Far Flung Philosophies

The ancient Romans were not totally off base in their practice of crucifixion. People are reasonably prejudiced against the practice, since popular perceptions place it in the 'misdeeds' category, but that stems from a complex case of crucifixion.  In it's essence, it was a practical deterant to vandalism.

The self evident relationship between misconduct and consequences is one thing lacking in modern American capital punishment.  Our adversarial justice system, grown by greed and misguided hope, allows a enough time from murder conviction to execution to raise a family and buy a brand new trailer.  If we're to go that long, we might as well try forgiving the son of a bitch.  Half the time, these creeps drop dead from substance abuse faster than they could reach the electric chair at Sing Sing.  Why not skip incarceration altogether, and hope the old fella' will decide on his own to be nice?  Or, we could could speed up the process of execution.

Am I really this much of grim reaper?  Hecks no.   The point is that capital punishment should either do its job, or face corporate down-sizing.  The whole criminal justice system needs a good corporate down sizing.  If capital punishment was the best way to eliminate the most dangerous people, this writer might quietly continue discussing the matter among responsible, law abiding mini-philosophers.  Not unlike the practice of crucifixion, a quickie death by firing squad works wonders.  Ask Norway.   They killed the traitorous Vidkun Quisling by firing squad, quicker than snot in February, and you don't hear too much any more about quislings in Norway.

Always Open For Business

Okay.  I'm more or less at liberty, and you need a Rasputin.   Didn't think I'd pull this kind of stunt, did ya'?  Ayn Rand might have liked this rant.

There are these assholes, in the corporate world, private and public, in twitty NGOs, and even in the few remaining tech companies that still have cash to waste on their retarded friends.  They are called 'consultants,' and they all do something putatively miraculous for your organization.   Most are unemployed executives who founded a consulting firm.  Some of them teach you how to run your premises.  Some are completely useless jack offs.  But a guru is a lone wolf with the gift for instruction.   I'm one of these lone horse conversants.

For a set fee, I can get the gunk out of your ontology.   Not a bad slogan.

Agenda time

Hurt?  You want to know if I'm hurt?  It's as if a punk band from central Pennsylvania was doing a version of Marvin Hamlisch's lovely song, 'Memories.'  I'm dying, here.

Most of the time I spent at a nameless state university is 'too painful to remember,' such as the hours of boredom, but the soggy, colorless water paints that still run together in memory are still warm, even if Marvin went cold on us.  It was the most racist hellhole I've ever spent a few years dealing with on a daily basis.  At the end of the worst unpleasantness, I filed an affirmative action complaint, in house, and it was mishandled.  Our affirmative action officer was negligent, and all the faculty who know full well that I had faced an extreme hostile and discriminatory environment clammed up, fearful of retaliation, in spite them having both tenure and a union to protect their supposed free speech.

One of the mini-agendas, and this one is small, like a mouse's midget cousin, is to invalidate the statutes of limitation that protect colleges and other institution from action against their institutionalized bigotry.  Though there may have been a time frame in which I could have taken further action, the situation was exceptional for sheer ability to prevail against the victim.  Penniless undergrads cant' pay lawyers to fight their cases, so it is reasonable that statutes of limitation be lifted, so to allow people to recover damages long after the fact.  A college can be a real slimy bastard.   This one was.  Hint, it's in the Western corner of Pennsylvania, where racism has been alive a well forever.

Theology

There are a lot of religious fundamentalists in Pennsylvania.  In some communities, you can be stoned to death for saying "Osmond Brothers."

There are snake handling cults.  Rattle snakes.  Water mocassins.  Venomous rubber snakes they sell in tourist traps near Miami.  These zealots go into a frenzy and dance around, reciting bullshit real loud.  Sometimes they get bit.  Usually they just swell up and scream to the music.

Polygamy.  There are whole towns made up of inbred polygamists.   This adds up. Towns get bigger.   These are horny ridge runners.  When not posing in front of the tractor with their pitch forks, they are engaged in an orgy.

Religious freedom.   All for it.

Bad Teeth, Bad Luck

What can it mean when someone has an un-ingratiating smile?  It means he/she isn't perceived as swimmingly as folks who smile picture perfect enamel coated resin choppers, all equally white as sunshine.  There is inequality.  Aesthetic variety.  A motherfucker.

Lovely looking people with perfect teeth are worth a whole lot more to the US than buck toothed ragamuffins from West Virginia.  People with great hair earn a pentillion times more money than doddering chrome domes.  A scum bag with great skin will sell more Cadillacs than will some crater faced, zit factory with halo, white wings and long scepter with a star at the end.  Twinkling, for fuck sake.   People value beauty, and no one I know of forgives ugly for very long.

