Open Thread 16 JAN 18 -- new moon
Lots of energy in the build-up to a new moon. A time for a re-gathering of forces to work in y(our) favor. Well met and well parted.
Wow, can you dig the mess our blundering masters have created for us? Yeah, suck it up, peons. The masters call the tunes, we just pay for it. With our blood, sweat and tears. The rulers are whistling yankee doodle all the way to the banks. Didn't vote for that? Hey, that's the only chip you got to play in this farce democracy game. Funny how it doesn't count for much. But, no worries. Dept. of Home Land Security is going to protect your vote from the scary ruskies. Nutty butters.
The present age is demented. It is possessed by a sense of dislocation, a loss of personal identity, an alternating sentimentality and rage which, in an individual patient, could be characterized as dementia. Walker Percy
Kinda gets my goat...
In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished. Walker Percy
BST spinning wheels
Seems the bandwidths are getting more restricted lately. It's become harder to get alternate view points across. Won't be long before sites like these are choked down as well? Need to find other ways to share our thoughts and observations. The web police have found the algorithms to stifle free speech on the net and in the tubes. Now the "authorities" have decided it is in "our" best interest to include microchips in medications. Just for our 'safety'. In case we miss a dose of the soma drug.
Our means of communication on this and other pertinent issues is being throttled down. At first, it seems like a slow down. Then it becomes a speed limit. Next is a STOP sign, for national security reasons, ya know (wink, wink).
Enough of my worries. I am compelled to cease hosting this Tuesday Open Thread party, due to all the whales leaving the planet, or some such. Hopefully JtC has found another volunteer for the up- coming episodes. Will still be around when I can. It's been fun and enlightening. Carry on... Peace
Comments
QMS yeah I'm feeling the New Years Blues too.
I had a 'back and forth' here yesterday with a couple members who were defending Trump. IMO they are here to 'Normalize Trump' with Faux News propaganda talking points. Oh well, if I have to be "civil" to aholes who are propping up President #Shithole, I guess I need to throttle back myself.
2018, the Year of Peaceful Non-Compliance. (We need ideas. Who's got some?)
I like the whale pic you used to close the essay. For folks who haven't seen it yet, here's the youtube video of the whale that saved the lady diver from a tiger shark by gently nudging her back to her boat. At one point it lifted her out of the water with its fin. So cool.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
We seem to have done our actions on Wells Fargo
Or they are screwing citizens by closing many branches.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
That's good to hear.
It still amazes me how the MSM reports on Wells Fargo like it is a reputable business. Glad to see people are voting with their wallets.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
Credexit
" We need ideas, who's got some".
Individually, it is the most powerful action we can take. Stop borrowing from the bastards. Don't use your credit card, pay in cash. If fact, cut up your cards.
Save, save, save. But not in a bank, in a credit union, but under your mattress is best.
If you can't do this, at least stop buying from corporations. Shop local. Keep your cash local, greasing your local economy.
Of course, the usual reduce, repair, repurpose, or recycle everything.
And you don't need anyone to help you do these things. It's all individual
But in aggregate, crushingly effective.
IMHO.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
All Great Ideas
Thanks.
I think I practice most of these to a degree already. I hate throwing stuff out if I can duct tape or superglue it back to working order.
I wonder if there is a hashtag that represents this movement.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
I need to practice a few more of these myself.
I've been working at reduce, reuse, recycle for the better part of the last 15 years, and have just committed to sewing my own clothing back together when it rips (lol). I still have two credit cards and a debit card, and would like to get rid of the one that isn't from my credit union. And I would love to start stuffing what little cash I can manage to save (which is rare) under the mattress.
Germane to that: I saw a story recently (unfortunately can't find it right now) covering the fact that businesses are trying to outlaw cash transactions. Gee, I wonder why that is?
ban cash
I don't know why, but I strongly suspect that the fear of this is why cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are doing as well as they are.
