Things are not what they appear regardless of what you are told.

Attention: Love Tribe

Don't miss this rant.


I've been offline for a week, not by choice.  One of those times when the device was a few years past due for replacement and was ignored.  A wonderful world suddenly opened as the full moon came upon us, so much life to be experienced, so much to digest, contemplate and meditate upon, I highly recommend getting away from the web at least one week out of every month if not more often.
Meanwhile, A new system shockingly came into my hands, running WIN8.  Yes, I am extremely grateful, but it will take weeks to get it down. I never used an iphone so this touch screen concept is kinda weird.  When you turn it off, the screen is smeared with fingerprints.  Makes interesting wall paper.  ... not

There will be mini-posts here in the interim.  Hearts and hugs to all.

decisions, and decisions, and decisions, creeps in this petty pace ...

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

If sticking with blogger translates to censorship, a further dumbing-down of the greater dumbdown which incidentally is a major whiplash into absolute slavedom, then the idea of packing up and moving one's blog somewhere else is unnerving to say the least.  Who is to say which is worse, staying or leaving?  Of course, moving elsewhere can be done, supposedly easily if you buy the hype, but the downside is finding yourself spending infinitely MORE time online than you already do, without the interaction, the discoveries, the visuals and the building on each others spiritual foundations.  Moving the blog technically is demanding enough for non-geeks, but the rearrangement of visuals is an unnecessary chore because we've already done it and can't imagine anything more potentially irritating than revising a finished work without the tools we trained ourselves to use developed over many years and through many "supposedly" more efficient ways of doing what we do here.   There is a  lot more to it than we are being led to believe, deleting the photos Picasa has accumulated in disregard to the fact we have already have offline photo storage and of course, the very big issue of starting all over again with a different email service.  I've tried a number of them over the years and found g-mail a lot faster to use, although you don't have any of the graphics choices other email systems provide.  And then there is the search feature, too, etc.

I've had a hunch from the beginning of this blog D day was coming because once you sign on to the blogger experience, you are encouraged to open a lot of strange doors, all of them leading back inside the grand spider web.  If you don't want to be eaten alive, you'll need to find the exit.  If you are uncomfortable with google's widely posted changes to come, don't let it turn into the procrastinator's indecisive wait and see. 

If we leave things as they are, after March 1st or 12th, I'm not exactly sure of the date, it appears we automatically turn into a Facebooky social networking situation, an all-inclusive, systematically tracked and profiled, total void of privacy; whatever is said in blogs, comments and emails will be scrutinized for the stated purpose of personalized advertisements popping up apparently whenever we connect to the web.  And where we go, we are advised, will be linked with where we've been, where we go next and how they classify the individual user, all wrapped in one tidy package to improve our overall individual internet experience.  Really!  Then count on whomever else comes into the mix up the road apiece, someone with the innovative moxie of the moment, as pretty much a guarantee to take it even further and deeper into previously unknown dimensions of connectivity and hog snorting glee as the anticipated profits rain down.  You will have to decide for yourself what those dimensions of the future could mean and how they could affect you.  It may suddenly take on new weight in your thoughts concerning your participation in the program. 

I am of two minds on this.  One mind, not my better, higher mind, says "So what, I'm okay with things as they are." The other mind sees this situation as dangerous, dangerous because anything anyone says is open to interpretation by technology, how reliable is that?  There certainly is no logical reason to be lackadaisical since whatever is going on today is already racing to change itself towards superseding unlimited growth, imagine that, infinite mutations of pituitary gigantism also known as Launois syndrome; downgrades and bankruptcy likely being the feared classic consequences they probably envision lie ahead without immediately monetizing every cluster of binary numbers.  Do note this change comes directly on the heels of Facebook's IPO filing.  If this gives you the chills, try to remember we're talking about personhoods here, not flesh and blood. 

Try telling them it isn't necessary, stop fiddling with what isn't broken.  Ah, but you know you cannot argue with machines armed with computer generated stats promising profit for economic innovation.  Have you ever tried to contact blogger for tech support?  Where are the people, the human beings wearing ear pieces and mouth mics, to fix your foibles?  We shouldn't wonder what happened to the human personality that used to be so gracious.  Once autobots replaced the human being your query into tech support in ANY situation no longer encouraged or required courtesy.  Once you figured out you could pay your bills by cellphone, online or just by authorizing creditors to trawl your bank account, you didn't have to write legibly either.  Mostly we learned to check boxes and copy/paste the rest.  How encouraging are conversations with other voices where you respond with only "yes" or "no" and hang up on them?  Every one of us is at least guilty of that.  That is what they want.  These antisocial actions only create more of the same antisocial behaviors.  If we are willing to cooperate this much, how much more will we cooperate with before signing out for the last time?  Are we even close?  Remotely close?  Some will be more than happy to go away and do something else, something real, something that does not lead to ennui.  Believe it or not, there is still a beautiful world out there, we will never find it the longer we stay glued to this unnatural relationship.

