Rite of Passage

If there was one rite of passage among Celtic, Irish, French Canadian ( and many other cultures) today it would be a boy’s first all night out drinking.

Not sure what age it happens to most, like some sort of a Bar Mitzvah not too Kosher, but mine was at 14 IIRC.

We had just met our new half-brothers and our family size had doubled all of a sudden. I went from First to fourth in no time at all to my greatest shock and dismay.

I was so stunned by the news and the secret they had kept from us for so many years, crying over old photos of 'nephews', all of us being ‘officially’ Caissys,
and also the strange strange fact that all other kids parents in our school had wedding anniversaries,
a celebration that surreptitiously  never happened in our house.

So on our first summer together in one of our yearly trips to Gaspé or Gaspésie as we prefer to call it
(Gaspé being a town and Gaspésie a huge peninsula)
we met our new “brothers” as my natural siblings are known to call them.  

I stick religiously to half-brothers myself, a stickler for the details of the facts. 

Now there is a story and we might never ever know now,

that I might not be exactly the prime of my father’s jizz. 

Even my mother says she is not sure and doesn’t know.  

In modern relationship terms “It’s Complicated”.

But technically he is a Rioux. All three of them were somewhat abandoned and ‘placed’ among family members not to the best terms of life I gather. 

Majella, Pierre, and Denis in that order. 1951? 1953? 1954? 

And then I came along , after a 500 miles exodus to the big city because of course you did not leave a husband and three kids in a small Catholic Bastion Village of Quebec in 1955.

Being my father’s first, and being born around Xmas too, I was named after my dead uncle, Sergeant Léo Caissy, dead just a few days or weeks before the end of the war (WW2), buried overseas.  

My dad’s oldest brother, he being the second oldest I believe.  

Well of the boys anyway there was an older sister ma tante Eva beloved by us all.  

Her family brought a lot of interesting stories to the family for sure.  

Then there was mon oncle Albenie, the one who couldn’t shut up during movies to my father’s great dismay and anger.
And some younger uncle who popped up much later in my life, when I was around 12 in fact.  According to his story he had been in college for a while college being hard time in a prison out west for armed robbery.  The baby, son of grandmother’s lover, always at odd with my dad for obvious reasons.  A big mouth and a ladies man, well he had a lot of time to catch up to and he did trust me.

It took me years to find out that Uncle Joe, Grandma’s handy man was handy in more ways that I could ever think as a child.  No wonder the 3 of them rented the last seat in the back at church: my grandmother, my “uncle” Joe, and a very old very frustrated and deaf cuckolded grandfather.

So back to that Summer 1970 now.  Even though I forgot an awful lot of my life I do remember many details of that famous night.  

A nice and big white Ford LTD. 429 cu. in. engine, 4 barrels carburator, convertible, blue top and blue leather inside, automatic with transmission on the floor. 

 
Guess we started drinking at the local pubs the three of us, maybe with a starter at home.  We travelled an awful lot though something like 400 kms? 240 miles? Maybe more even.  We made it to Murdochville at sunrise in the middle of absolutely nowhere at all. Denis doing most of the driving by then since my dad was way too drunk to drive, not that it had ever stopped him thousands of times before and after. That’s what they did then, in fact we managed to kill like six of our family in one shot that way once.  I remember running out of beer in the middle of the night and stopping at a hotel just before they closed, round 3 AM back then and all they could sell us was a case of beer that had been laying on top of a fridge, since they were not supposed to sell beer to take out at all, them were the rules back then too. That beer was a little warmer than what we call tablette let me tell you in fact it was piss hot and absolutely awful but we were way past the caring point anyway.  So we made it back home somehow maybe early afternoon IIRC, and I remember the wonderful feeling for maybe the first time in my life of not giving a single fuck that my mother was very angry at me for the 10 millionth time.

Oh yeah besides the fact we could all have died a thousand times, our only loss was a wheel cap when Denis lost control and made a tête-a- queue, a 180 degrees in a gravel road, in fact most of the roads were lumberjacks roads, long and winding dust filled gravel roads, miles and miles of them.  So look it up one day on Google Earth from Pointe-a-la-Garde, QC to Murdochville, QC and back alive and in one piece.

He was a pretty good driver for a drunk 17 year old. J

R.I.P. Denis Rioux (Caissy?)

