponder areolas

Areolas dicks n ladies eggs

An the karkers march and rose all agin me

An drug me down with all the written regs

So what the gist o this ol fubble funsong

Where the meat in everthing we say

In trufe there be no uberfatal meaning

but ta blow the myth of meanin allaway

The Irrelevance of Fidel Castro

By Rob Sequin | Havana Journal

Heard from Fidel Castro lately?
Read any news articles about him lately?
Do you care?
If you answered no, you are not alone. 
Seems that no one cares about Fidel Castro anymore.

ingredients

Rains Flood Manila, Thousands Fleeing

MANILA —At least a third of this overpopulated capital and its suburbs were submerged on Tuesday as torrential rains battered the city and floodwaters poured in from almost all sides.