There will always be cash. The only question is what will constitute it, and therefore who creates it to begin with.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Here to normalize Trump
You noticed that too, huh?
Sigh.
Thank you for your "service" time, QMS
You have had some great posts. I have appreciated them.
Another day of snow is perhaps better than brutal windchill temps and none. This seems to be my year for testing of my mettle. My car is now 900' downhill on my driveway, stuck in an ice hole due to a culvert flood. That culvert was supposed to be replaced in 2017, but my plow guy did not get the time. Big $$$ expenditures were due on the driveway; I hate to compile cumulative cost. We wanted to be secluded. I still do, but it gets harder as an older single female. 4-6" of new snow today. And it's still January! February is the bad month here historically.
Us natives seem more restless than I can recall. Distill that into anger at the 1%.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
The good news is that temps will warm into the 40s
by Friday here in the North East. Hopefully you have food to last til then. Hang in there.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
Food is no problem
but frozen. Any latuca product I won't eat.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
latuca?
latuca?
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Lettuce
Did I get that right?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
"Snowed-in" in Texas
That only means an inch of snow and ice, but there is no way to get it off the roads, so no school today. Whoo hoo.
This means I had time to enjoy the reading and all of the videos. Goat video - so hilarious I watched it several times. Very nice arrangement of Gymnopedie - loved the counterpoint. And one of my favorite songs when I was a kid. "Spinning Wheel."
And the whale video was just great.
I have enjoyed all of your OTs so much! Thank you!
Stay warm all.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Oh noooooo! Spinning Wheel...
Years ago we (kids, ex, and myself) liived next to some people who liked to impress the neighborhood with all their expensive ‘toys’. Huge motor home, new cars every year or two, matching His & Hers motoetcycles, etc. They bought their spoiled rotten only child this fancy-schmancy organ. He was going to be a ‘musician’. World famous. Name in lights. You know, Justim Bieber before Justin Bieber was Justin Bieber. (This kid and Bieber are on the same talent level, which IMO would be zero, zip, zilch, nihil, nada, NONE!)
Anyway, the ONLY piece of music that kid ever ‘learned’ was Spinning Wheel and he SUCKED at playing rhat. No timing, wrong notes, and the **singing** , OMG, the **singing**. The bastids running thr ‘interrogation’ program at Gitmo had NOTHING on this kid. He could and would have had the prisoners iflushing their OWN Korans down the proverbial poop chute faster than you can say Mohammed. It was amazing. And he played that thing constantly. Everyday. Starting early in the morning. And the organ was by a window facing our house. Even the dog started getting this strange, other-worldly look on his face he heard the words “What goes up, must come down...• [1].
I finally snapped one day and told Karen (his crazy mother who was a butcher) to get the kid some lessons or else the whole neighborhood was going to round up all it’s pitchforks and torches and we were going to have to do an ‘intervention’ before everyone lost their hearing AND their minds. That was when she told me he WAS taking lessons. At that point there was nothing left but to just say but “WTF ARE YOU PAYING FOR???
They moved the damn organ to their basement or somewhere. You would still occasionally hear the kid pounding thosr dreaded opening notes before belting out “What goes up...” but no where as often or as loud.
[1]. Songwriters: David Clayton-Thomas
Spinning Wheel lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Hadn’t thought about that in years. But then again hadn’t heard that song in years. For good reason. And I think it triggers something...
EDIT: typos, of course
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Thanks for all your contributions QMS. I have enjoyed reading
them! Wondering if anyone had watched this last evening or last year when it came out. Very powerful if you haven't seen it. And the parallels between the Civil Rights era and now are so striking. I was in tears and couldn't sleep very well last night after viewing it. It was on Independent Lens on PBS, entitled "I am not your Negro".
http://www.iamnotyournegrofilm.com/
Whales are awesome aren't they? Thanks for the video.
O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.
