Saturday, December 4, 2010
Afield and in the stream of technology
Want to live away from it all but work as if you aren't?:
Rural outsourcing gaining stride
Friday, December 3, 2010
Another Instance of Deprogramming Gone Wild
One side effect of the leaking wiki wikis - the dilution of years of brainwashing people into believing that there's something worth working/fighting/dying for.
Me, included.
If our leaders and fellow citizens are rotten to the core, why follow or join the crowd with them?
Despite my everyday practice of reasoning and rationalising (not to mention rationing), I hold a childhood belief in a sense of fair play.
Oh, to be innocent again.
One does not live on deer meat alone. Not for very long.
With no mortgage to pay and no [grand]children to raise, I am left to ask what is there left to justify my social compromises to help others compromise in their social interactions with others who compromise in promises they make to compromise my privately-compromised publicly-solid positions.
All of this inside the parallel universe that is this blogged storyline.
How can I tell the difference between the old Chinese way of teaching neighbours to spy on and report their neighbours' activities and the American way of its public/private citizens spying on its citizens un/knowingly?
How can I tell my international friends that the Western [i.e., American] way is any better than their sociopolitical systems full of bribery, cheating, spying and assassination?
Most people don't care. No matter how good/bad the news, they still have their cocooned lives full of mortgages, baby food, car payments, job requirements and personal ties to political/popular figures to maintain.
My cartel friends ask me what is it that I'm trying to say here. Do they need to increase their laundered investments in my companies overseas? Are their any political figures, security forces or average citizens they haven't bought for me already, either through direct bribes or subliminal advertisement campaigns?
I ask them to keep the back channels open as usual because, with the plugging of public leaks that continues to take place, I need the free flow of information one way or the other to manage this planet while building my resources to get me and mine off the planet before it's too late.
"Too late for what?," you might ask. That, my poorly informed friends, is for me to know and you to find out. If it's a dog-eat-dog world, I sure am going to keep some secrets to myself to protect the freedom of information inside the imaginary world here.
The social structure of this species into which my combined states of energy were born is more confining than I want to accept. There's a whole galaxy of possibilities out there that have nothing to do with our paranoid species-confinement tactics. Whatever form I (or my extended/extracted self) takes, I'm getting off this globe ASAP.
As we've already imagined, when prisons become "soylent green" factories, you'll know there's no limit to the compromises a species will take to treat its special members to privilege. Not enough food to feed the masses? Increase monitoring of the species to create more unprivileged lawbreakers and thus more bodies to process protein to feed the shrinking "free" population. Instead of swords into plowshares, abolish crematoria and establish smorgasbords!
I ask the bare trees outside, "How did we get into this mess? Is my brain really that much more valuable than your light-seeking leaves?"
The end never justifies the means, no matter how much we convince ourselves otherwise. In the end, it doesn't matter. This is just a blog.
In the real world, people [like to] believe their leaders and their governments and their employers and their fellow citizens are operating at the highest level of integrity, openness and honesty.
What is real? A package of crushed red-hot peppers - that's about as real as it gets. Remove the label from the packaging and the contents are still the same, as eye-watering and flavourful as ever.
Me, included.
If our leaders and fellow citizens are rotten to the core, why follow or join the crowd with them?
Despite my everyday practice of reasoning and rationalising (not to mention rationing), I hold a childhood belief in a sense of fair play.
Oh, to be innocent again.
One does not live on deer meat alone. Not for very long.
With no mortgage to pay and no [grand]children to raise, I am left to ask what is there left to justify my social compromises to help others compromise in their social interactions with others who compromise in promises they make to compromise my privately-compromised publicly-solid positions.
All of this inside the parallel universe that is this blogged storyline.
How can I tell the difference between the old Chinese way of teaching neighbours to spy on and report their neighbours' activities and the American way of its public/private citizens spying on its citizens un/knowingly?
How can I tell my international friends that the Western [i.e., American] way is any better than their sociopolitical systems full of bribery, cheating, spying and assassination?
Most people don't care. No matter how good/bad the news, they still have their cocooned lives full of mortgages, baby food, car payments, job requirements and personal ties to political/popular figures to maintain.
My cartel friends ask me what is it that I'm trying to say here. Do they need to increase their laundered investments in my companies overseas? Are their any political figures, security forces or average citizens they haven't bought for me already, either through direct bribes or subliminal advertisement campaigns?