By the time it takes to deliver munitions over Iran, internet use will stampede, that is if it has not already reached everyone its going to reach.  We all have our own personalized arguments against this medium of communications, small or large, and it is strange to see ourselves continuing to take the beating all the while knowing we pay a heavy price to play.  I feel like the last person on the planet sometimes, hanging on to dial-up.  Every time I investigate the range of high speed options, I walk away disgusted, they think we use our laptops to watch TV!  Yes, that is always the first thing asked by DSL sales reps, "How much television viewing do you do online?"  When I say "None", there is a blank pause as if some alien broke into the connection.  And fer cryin' out loud, who in their right mind would want to pay more for something we already have and really, really don't want or need more?  If you read this blog's previous posts you might have come across a brilliant comment from someone who has been through it all and was at a complete loss to say what he's gained personally over the past decade from his internet experience.  I agree.  How about ah, less than nothing?  Nothing we didn't already know or would have discerned anyway or found at the local library if we were so moved.  Somehow, out of all these years of living we share, we have arrived here today intact, did we really need keyboards and autobots to ease us inside the corral?  Isn't this easing simply another avenue of humiliation and diminishment on the way to the ultimate goal? That the citizen animal is of no more worth to this planet than a useless eater taking up space that could be mangled into profitability with a little shift in perception accomplished though the multitaskers' attention deficit hyperactivity disorder information storm pulsating with blazing personalized come-ons?  See cryptogon's take.

My decision is made, seriously, is there any decision?  I'm merely looking for some unlikely argument for the other side in case I missed something.  I've been through this before with an earlier blog hosted on our former ISP and it turned out badly making blogger seem such a good find.  I was shut out of my original blog because the visitor limit was exceeded, which was, ahem, a shock.  Just a few minutes ago I tried to access that blog and the message reads forbidden access on their server which says only their ISP customers are allowed to visit, provided those visitors remain under whatever viewing limit is being imposed.  Its no great loss, but typical of the surprises you come across in these strange days.  If we go by recent history, it can only become more of what it already is.

In closing, I have to say, it does appear another long term relationship is in the throes of crashing.  It did not have to be this way fellas.

What's goin on

Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today ...
1971 | Marvin Gaye | Obie Benson

Finally, it has come to this we think and yet, its not over, not by a long shot. The mess, the turmoil, has a long way to go. A few things need attention while the thunderstorm and hail are flung across the passes and traffic slows to a dead halt on the interstates ...

Browsing the welcome news (we all have welcome news, you might have seen this), I was amused by an article dated today concerning a GOP senate candidate's statement made four years ago and wondered as you will too, why bring up this paranoid's delusion now? Of course, its election dirt, but its more. It reads as a thinly disguised attempt to take us further into 1984 where we are always at war. If this is so, it needs to be nipped in the bud immediately because we are going to need strong friends and soon. The paranoid's delusion is just that, a delusion, and a rather perfect illustration of reactionary thinking. What's wrong with these people, anyway? We wouldn't be reluctant witness to provocateurs' antics if our Laureate community organizer and his handlers could organize their way to real solutions, but alas ... personalities earn fame and fortune spotlit by media's public relations-compliant analysis, pressing and pushing to no avail. Economic relationships are stuck for life regardless of who occupies what office, and where, unless (there's always an unless) one party is suspected to be profiting more than the other. Profiting greatly.  In the end, in our bottom line, in our litmus test, it means nothing we don't already know. Tit for tat. Where's the change, dude? The whole place is still sliding on thin ice.

You'll want to follow up that piece, whichever one you chose among the roster of corporate feeds, with something of genuine substance, although its the blog author who provides great insight to the ironies contained in certain documents which are purportedly the agenda for the upcoming G-20. You will find the opinions fascinating. You may even find confirmation for your secret thoughts on this issue contained within. Gonzalo's take on his material is most entertaining. It would make a great film. Someday, I would like to see a dream roundtable discussion between Charles Hugh Smith, James Kunstler and Gonzalo Lira on just about anything. If wishes grew on trees ... Oh, the poor public. They have no idea. The new statistic for our beleaguered livestock is three out of four Americans will be obese (not merely overweight) by 2020. Do I need to repeat that? Has it sunk in? Good. The cattle would rather scrape lemon drops off the bottom of the BGH-GMO barrel than figure out what's going on.