Good morning y'all
A cold clear morning here. Trade day was sparse today. We are due an inch of snow this afternoon, and Alabama declares a state of emergency? Whaaaat? We've become knee-jerk idiots I guess.
I suspect your are correct QMS and we are in a downward spiral....
...but we've faced and overcome obstacles before. Greg Palast told an interesting story about MLK's 1960 arrest and the mutual relationship it paved with the Kennedy's.
http://www.gregpalast.com/jfk-saved-mlks-life-won-presidency/#more-14889
To me, our greatest obstacle is our willful ignorance about the immediacy of the climate crisis. We do what we can....and I hope to enjoy a nice afternoon snow with a hot toddy in hand. I hope your's is a good one too!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Thanks for all of the great columns, insights, information
and commentary. You definitely will be missed, and not just on Tuesdays.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
in the
true-life documentary film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, a Probe comes to earth, and starts Wrecking it, because it is looking for whales, and there aren't any. The Kirks have to time-warp to retrieve some whales from before the humans extinguished them. Once this is done, the whales Talk to the Probe, and the Probe stops the Wrecking, and leaves. If the Kirks had not time-warped the whales, the earth
would be Over.
We know from the true-life non-fiction tomes of Douglas Adams that all the dolphins leave the planet, just before it is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. I don't think he says anything about whales.
Yesterday I discovered my pants are all in on a plot to make me buy new ones. Either the lining of the pocket has worn through, or nearly worn through, so that all of the change will fall out, and/or the bottoms of the legs are all frayed and ripped and wino, because when I don't wear boots, I step on them. Why is it one day you have three or four pairs of pants, and the next day they are a rag-heap? I find this irritating. I don't think clothes should wear out. They should be exempt from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Then there wouldn't be this Problem.
Buy only floodwater pants
The problem will solve itself. Gotta go. Have reservation with a restaurant at the end of the universe.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
when they make you
go to the school, and you go in floodwater pants, all the other children laugh and call you names, and you are so forever Seared, that you would sooner cut all of your throats, than ever wear floodwater pants again.
Also, the floodwaters would not solve the problem of the coins dribbling out of the pockets and leaving Hansel and Gretel trails all along the sidewalks, hills, and dales.
WTH is wrong with flood water pants?
I wore them and I was always the 'talk' of my college dorm.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
I look forward to the time I wear "leisure suits" or
sweatsuits only. Getting old does have its benefits! #sweatsuitnation
O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.
if you
wear a leisure suit, you will be seized by an overpowering desire to put on a MAGA hat, and/or go to a disco. They are Infected.
If you wear a sweatsuit, and you are a melanin person, you will be shot by the police.
Yikes! Ok then I'll go with leggings
and tunic tops! But I am under no delusion that will prevent the Brownshirts from shooting me.
O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.
However
If you are a melanin person wearing a leisure suit in a disco, good things happen.
Even non-melanin people can have fun in a disco: although I'm not sure what drapery fashioned into a clown-suit has to do with it.
By the time the hairball
is done with this economy no one will have any coin to put in their pockets.
Again, problem solves itself.
And think of all the BS we have to wade through now. You will learn to love highwater pants.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
i also
carry little stones and such in my pockets. So these will dribble out, even if there are no coins in there.
Floodwaters are better in the music, than on the humans.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYTGK_M5GaU]
Liberals
Oh I think the Reaction to President #Shithole
is more than about one racist comment. It is just one more outrageous straw in an avalanche of straws. Trump is Symbolic Of The Greed And Depravity that has driven this world to endless war and environmental destruction. I think that is why people are finally saying enough with this outcry.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
If that was true
then how come no one is talking about the wars?
That's A Good F'n Question
I've noticed an uptick in military dramas on teevee (The Brave, Seal Team, mini-series on Nat Geo, ...). I guess Mericans got themselves a real taste for blood and war -- the dumb shits.