P.S. there is a lot of questions as to why my mother went to name my sister, the one after me, Denise, after abandoning a Denis. It was to be a very bad omen for poor Denise.

Buona Fortuna James Eugene Carrey

La gloire est éphémère et tout et tout mais…   

Glory is short lived and all and all but…

I find it sad that Jim Carrey is playing second violin to Steve Carell.

Hell! He is fourth billing, how the mighty have fallen.

I do understand that these fragile fires burn erratically at best
but to me 

Steve Carell doesn't come to the ankle of Jim Carrey
as far as funny genius is concerned.

I do admit I know next to nothing of Carell 

but that is part of the point. 

I don’t think that it is some lame patriotism either,
maybe an attachment to mental sickness at best
or maybe the same initials :)

Obviously Carrey like Kerouac is burning the candle at both ends
and the end cannot be good. 

 
It would seem that the only way for these guys to live forever is to die young.

A prolonged death preceded by oblivion 

and oblivion (Alzheimer’s) 

is never too good, 

like Columbo not KNOWING he was Columbo.

Maybe Comics have a shorter life in general I suppose. 

They burn the fuel faster.

O well maybe Jim will have a comeback or two
if the bipolar daemons are graceful to him.

Buona Fortuna James Eugene Carrey.

What is YOUR perfect world now?

I have a dream, a dream where certain words and ideas have totally disappeared.

A French dream kind of, of REAL liberty, equality, fraternity, a dream in fact where even the word fraternity has changed to something asexual.  

Mind you it is a very childish impossible dream that will never happen but what am I to do on my passage on this earth but to dream of a much better one?

For one thing someone said 

“Dans une société fondée sur le pouvoir de l'argent, il ne peut y avoir de "liberté", réelle et véritable. “

“In a society based on the power of money there cannot be any real and true freedom”

I am still quite impressed by a very short part of French History, an incredible part where humongous changes were made, changes that did not last long alas. Speaking here of the French Revolution Calendar of course and its complex remodelling of society thinking with at its based the dechristianisation of France altogether.

Of course they were going to meet with extremely violent forces foaming at the mouth mostly over their loss of power really when all is said and done. But the IDEA, the music, of it all was blissful for a short time.  No more of this 7 and 12 business and all down to a decimal system in a decimal world. 

The idea that each day was related to a complex vocabulary of Nature and that Reason was a god for a short moment leaves me with a sighing melancholia.

We have to confess that our million rituals, most of them somewhat barbaric, are nothing short of emotional mindless madness:  based on nothing but mass hysteria really.

Even a utopian island could not exist for very long I am afraid in this mass media society we have created: no more Robinsons & Fridays, no place to hide anymore.

Not even sure how it would function really, can’t think of a perfect world with man in it as man is so imperfect and such a failure.

Man can only dream of a perfect world, usually one to come, and SOMEWHERE ELSE, some OTHER time or dimension of time even.

A John Lennon imaginary world kind of, with no religion, no countries, nothing to die for, where people have no history really since happy people we all know have no history. No religion meaning no sacrifice, no ritual, no liturgy, no myth, and no delusions.

This is probably why it is much easier to write a dystopia, happiness is hard to dramatize as Fellowes says.

What would one read about now? Let’s face it, a Penelope is utterly boring and won’t appeal to Jane Austen or Oscar Wilde or Shakespeare.  You cannot write a movie about Penelope.

Imagine a world with no bullying, no hazing, no lynching, and no mob hysteria now? How rational! How BORING. Fuck no Jackass either! L

A world where everyone is rational, loves and respects each other, no one is cunning or deceitful or even deluded.  You can leave your door unlocked and sleep in the middle of the park at night.  Everyone is free to love whomever he/she wants, everybody minds their own business (Fuck Forbid) Papers have nothing to write really.  We really live in the pursuit of happiness happy with little and no one is lacking anything or starving. No one is filthy rich either of course.  Eloi WITHOUT the Morlocks.  Books and Music for free at every corner.  Epicurian moderate feasts with medicine to compensate. Everyone dies of old age peacefully in his/her sleep.

None of this need to be Stoic or resilient in anything.

Ah dreaming is so pleasant.

What else? A controlled population of course with everyone “allotted his lot”, A house, a bed and enough food for all.