None of the above will mean anything to you if you don't see the links.

The cattle better figure it out soon because it is no longer in the hands of some mythical great overseer. Mentally repeat the past and ask yourself what are you going to do when disaster snarls its way into your living room? Who is prepared when they don't know what is brewing in the witch's den? Personally, I have a prejudice against knowing too much because MSM details generally obscure the point, among other travesties. What has happened is we have no one looking out for us, we are viewed as too shallow, too spoiled through over-abundance, too oblivious and too corrupt for salvation. The humanity has been wrung out of the human. Where does one begin to repair all that has happened and all that is to come? How can we heal while wallowing in a national cesspool of denial? Yes, it is shocking. It is an impasse like none other, ever.

Mister Kunstler's essay today is his best one since I've been reading him, easily a few years by now. Oh, I know, he doesn't keep his house all that clean, there are plenty of repeat trolls nosing around, but once in a while there will be a comment so worthy of a larger audience it is like a rainbow breaking the storm. (I've taken the liberty  to correct punctuation where I find it and understand in the heat of the moment how such things happen.)

This one is from conchscooter:

"Can you spell quitclaim? The reason those famous "23 states" keeps getting brought up on this issue is that these are judicial foreclosure states. That would be states that require a judge to sign off on a foreclosure order.
However if challenged (and the title companies are doing just that)the banks not only can't produce the pen-and-ink mortgage agreement, they have had those lackeys sign off that the original documents were "lost." They weren't lost they were transferred without the benefit of being properly recorded to investment trusts.
That means the mortgages are not properly recorded and can therefore be challenged.
If you buy a foreclosed property you will not get title insurance because in those judicial foreclosure states the banks had no legal right to sell a property in which they had no legal standing.
This is a state issue and is going to have a more revolutionary impact on this lawless state of ours than any number of survivalists with guns.

Don't believe me? Ask yourself why banks are stopping foreclosure in judicial foreclosure states...No one else has asked themselves why and what happens next. Not even Jim Kunstler, which is disappointing, but he got closer than most."

And here's one from eightm: 

Another AX: WORK
Take a look at all of those skyscrapers in New York City, Tokyo, Seoul, etc. What do you think all of those office workers actually "do" ? Do you really think they are actually producing anything ? Are they needed for anything except being a place holder - a figment of imaginary labor - work, to justify billions of dollars of money transfers amongst the already and only ever going to be rich ? The truth is work in general is no longer needed, is destined to become obsolete no matter what anyone says or thinks or desires.

