I Am A Caffiend!

I really like coffee, alot! I don't adulterate my coffee either. I know people that claim they like coffee but, what they drink is some kind of syrupy sweet tan milk product with a vague coffee flavor. Coffee is an acquired taste. Nobody was born craving coffee, it takes discipline! Real coffee is a dark brown liquid with an adult flavor not some sweet kiddie drink.

What happened to percolators? Does anybody remember them? I decided to buy a stove top percolator. I figured I had time to actually percolate my coffee. I decided to buy a cheap aluminum percolator I could set on top of the stove. I went to the grocery store, nada! I went to Walgreen's, zilch! I went to Target, null and void! I actually went to Walmart and they didn't have any percolators either! This was a Super-Walmart too. Ace Hardware had a camping percolator, the kind you use on a campfire for Chrisakes! I felt like I was asking for a buggy whip.

I think I could buy a percolator online. It would probably be manufactured in India. Somehow it just seems crazy to go online in order satisfy some bizarre retro tech impulse for genuine percolated coffee. But then again I am blogging about it.

One day I found an online store that sells old fashioned candy. Not homemade candy, just brands and flavors that haven't been popular since the Eisenhower Administration. That is so weird because who would buy it? Nobody that ever ate the stuff shops online and nobody online ever heard of this crap. Well there is me of course. I mean it's tempting but I remember how bad Necco Wafers really were and I only buy stuff for my daughter online.

Maybe I will look for a percolator on the net. Right now I'm going to load up the Mr. Coffee dripolator and drink some manly coffee in a manly way out of a manly mug! Well actually I am going to drink it out of one these cups I hand decorated. That doesn't sound to manly does it?







Russell

Cartoon Physics

I think this may be my first incarnation. I just don't seem to have the hang of it. Have you ever gotten some of that Ikea furniture and somehow lost the directions? There you were with all this one sided veneer particle board, assorted bolts, some unidentifiable slotted metal cylinders, an odd number of tiny wooden dowels, and some kind of pygmy wrench. Remember how lost and confused you felt? I don't feel that way all the time, sometimes I am in denial. That's fun! But then reality yanks the floor out from under me. It's like cartoon physics.

I believe in cartoon physics. Cartoon physics is so much more relate-able than are quantum physics or relativity. Einstein and Schrodinger had nothing on Tex Avery! Schrodinger and Einstein had some good ideas I guess but they didn't know how to defy gravity! Tex Avery understood how to do it. It's the first law of cartoon physics. You can in fact walk on air as long as you don't look down! That's where I go wrong every time. I just can't help looking down, and there I am standing on nothing!

Life is a pop quiz in a subject I didn't know I was taking this semester. I'm here doing improvisation because I have the wrong script! That's how I feel when I pay attention. Fortunately I rarely pay attention. Nearly all the time I am blithely strolling along on thin air. Only occasionally does some shiny bit of reality distract me. Then I realize how unprepared I am. It's damn uncomfortable!

There are those people who always seem to have it together. Those people that always say the right thing. Those people who seem to have it all figured out. I am probably being petty but I like to believe those people are fakes.




Russell

Romney's Song

I was irritated by Mitt Romney's craven politically motivated comments regarding the attacks on our embassy and our president. So I wrote a song. It's to the tune of "Wake Up Little Suzy" by the Everly Brothers. It's called "Shut Up Mitt Romney." Here it is;

Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!
Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!

You're completely full of shit!
You're such a stupid git!

You opened your mouth!
And the bull came out!

And that bull is full of shit!

Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!
Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!

You're such a stupid ass!
You really have no class!

You're campaign went south!
So you opened your mouth!

And you really showed your ass!

Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!
Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!

Why don't you just shut up?!



