the little people look at signs and wonders

Nothing would surprise me now. I fully expect a great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth to greet me every time I have to slog into the town for supplies. The more the connivers keep on repeating themselves and covering holes in their stories with more holes, the faster the little people are going to figure it all out. All of it. They are going to make connections out of everything from bailouts to Nick Berg to being turned away for an existing condition to cash for clunkers to purple fingers and are going to be having hissy fits right and left. I don't want to look. Visible called it a live slasher film, a fitting description for these times. And it was only recently I asked so full of incredulity, what if evil only becomes more evil? My friends, now we see and whatever we are seeing is still nothing compared to what we will see.
It does not matter that we see. Imagine that? So little concern for the curious onlookers tells a story in itself. Richard Reid was one thing, the latest terror attack is a lesson from Kitty Genovese writ large. The lesson is known as the Bystander Effect:

... There are in fact many reasons why bystanders in groups fail to act in emergency situations, but social psychologists have focused most of their attention on two major factors. According to a basic principle of social influence, bystanders monitor the reactions of other people in an emergency situation to see if others think that it is necessary to intervene. Since everyone is doing exactly the same thing (nothing), they all conclude from the inaction of others that help is not needed. This is an example of pluralistic ignorance or social proof. The other major obstacle to intervention is known as diffusion of responsibility. This occurs when observers all assume that someone else is going to intervene and so each individual feels less responsible and refrains from doing anything...

Of course, we are not talking about the oddity here of the vague young man who clobbered the Manchurian Candidate searching his body for explosives, he acted exactly like he might have acted if he had acted instinctively somewhere else, some other time, searching for extra explosives, no, I mean, would you do that? We are talking on the larger level, the level that takes everything into account and makes columns of disconnections until something connects as it always will. The six degree factor we might call it. This is why its a bad idea to be running into town, milling about, doing nothing in the park but sitting on a bench reading Camu. If you don't want to be in a slasher film, leave now.

Here all these things are taking place at exactly the same moment in time we are standing at the edge of the abyss of climate chaos. What did those emails do but underscore the drastic nature of this situation so that the citizens of the planet are forced to tranch additional fears into the frayed security blanket of peace on Earth, goodwill to men? And was the right thing done, no again. Health reform, who are they kidding? Why do they bother other than to make the illegal legal for themselves, certainly not for you, they do not care about you or what you need to survive. They do not care about your pharmacy bill. They do not care if all the children grow up dirty in an atmosphere of wanton poverty and Migrant Mother despair. They love what they do so much they are blinded to the effect. Every day is a thrill, the razor's edge, Major "King" Kong riding the bomb into oblivion. What they do is not all that different from what they do at the swaps exchanges. The devil is in the moment, not the outcome, not the effected parties, its all about the action, the height of glory some people jones for and are miserable until they are in it, its all there is - and when they get it, its not for you, or me, or any other person in the entire world. It must be the highest drug for the end times that can be imagined because somewhere, there is a little voice inside that says what are you doing? All sentient beings have this little voice. That voice is your voice, not the voice of your self-representative speaking some jive as it is allowed to do so often.

Yemen (rhymes with lemon) joins the massive swell of bloated representative-selves planet wide. Perhaps they are overfond of Chateaubriand and psychedelic dom perignon. If you've ever sat with them in a formal and popular hotel dining room you'd have seen it rolling by the white linen covered tables in a decorated silver trolley with a roll up lid so everyone is supposed to roll their eyes and pretend to drool - oh how gauche. They're loaded with in jokes, its all part of that fabulous high they're under from the arduous day spent on the razor's edge.

And us? How many food stamps does it take to buy 20% fat hamburger? You know they are making a lot of flat patties to supply all the burger joints in all the townships and outburbs and exit ramps and casinos on the reservations ... the cows cannot be pleased. The Creator is not pleased. But the Chateaubriand set doesn't care about them either. When belief is not present, values are absent. Besides, no one is blocking them, they can do as they please.

No one is blocking them because they are going about it, incredibly, tragically, in the opposite direction like two strangers passing in the night on a dark highway at 90 mph in classic Ventura Freeway bumper to bumper traffic, each stranger taking a different exit. Living - this thing called life - our thoughts occupying these bodies - takes up most of our time. There are employments and situations requiring constant monitoring, we barely have time left over to take responsibility for the psychopath's hostile takeover and guilty often that we don't do more. How much responsibility is the crowd taking? You could be someone waiting to see how the crowd handles it, or not. It could be that the little people are exhausted with the monolithic exodus away from their once upon a time-ownership society and get no service from any of the official avenues suggested. A lean holiday makes for a strange day. Strange days make people speculate on what is going on.

There are then some even stranger interpretations based on rumor mill-style hearsay tranched into bundles of undereducated simple-mindedness. Almost funny if it wasn't so sad. Every level of awareness carries its own memes. This should be saying something about the awareness level of our Superiors. Da Vinci Code they are not. Forged letterhead and precious metals? Camu was never read, it sat there on the lah de dah coffeetable like a show trial. They could glance at it for evidence that their intentions were well placed, inhumane, but served a financial purpose.

They are not in my thoughts, sorry, we do not even have to read the body of copy anymore underneath the consumers' headlines, we already know what it will say. Often, there will be just enough unnamed twists that reading these stories is like doing a little wooden puzzle, you know everything goes in its place, you've been there so many times before, and the last one won't fit ... until you turn it upside down. Easy.

More importantly, our thoughts turn to having had the honor of Dadnerd commenting among us in wisdom and grace. He liked my take on his self-portrait. Then comments took another turn, but he'd let me see him in a way that another man would hide. Only tonight going back did I discover he'd altered the work to include my comment, 10 months ago. Surely he did that on purpose, confident I would find it one day. He leveled with us from the start, but he was such a full and total personality focused through integrity that his condition took back burner, the far back burner, until he was forced to recede from us and now he's somewhere else. We must appreciate the company of special people and tell them so when we are in contact with them, not later, and definitely not though a representative-self. It seemed much of Dadnerd's charm was his ability to speak freely from the heart without hesitation or taking it back in self-effacement, but with respect and attention to the subtleties of his friends while making perfect sense.

I find mourning to be selfish. We want the good among us to remain with us, present and accounted for, some of us are easily attached, fundamentally we feel its not fair, we experience loss and all that loss entails. I think instead, when someone leaves they should be celebrated with a festival. There should be a party in the cruise cabin and a glorious send-off. I say Carry on Dadnerd, save me a place in your circle.