The epitome of...

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

Voltaire

See? Just look at all that Christmas spirit! Why, I'm fairly suffocating in it!

Happy Hollandaise

PSM-(RH)

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

J.D. Salinger

'Tis the season. Truly it is upon us. And that means they are upon us...

I'm looking for an opening here; something that will gently ease my readers into the material for today's offering but I'm finding it difficult to 'ease' into this. Why? Well, to illustrate the problem I'm having, try going to a grocery store, a department store, box store, any store, anywhere for that matter. Or just try going out, getting in your car and driving. If, god help you, you are like me and have already reached your own particular saturation point (again), stay home. Try turning on your TV set, answering your phone, or getting online. You will then realize (if you haven't already) why I'm in a quandry as to how to gracefully, or tactfully, approach this.

But then again, why should I? Hey, I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir here anyway, so why do I need to sugarcoat what's on my mind? There's no way, no need, to tastefully, or 'eloquently' throw down the gauntlet for this. Why should I? The people I aim this at are too mindless to understand that it's about them I'm writing, if indeed they can read but oh, of course they can otherwise NASCAR magazine wouldn't be so popular but I'm thinking it's all scratch-and-sniff pictures (for that realistic you are there experience).

3 words. Repeat after me, class. And salute the rebel flag (or the stars and stripes, doesn't matter) while you speak. Ready? Putrid Stinking Masses (enunciate please). Also affectionately referred to by some of my more radical friends as The RH, or, Repugnant Horde. Not to be mistaken for the Mongol Hordes; they were the epitome of etiquette, the dilettantes of discretion, compared to this mob. The PSM, or RH, are everywhere. There is no escape. They have, and continue, to insinuate, infiltrate, and integrate. Without pause. Without concern for color, race, religion, celebrity, or sanity. They have no other mission other than to live their mucked-up little lives, and spawn future hordes, right in our faces! But you know what the real beauty of all this is? They have absolutely, without a doubt, no clue that there are people out here who are not like them!! Whoops. I guess I should retract that. I forgot about the nazi-zealots who have decided that anyone not sharing their mindsets be imprisoned, gassed, and/or barred from shopping at Wal-Mart (where they can leave their carts out in the middle of any aisle indefinitely) for life.

I'm rolling now. Turn on your TV. Watch the local news. Know why it's filled with stories about the PSMs and their pathetic little existences? Because they run the damn station now, that's why. Hell, they run the whole network! And none of 'em can spell!! Look at the headers! Jeezus! Tired of that? Take a break. Go hop in your car and drive down the street, any street, where you see those fancy little electronic billboards out in front of businesses to highlight their wares. I don't know about you, but it would be embarrassing to advertise the fact that I couldn't spell. But, in the grand order of 'how it is really', when I think about it, it doesn't matter because no one reading those billboards can spell either. Even if they could, they're already well into the stage of PSMism whereby they could give a rat's butt, or, as I like to call it, ass.

But here's the deal. And this is hilarious (I mean serious, it's just that the visual concept of it all makes me delirious). The RSMs are wired at birth to go out, find a mate (or whoever they can bump into) and re-populate the earth. At your expense! This is their directive. They have no other purpose here. They are not here to actively make our lives miserable; that's simply a by-product of their daily routine as they are way too involved in trying to find ways to keep their youngster's mouths full of garbage so they can grow up and continue the process.

Warning. Be careful out there. You may at some point seek refuge, driven half-crazy from all this madness. Know this; the RHs can look okay. They can dress and walk, and drive nice cars (just like the one that's been tailgating you for the past hour). Sometimes they even speak in complete sentences.

So... there is nowhere to go. No space. No sanctuary. THEY have either laid claim to, or are in the process of usurping, almost every last liberty we currently have. Almost... but there is one thing they can never take, never have. They can only dream, except that's silly because when they do dream it's about snowmobiles and ATVs and pick-up trucks and corn dogs and guns and wrestling and...