No hatred, no gossip, no bogans or chavs or any of these low economical crime infested convict violent behaviour areas.  Epicurians with  social responsibilities.

Words like RESPECT and CONSIDERATION re-established as priorities number one in our school curriculum.  Free Schools that teach you to think for yourself.

No child is mistreated or even laughed at. 

Of course no war and not a single need for any kind of weapon.

It would seem to me also that without going fanatical PETA here or even vegan it might be a necessity to avoid meat as blood spilling seems to only need to more blood spilling.

It seems to me that a free Commensal would be Epicurian enough and answer to all tastes. 

Commensal is at least or was a vegetarian franchise where food is sold by the gram. One would be amazed at the expensive costs of something that is 90% heavy water now J

Trying to create a balanced ‘perfect’ world now also needs to ELIMINATE all form of activism/fanaticism of all kind.  Because let’s face it many are violent freaks.

One of them freak once claimed that we could lodge the whole population of the world in Texas and even though I doubted his claim at first it seems that he might have been right mathematically after all as the population  density would certainly not be as high many cities in the world.

So imagine now everyone with his little white picket fence house in the prairie, with his 2.2 children and a happy well-respected EQUAL wife, maybe not in Texas but somewhere with a minimum of 18 and a maximum of 25 all year round with rain only at night, sunny days and a nice breeze otherwise.  Maybe everyone producing enough food even for his family and a little extra. No need for lawyers.  Free doctors and specialists at all time. Life as priority number one at all cost.  Meaning being no poor or rich that one needing a billion dollar procedure to extend the length and quality of his life can have it no questions asked with no stressful waiting time.

We all know by now that I am in the IMPOSSIBLE conjecture realm and therefore economical conjectures are no object by this time since none of this will even happen. But I mean if we have the “means” now to spend trillions of dollars on armaments of all sorts, eliminating that “need’”, one can easily imagine good money being spent elsewhere on health and education where it SHOULD be in a perfect world right?

Can I even imagine respectful divorces in such a world because let’s face it more than too often it takes more than one or two trials to find the right person?

Divorces with no misogyny or misandry for that fact. Respect for the ex and what not even.

Paperwork in fact might be totally eliminated as one lives on PRINCIPLES.

Imagine waking up to this now Rip Van Winkle?  A breath of fresh air in an ethereal almost astral realm.

As I said it will never ever happen, if there was only one truth it would be this one.

A world of respect of sound and air and smells and pollution, filled with respect and consideration, filled with love with no hate and no violence at all, no need for violence.  A world where the lion really sleeps next to the lamb? Why is there a need for all these animals anyway in an Ha Olam Haba? Just curious.

No death now might be a blessing or a curse so I am not so sure on this subject.  Of course there would be some sort of inevitable inexorable forms of grief I am afraid, FEAR being included here in this expression.

So here is a start anyway, of course my perfect world is different than yours, and everyone’s perfect world is different from the neighbour.  This is intrinsically WHY there can never ever BE a perfect world in fact.

But it was nice to imagine, to put in thoughts and images anyway.

What is YOUR perfect world now?

On a final note it seems to reflect a world where your chaos is not imposed on my chaos really.  An elimination of stenches and noises in fact.

It would also resembles much of Alanis Morissette’s view of Utopia

We'd gather around
All in a room
Fasten our belts
Engage in dialogue
We'd all slow down
Rest without guilt
Not lie without fear
Disagree sans judgement

We would stay and respond and expand and include and allow and forgive and
enjoy and evolve and discern and inquire and accept and admit and divulge and open and reach out and speak up

We'd open our arms 
We'd all jump in 
We'd all coast down 
Into safety nets

We would share and listen and support and welcome 
Be propelled by passion, not invest in outcomes
We would breathe and be charmed and amused by difference 
Be gentle and make room for every emotion

We'd provide forums
We'd all speak out
We'd all be heard
We'd all feel seen

We'd rise post-obstacle, more defined, more grateful
We would heal, be humbled, and be unstoppable
We'd hold close and let go and know when to do which 
We'd release and disarm and stand up and feel safe 

This is utopia 
This is my utopia 
This is my ideal 
My end in sight
Utopia
This is my utopia
My ultimate

Epictetus Fullofshitus

I am so sick and tired of the god thing. 

I miss the ‘olden days’.

