Answer me this… May 23, 2013

Why do old men like to wear white shoes?

The Loyalty Oath, Redux May 18, 2013

"I pledge Allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
with Liberty and Justice for all."

"Ich gelobe Treue auf die Fahne der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, auf die Republik, die eine Nation unter Gott ist, vereinigt durch Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit fur alle."

So which is it, the flag or the Republic? Why pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth? If you’re going to swear a loyalty oath shouldn’t it be to the nation, or to its laws or its Constitution? Really, pick one: the gaudy piece of cloth, or the real system of government. Otherwise you’re just bloviating. Sort of like what those people do who drive around with flags flapping on their cars. Most of them couldn’t pass a high school civics test. Oh, wait, high schools don’t teach that useless stuff anymore, do they?

Why ‘and’ flag and Republic ‘for which it stands’? Cut to the chase. The Republic is law and nation and history and Constitution. Flag is cloth. Flag is copout. Love the flag and you don’t have to do anything – you’ll be admired for your ‘patriotism’. Ah, but love the Republic? Yeah, for that you have to fight. You have to get off your ass and wade into the fray; you have to know what you’re actually fighting for; you have to know some real history, not the phonied-up stuff from the Tea Potty and the screeching Republican fakers. You have to actually work at it.

It’s much easier just to mindlessly recite the loyalty oath and look down your nose at those who object to it (that would be me) and smugly diddle your mind with your profound patriotism. That’s what the ‘flag’ reference is all about in the Pledge. It’s a way out for the ignorant, for the lazy, for the fakers.

And of course my old argument still stands, that the Pledge compels silence, compels conformity, and compels Christian religious belief, all of which would have the Founders rolling over in their graves, if not digging their way out and heading to Washington to kick the fat asses of the faux Tea Potty Republican patriots running around befouling the whole thing.

Oh, the German thing up top? Yeah, switch out the States for the Reich and that would have fit well in Hitler’s Germany, don’t ya think? Dolfy was big on loyalty oaths.

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All Power To The Roof! May 15, 2013

 

All the regulatory hurdles have been cleared, the power company is happy, and just a few minutes ago I finally turned on the solar panels on the roof.

My little bit to save the world.

Okay, I don’t believe that either. But at least I’m doing something and I can feel better about that as the biospheric Titanic breaks and sinks.

Yowsah!

By the way, the company is Sungevity, out in California. Very easy to work with. Tell ‘em Ric Gerace from Cape Cod sent you.

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There! I’ve Done It Again… May 13, 2013

Yes. Again. I broke up with Facebook for the second time. A week or two ago, I’m not really sure how long it’s been. Peace of mind tends to blur time.

I did it for the same reasons both times. Facebook is mentally fragmenting. It’s a collection of fragments of people’s lives, ideas, problems, desires. Bits and pieces. Like rushing through a crowd and picking bits of lint, strands of hair, swatches of cloth, hints of bad breath and perfume, words and phrases, a grunt here, a moan there, a giggle, a laugh, a curse, a bad pun.

And rushing through a crowd that cries out for a signature on a petition for this, a petition for that, a petition for half a dozen causes a day; holding out a hand for a donation for a cause in America, in Africa, in London, in Iowa; laying out pictures of abused, abandoned, and dead animals as a plea for help for them.

It’s too much. There’s too much of it.

I made it stop. I think I will not make it start again like I did last time.

I’m sixty-eight years old. I can’t save the animals. I’m tired of signing petitions that go nowhere, do nothing. I haven’t got enough money for all the hands wiggling their fingers at me. And I don’t want the fragments of lives: they all blur together.

I want to read whole books. I want know whole persons. I want to spend whole hours just being bored. I want to work through whole arguments about politics and ethics. I want to play real games of backgammon.

I got tired of snappy memes, snarky comments, brief bits of ideas, impotent rage.

I like the people I met there on Facebook. I think I could be actual friends with many of them, in the real world. Or maybe not. I’ve been the perennial outsider and loner all my life, though not, as PeeWee Herman would have it, a rebel. Which is fine with me. I like my silences. I like the feel of my mind working uninterrupted.

I can write, somewhat. I think that’s what I’ll do from now on. That, and tend to my cats, read my books, mess around with ham radio, peek through microscopes, do the laundry, and listen to less news from the BBC and NPR.

I’m tired and I’m alone and the rest of the way is going to pretty much be like that. It’s okay. Could be worse. Could be better. But Facebook jangling around my brain isn’t the better way.

Goodbye Facebook. You were interesting. But I think you’re just not my type.

Corona Virus, Chinese Flu Run Wild May 13, 2013

750 Million Dead, No End In Sight

Scientists: “No cure yet”

New York, Chicago, L.A., World Capitols Shut Down

How about that?

It could happen.

A couple of microscopic, inanimate bits of protein could actually save the world from the plague of humanity that’s brought the biosphere to the abyss of destruction.

Considering that we came from some bits of amino acids, proteins, microstuff, way back when, we could be looking at the ultimate ironic justice. 

Yeah. We could. How about that?