Quotes

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Aldous Huxley

Before I wade more deeply into my subject matter, I wish to thank my son, Aaron, for his blog. In addition to his insightful offerings, he quite often, with literary precision I might add, begins with a quote. His quotes provoke thought before the material is read, as it is read, and especially, upon completion of reading. They punctuate his posts so effectively! So, with his method as my guide, I have adopted this idea. My hat is off to you, Aaron. I am humbly appreciative. Whether or not I am as successful is, and will be, fodder for discussion among those who discuss things of this nature, but I definitely like the approach.

Finding a quote that can effectively contribute to the depth of an offering is either a science, or a gamble, or both. I'm a terrible gambler. I'm one of those guys who can't keep a poker face. I give myself away, and it's usually because I've got stinky cards.

But a good quote is one that when first read, gets one to thinking, and then further spurs cognitive process, from hopefully a different perspective, after the piece is completed. In my searches for appropriate quotes, the search itself has often altered my subject matter, because I'll like a certain quote so much that I feel I need to start with it, which forces me to change everything about that which I was going to write.

There are many really great quotes I've unearthed that will probably never make it to my blog. At least not until I'm really ready to face up to the stuff that I need to face up to, in that they make me a bit uncomfortable. Smack dab in the middle of a search I'll get blindsided by a quote that surgically removes my life and sets it out on the table in front of me. Interesting, too, in that when I find these, that usually throws a major wet blanket on whatever it was that I'd originally set out to write about. So be forewarned; the offering you are reading may or may not be what was planned. Maybe the one that was supposed to be here was ixnayed because I ran headfirst into another eye-opener. But how would you know that unless you were told. And, as it now turns out, you just were!

Anyway, thanks, Aaron. And keep 'em coming. You are the master... and look! I never even got close to broaching the subject I'd planned to concern myself, and maybe you, with. How did that happen! Oh well, stay tuned, if you so choose. I promise I'll stay on task... hyuk.

Attic

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

James Thurber

Clutter. That's what comes to mind, right along with the dust and disarray. Stuff no longer thought useful in the daily scheme; not yet ready to be disowned or discarded, but dangerously close to being forgotten unless somehow rediscovered. And as more stuff is piled on top, it is quite plausible that the odds of that happening would seem greatly reduced, unless there has been sown a viable, lasting connection to this object with an event, incident, or, more often, personality, that will spring to mind if and when the right buttons are pushed.

Good stuff. And bad stuff. It all gets saved. And forgotten, too. There is no discrimination. There is just time, and it passes. Sometimes it passes into obscurity. Then, good or bad, it's gone forever.

Portage

When we go to play, you flip around and flash around and everything, and then they're not gonna see nothin' but what their eyes see. Forget about their ears.

Jimi Hendrix

"...standin' here, freezin', inside your golden garden..."

Jimi Hendrix

Maybe it's not so bad, so terribly wrong, to take the long way. It's not always the shortest, or easiest, which flies in the aged, supposedly wise face of the more common sensical approach, but it does have, for me, a certain time-acquired attraction.

Something some one wrote recently set me to thinking. Taken in context it had nothing to do with anything specific save for the subject matter with which it dealt. But this statement separated itself from the rest of the piece, and it found purchase. As can sometimes be the case, especially if the timing is right, well-chosen words connected into phrases will stick with me. They come back, often incessantly, at interesting moments, now so much more than a simple point of reference. I find them applicable to more than for what they were originally intended.

But this is not about that particular series of words assembled into that phrase, nor is it about where it came from or who wrote it. It's as much about where they found me as it is where I intend to go with them. I am amazed again, by how such seemingly pedestrian moments can be so illuminating. Maybe even life-changing.

How really different we all are. How our sets of experience are totally unique. How we see and what we see are all pre-determined by

our unique perspectives long before we think we know ourselves and can somehow begin to alter our 'way' of thinking. And, while this sets us apart from each and everyone else from the time of birth until we die, it's at the same time the only thing we will all ever have in common. Yes, I know, maybe that's all been said over and over again ad nauseum, but it finally rings loud and clear to me.

And the best part of having this common ground, now that I understand,is that it's comfortably small. We live, and then die, each on our own, to our own. In between, we do what it is that we do, sometimes not as well as others would have us do, but, it's really not for 'them' to say.

Let 'them' say what 'they' will. From now on, I will strive to live my life as I perceive it to be lived. I spent too much time seeing through eyes other than my own, and now time is short...