This is gonna be décousu I can tell!

First the god thing I guess.

Let’s start with Epictetus now.  I was kind of boiling in the bathtub where I was presumably sitting in in order to RELAX reading the golden sayings of Epictetus part of a much broader liberal education apparently called the Harvard Classics, assembled by a dénommé  Charles W. Eliot in 1909.

Well maybe in 1909 you could get a liberal education but I doubt one can get one these days because in 1909 it was a different world, a world with no television and no internet.  I read of people like Dickens and Mark Twain who have read Thomas Carlyle’s long (and probably very tedious) French Revolution not ONCE but MANY times over and over.   

Also back then many a scholar and polymath were well-versed into every single old Latin and Greek writing from Ovid to Homer, from Cicero to Plato, from Horace to Sophocles, Virgil to Aristotle.

Anyway back to Epictetus now the father of so-called Stoics.  Here is one thing I said yesterday about him:

I only have 2 words 

for someone who wants me to be 

a better slave, 

a better soldier:

FUCK YOU!

Assumptions like “so-called non-existent gods know better” piss me off.  Plus the deceiving translation of Zeus into God is to say the least misleading. 

God, Yahweh, Allah, and Zeus are all different MYTHS, different LIES, with different attributes and qualities.

Add on his all-knowing, all –present daimons here and we have a nice mixture of Greek and Christian mythological mash.  There is no such thing in the bible as the notion that each one of us has a guardian angel but it is a clear Greek mythological teaching that we all have a personal daimon, a spirit to look over us.

Nevertheless he has placed by every man a guardian, every man’s Demon, to whom he has committed the care of the man, a guardian who never sleeps, is never deceived. For to what better and more careful guardian could He have entrusted each of us? When, then, you have shut the doors and made darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not; but God is within, and your Demon is within, and what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
Epictetus Discourses Chapter 14

So when I hear of how a proud US G.I. survived years of horrors in horrific Vietnam camps (insert visions of Deer Hunter here) I am not overly impressed to begin with since the horrors were somewhat self-inflicted, choosing a way of life I totally oppose.

And now again we have so-called science, psychology, fornicating with mythologies one more time where Epictetus is one of the champions of Albert Ellis and his therapy style.  

Some of you will still remember my rant on Marsha M. Linehan fornicating with Buddhism’s Mindfulness.
DBT, REBT and all the other bastards BT one can think of. Let’s not forget CBT now where your mind is apparently a computer: garbage in, garbage out.

If one tries to eliminate all possible myths and lies out of his life one is left with nearly nothing and utterly isolated from so-called normal society. I mean try so find some form of help somewhere that is not FORCING you to

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be

Why Oh Why Can’t I conceive it/him/her to be non-existent now?

I mean it would be impossible to communicate without using some sort of mythological metaphors now like this is hell or it is a Sisyphean task etc.  It is a very concise way of communicating, much shorter than to explain the whole story of Sisyphus before using the expression anyway.

I do understand some Stoics principles and I do yearn for some stoicism at times the high and lows of my epicurean life get a little hard on the system at times, like going ballistic over dogs barking and such other disturbances in the force.  But the whole base of it is ruined now, totally ruined, because if the reason for acceptance is in order to properly

worshit some godhole 

somewhere, 

especially when one can fill the fucking hole 

with whatever he/she 

wants it, 

conceives it 

to be 

well it is all BULLSHIT then.

The way I see it I guess is Stoic equals flatline, Epicurian equals high mountains and low valleys of passions, burnings. 

What is moderation called then?

A LOT OF ASS & U & ME

Rosenberg emphasized that evil “needs to be desperately explained.” The Christian theologian responded by saying: “The problem here is that we are assuming that God's purpose is just to make us happy in this life, but on the Christian view that's false. The purpose of life is not worldly happiness as such, but rather the knowledge of God. There may be many evils that occur in this lifetime that are utterly pointless with respect to producing worldly happiness, but they may not be pointless with respect to producing the knowledge of God and salvation and eternal life.”

Audience members, the formal debate panel and online viewers all said that Craig, the Christian theologian, won the debate.

I hope there was more to it than that but still I seem to have missed the point here or the whole boat.

The purpose of life is the knowledge of God?

Empirical knowledge?

Epistemological knowledge?

Emotional Knowledge?