This can mean 'no smiling,' one of those oppressive rules that turn up in armies, orphanages and grade schools.  Or at the office, or when walking, at any age at all, one to a low three digits, down the street you live on.  It's a cruel inversion to look uglier smiling than when keeping a straight face.   Might say the problem is emotionally crippling, but that would indicate greater sensitivity than is wise to pony forth in this slummy district.   Bad teeth are ugly.  People are hostile and discriminatory towards the condition, in the same way as toward women, minorities, and people with weird medical conditions too ugly to go further warbling about.

Nostalgia, as it applies to people's sense of entitlement

A way long time ago, in the 1970s, there lived a television series called Marcus Welby, M.D.

Played by actor Robert Young, the character was wondrously successful, having planted within it the word "well," which suggests that this guy is more healing than just any scumbag general practitioner. This guy is no quack. He cared a great deal about his patients. And this is where the problem cropped up in the real world.

There was an article in Time magazine explaining how people coast-to-coast were complaining about their general practitioners. People felt that they were entitled to the sort of relationship Dr. Welby's patients had with their general practitioner, and with the nurse, who on the show was played by Helena Verdugo.     The nurses most people got  were played by anyone at all, in a real doctor's office, by a real nurse, with whom patients are not entitled to a personal relationship anymore they are entitled to play golf with  Marcus Welby, Robert Young, or their real general practitioner.

People go see the doctor when they are sick (sick sick.) There is no such thing as being entitled to a personal relationship prescribed by the television.  People generate their senses of entitlement from what they see and hear.  And get riled when bereft of what they now feel they should have had all along.

 Not for nothing, the point in diddling the past is to recognize that  any time at all, such as in the present, the same, similar, or hybrid stupidity may be at work. It is a person's duty in life see the stupid before it creeps up on him or her.  Kill your inner sense of entitlement, and you and everyone else will suffer less interpersonal grief.   Less road rage.  Fewer spouses rushed to the emergency room.  People aren't stock characters you can depend on to tickle your stick.  Most important, for now, don't let the media  make a schmuck out of you.

Rich Overhearing At The Pizza Joint Downtown

Best line of the day:  Why do you care what happens in Turkey?  This is Pittsburgh.

Yours truly at a crappy Formica table crunching pizza, sweating like Ma Rainey, hearing what's said, the cashier/server asked the universal of someone or other, don't care who, but I heard something to suggest family 'over there' and I would have loved to find out the whole package of people and places.   I got a few specks and shards.  I think the guy who cared about Turkey needed to get back to work on pizza, and I lost radio contact with the gent.  

And then the trombones and trumpets that only whisperers hear  presented their impromptu clarions and sound boffs.   The cashier who raised the most important question of the century, the one people pay gurus and institutions for, turned chatter to her work mate, and two young working women talked about a recent birth.  Not only did the broad toss out enlightenment for free, she had dropped the kid she had been carrying for my past nine months of eating pizza a few times a week there.  Good pizza.  Good to hear of a successful birth, though yours truly has  a scant gustatory relationship of getting pizza, choking it down, and fucking off. A nicer fucker might say it speaks to the family of man/woman/universe.   Even a total ass fuck might agree.   Costs nothing to live in the present, and all Bhudists should give a whistling locomotive on that.  The  Pizza Broad deserves greater honors than Bhuda, because she's here, and he might as well be in Turkey.  Case, of enlightenment, closed.

The Pizza Broad delivered

the most important message in human history, to live in the present and to work with what is here. I overheard some particulars about the zip to the hospital, leaving against medical advice, getting bitched at by a nurse, and sounds like the kid's just fine. Medical services can be brusque in the land of soda cups and cig wrappers in the weeds. The elements that raise respect in guys, for women, were gushing out of the bev dispenser. I fizzed like a soft drink for the human spirit. The pizza was grand as always. 

As intimated, and...

.....it was none of my fucking business from moment one, I'd noticed the progress of the Pizza Broad's pregnancy when folding my slice with pepperoni. Passing curiosity can be a little bastard, in a goofy man's mind, and some of it got answered, along with the need for presence. I overheard that it was her boy friend's kid as well as hers. This brought me greater schmuckoid benedictions from the hot pre-summer sun. Marriage is the leading cause of devitalization. And a bastard has greater vitality than some snotty middle class prick born into the married middle class. I went to high school. I still hate it. Out of wedlock is out of the institution of marriage, which jibes lovely with my dislike for institutions. This was a great day on which to get a slice of pizza, with pepperoni.   I can't help adoring women who spite institutions.