The calculation is easy to do: there are 200 million office workers worldwide, information workers, "knowledge" workers, research workers, "innovation", and research and development and all of the other mega Bull Shit terms and expressions the modern economist love to talk about. So exactly what are they discovering - improving - creating ? Absolutely nothing except billions of dollars being robbed from the poor. But let's look at it for what it really is: out of 200 million workers I would fathom that only 1 out of 1,000 are creating anything, are really producing anything of lasting value, any real optimization, any real improvement, any real result, any real serialization of work as something that accumulates. But this is OK, the other 199 million are just running around in circles, they are essentially spinning their wheels, they are mostly just killing time and creating and solving imaginary problems, and playing the status game, office politics game, and creating useless meetings and every conceivable way to pretend to actually be working and doing something.
But those 200,000 that are actually optimizing, that are improving the little work processes that are left to do, those guys there are setting the stage to eliminate at least each 100 jobs as a minimum. For what is all of this research, optimization, innovation worth if it doesn't cut costs, which in the end really means cut jobs ? And cut costs they will, no matter how inefficient they are because it is only natural that processes can slowly be improved and optimized. So 200,000 workers (the only ones that are actually serializing work, accumulating lasting results) will eventually each cut 100 jobs, so another 200 million unemployed workers will appear in the near future.
So the future of work is actually no work, hundreds of millions of unemployed, mass poverty, eventually starvation, thanks to the capitalists, success model of rich robbing everything from the poor. We need free salaries, and cheap rents since there will no longer be any possible work in the future. We need to get rid of the competition mentality, the me better than you idea, the idea of "earning" what you need, we need equality and everything must be furnished for free since automation and technology have essentially killed all possible work and will kill all work in the future.
You don't understand: you won't be choosing "capitalism" or whatever, the forces at play are going all in the same direction no matter what you or anyone wants. Optimization, automation, Chinese or South Korean scientists - engineers automating factories, creating production shortcuts, etc. etc. This will trickle through and translate into less costs which means somewhere and somehow less money to workers or less work. No matter what, this world is going towards the end of work, work is no longer needed, I know many people for one reason or another have no work, have nothing to do, even if they wanted to, because the modern production process is all geared towards the elimination of work. We better get this straight and not buy all the BS justifications of the economists that say more productivity, more research etc. will create new jobs. And in fact these are exactly the items that are eliminating work. More productivity and more research will kill jobs, not create new jobs, unless you consider dog walking a new "kind of job", a new "service job"...
No matter where and how many people can build houses or cut the lawns (valid only in the US, most countries don't have houses with lawns to cut, etc.) there is not enough work for too many people. We have huge excess capacity in all productive endeavors, Spain and the US, just to name 2 even very different countries built way too many homes and now have a glut of homes, the US may have 15 million empty homes, all of Europe from Lisbon to Moscow may have even more, they did all the right things, they built all the homes they could, but the system cannot support them without free salaries to millions of families that could use them.
The right wing thugs like to pretend there are these magical solutions, "technology destroys jobs but creates more jobs than destroyed", or "go somewhere else where they are looking for your manpower", etc to put the blame on the unemployed, to put the blame on the victim and not on the system: we live in automatic economies, work is disappearing at an alarming rate, there is no magical solution. We need free salaries and cheap rents, government owned, because the government is the people, the government is the nation as a whole, is the only real value, the collectivity, the individual is an egotistical criminal that wants to rob from the poor, wants to beat up the weak and kick them out of work. A central government that gives what the people need, and a progressive government that will use all the excess productive capacity for progress, the future, like space exploration, millions of skyscrapers, a society where the common good, and not the individual good is cherished. Exploration of the solar system and then the stars and planets, thousands of rockets, the future of humanity, a future of science and discovery, of an advanced civilization that puts all of its energy to use for progress, for the advancement of everyone, to share with everyone, to go higher and higher and further and further. Capitalism is a stone age system for violent - ancient apes that like to fight and have huge egos.
But this is exactly how the system is being set up to be ... (Please see link above for the rest of eightm's comment.)

Shall we ask eightm where the free salaries will come from?  Ah, sweetheart, don't even think about Treasury's presses.

What does all this say as a whole picture? It means we are fubar and need to either pull up stakes or batten down the hatches for our remaining lifetimes. That's right, sail under bare poles from this moment forward.

Who remembers the ISG, the Iraq Study Group, asking for solutions from the American citizens?  And did not BP ask for the public's solutions to the blowout?  And was Saudi Arabia's' offer of assistance not refused? Of course, Bush strummed his three chord riff, his only riff, during Katrina at a California's power photo-op rather than ask for solutions because he just didn't give a damn.  All along the signs and omens were blinking neon truths which for the most part have been taken for granted.  You saw it. The Fema trailers for those who qualified were reported to be cancer incubators.  And now there's Corexit - a solution not supplied by the public who was cluesless as to what on Earth could be done short of a walking evacuation, but where to?  With what?

Nothing is like it was and will never be like it was again. We've outgrown our childhoods and cannot go back. The people are unhappy and complaining and running into brick walls with every action they attempt to accomplish seemingly simple tasks. Simultaneously, it is a continuing joy to communicate with each other in our small, caring communities. I know lots of readers are worried about Visible this week, but he will survive his situation and resurrect into more than he already is. Tell me who among us has not been there? Let us trust each others' journeys through our own power to survive these times with our love and understanding. We ARE on our own, but we are not alone.  I will pass along a secret I shared with a friend just this morning: When your broken heart needs repair and you find yourself in the dark, swirling abyss, falling, falling, faster and faster, do-something-good-for-someone-else.   It is amazing how one small good deed turns it around.  This is where we are, just taking it day by day, usually hour by hour.  Baby steps and good deeds.

Art: 
L.A. Postcard | 18" x 24" watercolor on Arches
Woof!  Woof! Creole translation: Oua! Oua! | 18* x 24* watercolor on Arches

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for comments made by others and hold no political position for or against the commentary produced by anyone else.  All material on this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Just a typical week in the Apocalypse