Russell

My Dharma

I've been trying to enlarge my spiritual life. Some times I am not even sure what that means. Here is the deal, I have found that I sometimes act like a jerk. Actually it may not be an act! Whatever! is the reality I want to change it. I want to be a much better person than I am. I have tried on my own for years but never really seemed to get anywhere. A lot of people have suggested asking a god of my understanding (they said God as if it was somebody's name but I know it's not) for help. This is tough to do when you have no god of your understanding. I have always figured any god I could understand wouldn't really be anything like a real god. If I understand it, it is not God, in other words. So you see that makes me pretty much an agnostic. It sucks, I want to be a better person, but consistently fail on my own. I can ask a god I understand to help me but I do not have one. And I know that if I did have one it would not really be God! So there!

I used to say I was an atheist. That was based on the fact that I have no theology. I thought atheist was short for a-theological you know, without a theology an a-theist. I am definitely not a theist. Apparently being non theist is not being atheist, who knew? I sure as hell didn't! Oh that's something else I do not believe in either, hell. Hell, from my infidel viewpoint, seems more important to most true believers than heaven. They seem to dwell on it more. The Devil seems pretty popular with the true believers too. (That's probably not a nice thing to say but, damn it it's true!) I have to admit I do admire Lucifer as portrayed in Milton's "Paradise Lost." God has devastated the rebel angels and Lucifer is literally flat on his back in a lake of fire (I hate it when that happens!) but instead of whining and crying he defiantly states, "better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven!" Man what a stud! I digress, enough sympathy for the Devil, that's not the main thing. The thing is how theology gets so complicated. A lot of these Christians (maybe Jews too) are not monotheists they really have two gods, God and the Devil, and they believe in both. I definitely do not believe in the Devil. I am iffy about God.

I turned non believer as a child. I asked for evidence and of course there is none so I quit believing in God. I got interested in spiritual matters after trying LSD. I had a buddy who was into Alan Watts (a translator of eastern spiritual traditions for westerners) and I read "The Book" by Alan Watts, it was awesome! I really got turned on to Zen concepts. (Zen practice not so much!) These eastern traditions seemed more organic, they have spirituality inhabiting everything. Western traditions seem to posit two planes one is the sacred plane, the other one, this plane we live on, is profane. Eastern traditions seem to posit only one plane, this one, which is either sacred or profane depending on your level of awareness. I like the eastern (as I see it) paradigm. The thing is this viewpoint does not include the supernatural. There is no separate reality where God the creator lives. There is just reality and it's either holy or not depending on how you see it. Sometimes I see it holy and those times God is everything, a lot of the time I don't, and these times God is nothing.

It must be so comforting to "know" that the almighty creator has your back 24, seven and that he loves you and all that sort of stuff. I tell you though and it is true, there is no act of faith more profound than praying to a god you doubt even exists! I am not bragging! I think really believing is a mental luxury I will never get to experience and in a way, I am kind of jealous I guess.

The reason I decided to expand my spiritual life was not the pursuit of mental luxury. It is because it seems to help me act like a better person than I naturally am. So I started attending and reading "A Course In Miracles." Now I won't even touch the premise of the course, it's quite bizarre. I don't care about that since I just want the karma not the dogma. Let the karma run over the dogma as they say. So there I was reading the text which is written in very dense logical extrapolations which are deliberate mind benders and I start wondering if the authors were on LSD when they wrote it. The sentences sounded like the stuff people say when they are using psychedelics for philosophical purposes and they're tripping their brains out! Spirituality is tough for guys like me.



Russell

Quit Being A Loser

The stuff that we think is important isn't and the stuff we take for granted or even ignore is all that actually matters. If I just listed these it might come off as insipid or sanctimonious and I hate insipid and sanctimonious so I won't do that. A bunch of years ago we used to play cards with friends. This was back when I was married. I tend toward competitiveness and I always wanted to win. Actually I got obsessed with winning. I understand simple games and can make myself recall which cards have been played. I would concentrate on who had played which cards and did my best to be a fierce competitor. When my partner made an error in play or things just went wrong due to erratic play by another I got pissed! To me the point of playing was to win and the seeming incompetence of others ruined the game. The truth of course was that I ruined the game!

