What it is, what it sort of is, and what it is not--well sort of anyway.

Whether we pay attention to it or not, reality unfolds.

Any sense of time that we add to the present experience is a mental construct.

Time itself is a mental construct.

Any sense experience is itself experienced in each moment.

Any sense experience can become a mental construct, or remain inchoate.  

Any mental construct is itself experienced in each moment in time.

We exist in a tension created by the immediacy of sense experience and the meaning that we create through various mental constructs.

There are also habits of mental constructs which exist independently of the sense experience of the immediate moment.

We exist in a tension between habit and immediacy of sense and mental constructs in time.

What we think, sense and experience, or its combination,  is just out of reach and just within reach, right where we begin to know is happening.  There is a habit and an awareness of habit, a sense experience and an awareness of sense experience, and the passage of time and an awareness of the passage of time.   There are mental constructs and the awareness that we are making mental constructs.

There is me.   Yea, right.

If you drink wine, none of this will really matter.

Elihu plans to move back to California.   the bike ride to the winery is planned.   My sisters house is robbed.   Soon, very soon, my father turns 70.   Mad and Mac play aggressive defense.   Very aggressive.

Don't think that way, or I'll pound you, Ezra

Canto I:

Geek:   I see that our old law school classmate Pablo McWilson is now on the Missouri Supreme Court.  I guess that is cool

Mondo:  Very, in my opinion.   You should read his application for the position.  It was posted online.

Geek:  Pablo doesn't look anything like I remember him.  I didn't realize he was so young.   I bet you could've surveyed 99 % of our class and they would've thought that he was substantially older than us.

Mondo:  I think he is older than I am.

Geek:  He's 51.

Mondo:  52, actually.  A couple of months older than me.

Geek:  But not wiser.   Unless he's had an epiphany or two along the way or something :-).

Mondo:  Pretty confident he's wiser.

Geek:  B.S. Eliot.   Don't go wandering in that Wasteland.

Mondo:  J.  Alfred Truthrock.

Geek:  Meow.

Mondo:  He's no hollow man.

Geek:   If you think that Pablo was wiser than you in law school, I'm going to pound you, Ezra.

Mondo:  I'm pound foolish.

Geek:  Foolish heart hear me calling--stop before you start falling.  Foolish heart heed my warning--you've been wrong before don't be wrong anymore---about Pablo McWilson, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don gets a younger wife.

 

Someone jumps on my back and hurts my neck

 

The campus tour is successful in a way never imagined when the campus was an abode

 

and the Uge definitely knows what the fox says......

 

David McCartney/Linda Bowie

Recently discovered top secret documents reveal the startling discovery that Linda McCartney and David Bowie are actually the same person.  Speaking on a condition on anonymity, D. Delbert Fudpucker of the McCartney archive commented:  "I don't know what you are talking about, its so not true."   Of course, Mr. Fudpucker's body language belied his statement.  

I then presented him with the following photograph and asked him to tell me if it was Linda or David?  Or both?  

He refused to answer the question.  

It really shouldn't have come as that much of a surprise.  Bowie was a confirmed transsexual.  Linda liked her men as well.  I was just surprised that Wings and David Bowie never toured together.  That would have eliminated much of the complicated logistics that must have been necessary to keep the subterfuge alive.

The above photograph was taken in Linda's/David's 1976 Wings Across America tour.   Note that if you do your due diligence you will find that Bowie was not touring on any of the dates that "Linda" was.   David was back in the U.K.   Or was he?

And all would have remained secret but for the unfortunate similar buzz haircut that they both sported in the 1970s.   Our crack team of investigators learned that it came from the same barber at a Fantastic Sam's in the Soho.   I suppose that the deception must have been a little too difficult to maintain, so they had to create Linda's whole demise with the breast cancer thing.   How unfortunate.



I'm so mellow; don't mess with me, Ch. 1

I was shocked to find the well recognized link in medical literature between individuals with a slow heart rate and aggression, crime, and violence.

Check these out:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2756992/

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2013/04/anatomy-violence-raine.html

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/363/1503/2543.short

http://johngottman.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/The-relationship-between-heart-rate-reactivity-emotionally-aggressive-behavior-and-general-violence-in-batterers.pdf

Did I ever tell you how slow my resting heart rate is?  Do you really want to know?

I can see you looking away now, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.  Really, I promise I won't hurt you.  I've never actually hurt anyone.  I really don't have that much of a temper unless I'm pushed.  So don't push me.  I don't like it when people push me around.   And they are always doing it.    I absolutely hate when they do that.   So stop it.    I don't want to get upset.

And so on.  

When you think about it it all makes sense.  Think of all the athletes who have been thugs:  Pistorius, OJ, Henderson, Bradley, Tyson.   Even the Unabomber had a heart rate of just 54 beats per minute. 

Like I said, I'm not telling what mine is on a slow day:-) 

But I will say that you probably thought I was a pain in the ass because of something my parents did to me when I was young.  But no---I've been hardwired to be a dickhead since I was born.  I would have a heart of gold, but alas, it beats too slow, so if you don't watch your step, I'm going to beat on you--just like a brat!

The Bespectacled Spectale, Ch. 1

Well, in France you have a society of "the Spectacle."   I think we all from around these hear parts are a bit too myopic to understand what is going on.  Maybe we should put on our glasses and watch a movie.

So lets start with the movie "Call it Sleep"

See its explained to little old me that "the Spectacle" refers to modern culture and the media.   Media culture is always trying to convince us that its problems represent the end of the world--as a way to further increase its powerful grip on us.

Here is what the narrator of "Call it Sleep" recounts.   Of course, this may not be entirely accurate.  See, in addition to myopic, I am a wee hard of hearing:

"Even as the Spectacle increasingly manifests the toxic basis of its own existence, it continues to create new conditions which further insult and assault the Spectator.  The Spectator is forced to speak of this sorry state of affairs which it attributes to various marginal factors.   For example:  criminals, unforeseeable environmental mishaps, the occasional incompetent official, assorted lunatic dictators.  And not surprisingly, the Spectacle has learned to exploit its own decomposition.

The Spectacle terrorizes whole populations with images of impending cataclysm, which it maintains will only be avoided by greater adherence to power.  

In all of this, the Spectator's approval is essential.   Today we find him busily acclimatizing himself to the horror that he finds all around.   Like slaves have always done, the spectator finds ways to rationalize his own punishment, he discovers commodities which insulate him from his own misery--even as he poisons world views which justify totalitarianism--even as they stupefy him.  Occupations which glory sacrifice--even as they mutilate his mind and body.   The more the Spectator acquiesces more abusive power is thrown on him.  New horrors are creating pointing the way to the ultimate yet unrealizable dream of power. 

The Spectacle is the direct heir of philosophy.   It seeks to rationalize all life to render it controllable by power.   It its struggle bureaucracy is the pragmatic organizational arm, and science its front.  The unification of these two aspects of science and information is total control."

In some ways I don't doubt the far reaching control of the Spectacle, of mass media, of images and ideas.  All you have to do is watch an evening of FOX News or MSNBC and you will hear on a nightly basis the prognosis of doom.   But its not like there is a great deal of social unrest in this county.   Most people would not even think about it--even all the Occupiers have all gone home.  Most have too much at stake, too much in play.   What other system is there?  What is the alternative?   What must be done?

A day in Hollywood/A night in the Ukraine.   The Uge goes to a retirement party and helps and old friend's relative maybe get a job.   The uge goes to a fundraiser for a dying woman and listens to music.  The uge rides a metric century.  The uge continues to drink too much wine, waiting for it all to run out.