I ask them to keep the back channels open as usual because, with the plugging of public leaks that continues to take place, I need the free flow of information one way or the other to manage this planet while building my resources to get me and mine off the planet before it's too late.
"Too late for what?," you might ask. That, my poorly informed friends, is for me to know and you to find out. If it's a dog-eat-dog world, I sure am going to keep some secrets to myself to protect the freedom of information inside the imaginary world here.
The social structure of this species into which my combined states of energy were born is more confining than I want to accept. There's a whole galaxy of possibilities out there that have nothing to do with our paranoid species-confinement tactics. Whatever form I (or my extended/extracted self) takes, I'm getting off this globe ASAP.
As we've already imagined, when prisons become "soylent green" factories, you'll know there's no limit to the compromises a species will take to treat its special members to privilege. Not enough food to feed the masses? Increase monitoring of the species to create more unprivileged lawbreakers and thus more bodies to process protein to feed the shrinking "free" population. Instead of swords into plowshares, abolish crematoria and establish smorgasbords!
I ask the bare trees outside, "How did we get into this mess? Is my brain really that much more valuable than your light-seeking leaves?"
The end never justifies the means, no matter how much we convince ourselves otherwise. In the end, it doesn't matter. This is just a blog.
In the real world, people [like to] believe their leaders and their governments and their employers and their fellow citizens are operating at the highest level of integrity, openness and honesty.
What is real? A package of crushed red-hot peppers - that's about as real as it gets. Remove the label from the packaging and the contents are still the same, as eye-watering and flavourful as ever.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Come On, Eileen
Do you ever feel like your conversation continues to fall on deaf ears?
I don't know how many times I've assured Putin in public that lack of approval of the START treaty is no reason for the movement of Russian nuclear weapons to European borders.
But does he listen to me? Of course not. He has to be the big bad Russki bear, growling and flexing his claws.
Vlad, it's just you and me here, kiddo. Ain't like you can't see what's really going on. Ease off the missile deployment, willya? Let the Europeans and Americans worry about the domino theory. No, not the fall of democracies to communism. Instead, I mean the fall of capitalist economies to bankruptcy.
Some days, I might as well talk to the trees as inject them with arsenic to make future poisonous toothpicks out of them to feed to unsuspecting aliens checking out the bacterial life forms in Mono Lake.
Excuse me, class, but is there a bacterium in the auditorium?
The world is full of white hair and stuffed shirts - isn't that what I'm supposed to say? Repetitious, however true.
Like attending a cultural musical event - orchestral support/attendance attracts/needs well-funded familial fixings, usually older, refined and loaded (with cash, that is). Youth (but not youthfulness) stands out in the crowded, aged multitude.
My Russian colleague, you should have been with my wife and me this noteworthy evening. Jigging (and almost jiving) to tonight's premiere performance of An Nollaig: An Irish Christmas with Eileen Ivers, the Drake School Irish dancers in street/Irish costumes and the LCT Singers dressed in black provided the perfect stepping/swaying counterbalance to Eileen and her merry band, Immigrant Soul.
You should take a lesson from them.
We should be sittin' in a pub "sipping"a pint pints like Clinton and Yeltsin in the old days, listenin' to these musicians, their eyes closed while tuned to their comrades' rumbling bass notes, percussive beats and high-pitched harmonic stringing.
You'd almost think we were in a contemporary church service, the band drawing the audience closer, Eileen fiddling like she's telling Charlie Daniels to put the devil to bed. Would I dare compare her to Natalie MacMaster? Would one compare Eric Clapton to Chet Atkins or Chet Atkins to Eddie Van Halen?
Irish might be the announced style but Eileen and her boys add bits of blues, jazz, rock and a touch of country to their tunes. A duel between Ivers' violin and Buddy Connolly's three-button accordion will nearly set the stage of fire, I tell ya!
The George Wendt of male singers - Tommy McDonnell - will practically have you thinking you're in a gospel singalong led by the Blues Brothers Band.
Leo Traversa on bass guitar and Greg Anderson on acoustic guitar/bouzouki will get your toes a-tappin'.
The finale tonight was like a volcano exploding with sound, wanting you to shout and sing until the roof came down (and considering the venue, the Von Braun Center, is under construction, that might be possible).