Of course even if there was an outcry to stop the pointless wars, it ain't gonna happen. B/c congress is bought out by the MIC -- they no longer work for us. Besides, the US is presently not at war (Ha, not a declared war voted on by congress).
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
The revolution will not be televised
A big anti-war movement will have to happen by word of mouth.
I am being phone-harassed by Medicare bots
I answer occasionally. But it's a bot or a robocall. And I did sign up, under duress. Try talking to a bot that gives no possibility of #press 1.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Good morning, QMS ~
All we have is cold and no moisture. Alabama seems to be getting our snow...
Spring semester began today. The kids are back in school (me, included) - May will be here before I know it!
Have a beautiful day, folks!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
One of the best things
about humanity is the inclination to gather together and discuss ideas about art, science, math, politics, etc.. I know this inclination is very often a target for ridicule but I still think it is one of the best and useful things we do.
This exchange of ideas goes all the way back to the ancients and up through the Salons in France and more. Every country/era had their version. Granted, most of these 'clubs' had high barriers to entry and nasty little gatekeepers, but still I find them intriguing when the goal was enlightenment. So while it used to be exclusive and difficult to participate, now, because of the intertubes, the 99% can join.
This new opportunity for discussion is amazing, cataclysmic, earth-shatteringly monumental.
It's also scary, hence the backlash and the insidious efforts to control and manipulate.
So as I read your comment QMS, a bit of panic sets in, since I agree with what you say. It brings to mind Dylan Thomas' poem about dying. But in this context I'm not talking about dying, but the "dying of the light" and there is nothing good about that night. My two cents: "Do not go gentle into that
goodnight".VoteVets.org asks in a survey:
Are you concerned about a nuclear war with North Korea?
1. Very Concerned
2. Mildly Concerned
3. I am unsure
4. Not very concerned
5. Not concerned at all
I want to know why they restricted the question to a nuclear war with North Korea. I am concerned no matter with which country the nuclear missiles would be exchanged.
So, my position is mildly concerned no matter what.
What do you think? Would you answer that survey? I know people here are critical and question the VoteVets organization, but what are you guys and gal not critical about, so ...I do the smart thing and ignore your opinions, oops, nah I didn't say that .../ducking ...
/s
How are you QMS? Thanks for the nice OT. I know how it feels to give up writing an OT or anything other than little comments. I did too. I always feel I don't know enough and feel scared of saying the wrong thing... But my kudos for having done it that long. Thanks.
https://www.euronews.com/live
My thanks also, QMS
You've done a great job and I appreciate it much.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Missing you already, QMS, and joinging everyone
saying thanks for your good work and wonderful insights here on c99.
Good fortune to you and all the best!
I'll join everyone in a Thank You
for all your OT's and comments. It was always nice to see you here.
My most sincere thanks and appreciation goes out
To all of you folks for the encouragement, engagement and enjoyment you have shared. It's both a pleasure and an honor to have made your acquaintance. I look forward to further unravelling the evil web with y'all. Peace.
question everything
hi, QMS! thanks for
all your hard work on the tueday OTs! even though i'm rarely around for the 'early morning' threads, i've always enjoyed reading, and rec'ing yours.
also, very much appreciated the tax info that you gave me. should have word from our finance dude (CFP) by the end of this month, or next, regarding the effect of the recent (so-called) tax reform.
good luck to you. please, don't be a stranger.
Mollie
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."--Lao Tzu
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Thanks QMS
Belated thanks a million for hosting open thread on Tuesdays, I always liked the essays.
I call a new moon the dark moon, like pagans do? It feels like powerful energy to me on a dark moon, same as a full moon. Owooo! Haha on the wolf moon I heard a pack of coyotes yipping and singing out my back window, it was great! Maybe they'll come back on the blue moon. HOPE
The other day I was walking to the credit union and noticed a Black Phoebe trying to stick mud against a building wall, for a nest up high. They are relentless in their mud gathering and splatting. At that moment I felt a dopamine click! JOY
peace