I thought the point of the game was to win! I was wrong of course. The point of the game was to enjoy the company of my ex and our friends! When I was a kid I got really upset when my older sister beat me at Monopoly! I was sure she cheated (I was probably right!) and it was totally frustrating to play against her, as I, being honest, had no chance. At age six I probably couldn't understand that the real objective of the game was not bankrupting my cheating sister but enjoying her company. I cannot blame my six-year-old self for this sort of confusion. The same sort of confusion is not limited to games. It seems to me this sort of confusion is pervasive and shows up in most areas of our lives. At one time it may have been mostly an American phenomenon but nowadays the rat race has gone global.

There is a certain cynical satisfaction in seeing billions of people worldwide exchanging any prospect of true happiness for the pursuit of happiness. I remember as a teen my dad once telling me that he earned a salary and owned a house in order to give us a good life. He said he would be fine living in a cabin and fishing all day. My response of course was we should do that, live in a cabin and fish all day. He told me I needed to grow up. The truth is circumstances whether they be a suburban tract house or a cabin in the woods are ultimately irrelevant! Now I do like clean sheets and comfortable shoes. I don't want to be exploited or mistreated. The point is, mistreaters and exploiters do that shit in order to win! They are bad sports, they are cheating at Monopoly or throwing the board in the air and accusing others of cheating, they are counting cards and missing the point of playing in the first place. The only real joy comes from how well you play with others.

Does this mean we should be insipid and sanctimonious? Hell no! Who enjoys any game that doesn't involve any challenge at all? Adults don't play Candy Land with other adults, it's a game for small children and no adult dreams of beating the shit out of their kid at Candy Land. Competition is good when it's fair and friendly but the win at any cost credo is really for losers. Fair play on a level playing field with the goal of appreciating and enjoying other players is the only way to win at life, in other words to be happy. Until we come around to realizing this simple truth we will remain victims and bullies, neither of whom is happy, both of whom are losers.

The good news is, all we need to do in order to bring about true happiness, is recognize what we really want and need. Nobody can prevent you from finding happiness in the pleasure of others and working toward that end.



Russell

The Denny's Test For Politicians

I can't decide if the political campaign season is too dirty or not nearly dirty enough. I didn't mind Joe Biden's remarks about Mitt Romney wanting to "put y'all back in chains." I did mind the official explanation that it was just an innocent gaff, that even though the audience was mostly African American it was not a reference to slavery. I figure that if you reference slavery you should own it. They should have said, "Romney has a secret plan to re-institute slavery" or, "Romney is going to essentially re-institute slavery" or at least, "y'all going to be virtual slaves!" If you say something mean it! And then Romney starts joking around about birth certificates but says he didn't mean anything by it. That's pretty chicken too! He should have just said what he meant like, "President Obama is in fact a bastard!" or, "who knows where this bastard in the White House comes from?"

The Republicans call Obama a socialist, I guess that's pretty negative. Then again Helen Keller was a socialist. They should just say he is the son of Joseph Stalin, that would play into the birther thing too. Democrats could say that not only did Romney strap the family pets to the roof his station wagon he tied their black servants up there too! We could really get this campaign stuff going maybe. It is too bad that Newt Gingrich is out because the Democrats could start their own birther issue by suggesting he is the bastard son of the Michelin Man! Sorry about that but it is hard to come up with really entertaining insults about two such colorless candidates as Obama and Romney (color as in personality not race).

How did we manage to select such drab candidates. Maybe they are both actually genetic experiments. Some mad scientist was trying to come up with the perfect candidate. Maybe they identified a gene associated with personality and managed to eliminate it. Personalities are offensive but the lack of a personality can also be disconcerting. They say that we don't just vote with our heads (IE. for the candidate that is most likely to do things which will benefit us) but also with our hearts (IE. for the candidate we might actually want to hang out with). Hmm... would I rather hang out with Romney or Obama? I suppose I would choose Obama since I can't imagine hanging out with anyone who reminds of Romney. But then again I don't think Obama would be that much fun either.