So it was fitting that the full ensemble appeared on stage to sing an encore medley starting with "May The Circle Be Unbroken" and ending with the Hallelujah chorus.
Vlad, if you could hear Eileen play the violin like a rock guitarist on steroids, you'd park your missiles over Afghanistan, Iran and every country standing in the way of women like Laurie Anderson, Eileen, Natalie and any other virtuoso female violinist unable to play a fiddle under a burqa. The world would be a better place, I'm sure.
I could say more but I suggest you get your own ensemble over to the States and catch a concert performance of Eileen Ivers' jig of a twist on Christmas music. It might even convince the North Koreans and Iranians to put aside nuclear armament, with visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads, instead.
Well, I guess it's time to settle my brain for a nice winter's nap. And here I thought I was going to keep silent. See what Eileen has done to me!
Thanks to SAIC for sponsoring the concert; Rainy, Gift and Penny at Thai Garden for serving dinner.
I don't know how many times I've assured Putin in public that lack of approval of the START treaty is no reason for the movement of Russian nuclear weapons to European borders.
But does he listen to me? Of course not. He has to be the big bad Russki bear, growling and flexing his claws.
Vlad, it's just you and me here, kiddo. Ain't like you can't see what's really going on. Ease off the missile deployment, willya? Let the Europeans and Americans worry about the domino theory. No, not the fall of democracies to communism. Instead, I mean the fall of capitalist economies to bankruptcy.
Some days, I might as well talk to the trees as inject them with arsenic to make future poisonous toothpicks out of them to feed to unsuspecting aliens checking out the bacterial life forms in Mono Lake.
Excuse me, class, but is there a bacterium in the auditorium?
The world is full of white hair and stuffed shirts - isn't that what I'm supposed to say? Repetitious, however true.
Like attending a cultural musical event - orchestral support/attendance attracts/needs well-funded familial fixings, usually older, refined and loaded (with cash, that is). Youth (but not youthfulness) stands out in the crowded, aged multitude.
My Russian colleague, you should have been with my wife and me this noteworthy evening. Jigging (and almost jiving) to tonight's premiere performance of An Nollaig: An Irish Christmas with Eileen Ivers, the Drake School Irish dancers in street/Irish costumes and the LCT Singers dressed in black provided the perfect stepping/swaying counterbalance to Eileen and her merry band, Immigrant Soul.
You should take a lesson from them.
We should be sittin' in a pub "sipping"
You'd almost think we were in a contemporary church service, the band drawing the audience closer, Eileen fiddling like she's telling Charlie Daniels to put the devil to bed. Would I dare compare her to Natalie MacMaster? Would one compare Eric Clapton to Chet Atkins or Chet Atkins to Eddie Van Halen?
Irish might be the announced style but Eileen and her boys add bits of blues, jazz, rock and a touch of country to their tunes. A duel between Ivers' violin and Buddy Connolly's three-button accordion will nearly set the stage of fire, I tell ya!
The George Wendt of male singers - Tommy McDonnell - will practically have you thinking you're in a gospel singalong led by the Blues Brothers Band.
Leo Traversa on bass guitar and Greg Anderson on acoustic guitar/bouzouki will get your toes a-tappin'.
The finale tonight was like a volcano exploding with sound, wanting you to shout and sing until the roof came down (and considering the venue, the Von Braun Center, is under construction, that might be possible).
So it was fitting that the full ensemble appeared on stage to sing an encore medley starting with "May The Circle Be Unbroken" and ending with the Hallelujah chorus.
Vlad, if you could hear Eileen play the violin like a rock guitarist on steroids, you'd park your missiles over Afghanistan, Iran and every country standing in the way of women like Laurie Anderson, Eileen, Natalie and any other virtuoso female violinist unable to play a fiddle under a burqa. The world would be a better place, I'm sure.
I could say more but I suggest you get your own ensemble over to the States and catch a concert performance of Eileen Ivers' jig of a twist on Christmas music. It might even convince the North Koreans and Iranians to put aside nuclear armament, with visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads, instead.
Well, I guess it's time to settle my brain for a nice winter's nap. And here I thought I was going to keep silent. See what Eileen has done to me!
Thanks to SAIC for sponsoring the concert; Rainy, Gift and Penny at Thai Garden for serving dinner.
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