Its a snow day here after yesterday's 7.2 mag earthquake in Baja. Not being an Ologist of one or the other, I'm not sure if there is a relationship in what I just said or if there is a relationship to what the Fireteacher grumbled when he saw the quake graph on IRIS, which was " Hmmmm, gettin' closer to the San Andreas Fault ..." (I thought the same). Meanwhile, we ponder the relationship of the current external public nastiness with the shift in the Tectonic Plates, as if Mother has had quite enough and those priests should all be doing time, etc. The fact they are not in the clinker (still abusing) means Nature will do as Nature must, text Luca Brazzi aka Mister Karma to clean up the joint. There is enough happening on the ground to upset the balance, flying in the face of every human life, every innocent species just being alive, but in process of being extincted though our overpopulation-consumerism-corruption crisis. Such a crisis, no matter how you look at it, is unfolding as genocide planet wide benefiting no one, with the exception of Nature. As I said before, when its gone, there is nothing left for exploitation by corporations in their daily business of exploitation, war and addiction. Yesterday, they rubbed their hands together in glee, tomorrow those hands will be grasping the edge of the cliff. Warning, don't look down, you will find there is no soft landing or even any landing at all. Infinity is a long way down. In our slow collapse, it might just take as long to fall as it took to achieve superpower stardom if it were not for the arrival of Peak Everything like a smothering black veil creeping over the Earth. Every day it is darker out there.


Being a snow day (holiday), there won't be any painting, everyone is home, big dog indoors doing figure 8's around the sofa, Fireteacher posting on the blogs alternating with some fix-its and the light is weak. I came across a few sites I'd like you to see if you have not already. Begin with Charles's The U.S. Status Quo: Unsustainable, Doomed and Danced Out:

...it is certainly striking that the two products chosen more or less at random were both complete wastes of money and time.

Added together with millions of similarly defective/low-quality/useless goods, this is malinvestment on a vast scale.

Add in the granite countertops in millions of falling-apart McMansions, empty malls, vacant highrises, hundreds of needless "profit center" MRI machines, etc. and we have a nation which has misinvested trillions of dollars which are now lost to productive investment elsewhere.

No economy can recover from this scale of malinvestment ...

... I am reminded of the Beatles' song I, Me, Mine. Perhaps that will be the anthem of the next decade as everyone scrambles to protect their swag and perquisites at the expense of some other less politically adept group of citizens, until the entire system freezes up and the dancers suddenly notice the music stopped playing a long time ago.

From there, you'll be of a mind to check out Justin Raimondo's Rachel Maddow, McCarthyite, the FBI, the left and the war on "extremism:

...there is a sinister aspect to all this violence-baiting, as well as a comic one. For the central point of all the pro-FBI, pro-government, anti-"extremist" propaganda blaring from MSNBC and other news outlets is to convince us that speech leads to violence – and that, indeed, certain forms of political speech – "antigovernment" in nature – are inherently violent.

The irony of this is that these people are cheerleaders for the biggest most powerful purveyor of violence on earth, the US federal government. All states are founded on violence, of course, and maintained in power by the continual threat of it, and yet the US government enjoys a special status in this regard, with more firepower at its command – and the inclination to use it – than any previous empire in human history. We are talking about a government currently waging two open wars and one "secret" one, abroad – systematically murdering many thousands – and actively threatening yet another.

The tiny and powerless Hutaree "militia" has about as much chance of overthrowing this Leviathan as a flea. Yet they are charged with "sedition." This would be a joke if it weren’t such a danger to what’s left of our civil liberties. ...

Next, it seems to me that long essays on this blog are supreme time swallowers and am going to be testing out a less consuming approach of brief mentions, more frequently. This would be a mirror to Ran's style, but when there is a need, I claim the right to revert. Likely, we'll end up with both. Today is a good example of what to expect.

Next, but on topic: How will all those people who built homes since NAFTA went into effect in 1992 know where their drywall was created? The Feds say if you have a home with Chinese drywall, it has to be gutted. And who pays for that?

Lastly, in reflection on the Easter weekend busy news, let me close with a mention there really is such a person as a Papal Preacher. A Papal Preacher (loose cannon) that thinks the public response to the (pure evil) sexual molestation scandal is anti-semitism. The Pope's personal Papal Preacher was made to apologize after the outrage hit the airwaves, but who really knows what goes on deep inside someone's secret mind or inside the Holy See?

Since all of us are subjected to the passage of time in years designated A.D. and B.C., you'll begin to get an idea of how powerful is organized religion by thinking a bit on that. How different it would all be if that power never got its grip so long ago.

Awful layout problems persist for some unknown reason. Will continue to work on it.

Do you see me?

Both my blogs displayed messages they'd been deleted this morning. The gmail account was close to blocked with the craziest captchas/word verifications ever. I got through. I'm here and everything appears as it should. What happened? I definitely did not delete my blogs.
Let me know what you are seeing, if you are seeing this. Thank you!