I might like hanging out with Joe Biden, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Ralph Nader and maybe Sarah Palin. I know it sounds crazy but imagine you're having coffee at Denny's, (a place which requires interesting company to be tolerated) who would you want to be there? Sitting listening to Obama and Romney would be so boring I'd probably turn suicidal! But listening Joe Biden and Ron Paul giving Sarah Palin a hard time for not knowing anything at all might be fun. Of course the truth is I might not want to hang with politicians at all but if I had to hang with politicians I would like to hang out with interesting ones (or at least entertaining ones).

So maybe Mitt and Barack can duke it out over who's least boring. Mitt could say that Obama is so boring that nobody bothered recording his birth. Barack could say Romney is so dull that his dog wouldn't even ride with him, preferring to be strapped precariously to the car's roof. The Democrats could say that even though the last four years have been boring that electing Romney would actually induce a political coma. Republicans could say that the last 12 years of Obama... what it's only four? It certainly has seemed like 12! How long was Gerald Ford the President? Too long! It's the same with either of these guys.




Russell

Is Truth Dead?

So everybody is upset about Tod Akin's ignoramus remarks about what he called legitimate rape cases. The politicians are embarrassed and pretty much everyone else is awe struck by his shocking stupidity. But should we be? I don't think so. Our culture has been anti intellectual for decades. Now it has become anti intelligence. We have become so stupid that we don't even understand the idea of facts. We think there are just competing beliefs and any one of them is as valid as any other.

Today there is something called "creation science" or "intelligent design" and people want it taught as a science! What has happened? How did we get so stupid? It's not the fault of the religious fundamentalist nut jobs. They have always been there. We used to ignore them the way you ignore your wack-job uncle or your crazy aunt who routinely channels her dead cat fluffy. Now as a culture we have decided that channeling dead cats is a valid scientific endeavor. A lot of this is the result of politically avaricious exploitation of these benighted boobs. And some of it is just a craven sort of codependency. We are so afraid of offending people! Now don't get me wrong I'm not in favor of rudeness. But shit, people need to know they are dumb-asses, when they are trying to indoctrinate others into some dumb-ass "theory."

I was watching another episode of "Ancient Aliens" on the History Channel (guilty pleasure). There is this crazy guy on there that refers to himself as an "ancient alien theorist!" I mean it's funny but these people use the word  theory and theorist when they should use the words fantasy and crackpot! I cracked up when this bizarre individual in an ascot and and a purple suit with his hair combed straight up, started talking about some UFOs which had been "breaking every single law of physics." How do you break every law of physics? Once it's broken is it still a law? These guys obviously do not know anything about physics or science or archaeology. At least one may be on the cutting edge of fashion! But not science.

People lump religious mythology and wacko pseudo-science baloney in with physics, chemistry and biology and give them all equal validity. Idiots believe they can dismiss evolution because it is a theory just like ancient aliens or creationism. I wonder what keeps them on the planet, after all gravity is just another theory! It is funny until these fools gain political sway, then it's dangerous. Welcome to the new dark ages!

I work as a counselor and I'm sorry but it's more art than science. Nowadays they have something new in social "sciences" it's called "evidence based practices." It's our way of pretending to be a science. It's based in  politics. Politicians want to fund scientific counseling. So some professor conducts an experiment and has evidence his or her methodology is effective. People set out to carry out the same methodology in their practices because politicians require them to conduct evidence based practice. When it doesn't work out the practitioner is held at fault for failing to adhere closely enough to the methodology. That's not science! When physicists were unable to achieve cold fusion by following the methodology of some researchers claiming to have achieved cold fusion they were not criticized! The researchers retracted their claims they admitted their error! That's science!

Today science and the scientific method are beyond most people's comprehension, there are no facts, everything is just a matter of opinion and all opinions are to be considered equal. I like yoga but I don't think it has much to do with quantum mechanics but I'm sure some cosmically conscious guru can explain how they are essentially the same. Nowadays children are forced to learn lies like creationism because craven politicians lust after the money and votes of insecure true believers with minds of small dogs. Government funded counseling centers carry out so-called evidence based practices and manipulate their outcomes to conform with expected results rather than relying on the skill of clinicians.

The truth is dead! I for one mourn it's passing.





Russell