Intellectual Knowledge?

Scientific Knowledge?

First define Knowledge and then go on and define God.

And those were the second and third assumptions only.

The first assumption was to ASSUME that life has a purpose.

So

1.       We ASSUME life has a purpose

2.       We ASSUME we know what knowledge is despite all the contradictions of epistemology and

3.       We ASSUME there is such a thing as one God vaguely defined amongst 1000 myths.

That is a lot of ASS and U and ME if you ask ME.

All these debates seem so absolutely pointless to me.  The rules are bent, the audience is bent, pride and prejudice play the biggest part in it and it is as invalid as democracy.

We haven’t moved a single inch forward from the days of the Aeropagus
and public intellectual masturbation. 
Rhetoric is not a science.
Rhetoric is a mastering of fallacies to fool the many.
Paul was just one more rhetorician among millions.

The truth is that there is NO explanation for our race of violent apes.  We are evil and that’s it. We are cruel and we don’t need no gods and no demons to be so we can do it all by ourselves same as any other apes do.

What is the point at all of master debating with another monkey?
Are we going to convert the planet to reason and good sense?
I THINK NOT!

Greed and Ignorance will rule forever or until the day the last human dies after having destroyed all other humans around him.  There is no redemption in the universe. 

So what is the point anyway with debating with greed and ignorance? What does it achieve?

Majority and numbers on your side mean nothing at all here.

So Craig could have just STFU after his first seven words then

The problem here is that we are assuming PERIOD. STOP. 

POINT FINAL.

Missing the Mark

Missing the fucking mark is such a big deal in this world. 

An awful lot of religion seems to be founded on negative words.

Aletheia, (Truth)  Hamartia (Sin) all express the lack, the removal, 

the negation of something.

The removal of the river Lethe, the missing of a lot or destiny appointed to us by some mysterious will somewhere.

So much foaming at the mouth over other people missing their mark while totally forgetting how many times they have missed the fucking mark themselves.

All empowered again in our darkest subconscious twisted minds, the so-called Freudian defence mechanism which bring the absolute worst of us all and which apparently are inevitable AND inexorable as well.

Projection, Repression, Regression

Denial, Displacement, Dissociation,

Rationalisation, Intellectualisation

Passive Aggression, Isolation.

All sicknesses found in large numbers in religious people.

If one is worried about missing the mark one should worry about missing the mark of reality and mental health really.

Venereal Veneration or Roshi This!

Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. 

This includes every mosquito,
every misfortune,
every red light,
every traffic jam,
every obnoxious supervisor (or employee),
every illness, every loss,
every moment of joy or depression,
every addiction,
every piece of garbage,
every breath.

Every moment is the guru.”

― Charlotte Joko Beck

Even when that teacher himself, that sacred guru is an arrogant, alcoholic, adulterous, obnoxious, seducing piece of garbage prick preying on his disciples.

For Fuck Sake when will people see?

For one thing, I keep repeating it:

Life, the Universe is NOT AN ENTITY.

It has no will, no wishes, and no desires.

If it has any ‘will’ at all it is only concerned about itself. Propagating itself, surviving and procreating and that’s all. 

It doesn’t give a fuck about you as an individual and your capricious tender little needs and wants.  

A sperm does not think! It acts. 

It doesn’t give a fuck about the million other sperms surrounding it.

They can all die as far as it is concerned.

The universe does not care for one planet more than another and given time will not flinch at launching deadly asteroids on us one random day without the will of anyone or anything.

Back to my original quote now. The pride of life. The wisdom of a guru.
To have submissive mindless slaves, err I mean disciples, around him who worship his every word and move.  

Submit to your evil masters just in case I ever become one of them and I usually do as we all know what power does to someone.

Obey! Obey! Obey! And take off your underwear while you are down there bowing to me. And above all give me all your money. You don’t need it silly, a primate like you would not know what to do with it anyway.

This is always what happens when equality is taken away,
 when it is laid down at someone else’s feet. 

Sit my way.
Eat my way.
Shit my way. 

And one day, 

one faraway day 

you will be perfect too just like me.  

Perfect until I get caught with my pants down of course.
Perfect in pure hypocrisy.

Many have become filthy rich telling you what life and the universe wants and if lucky they end up showing with Oprah. 

 
When life and the universe do not talk at all in fact no more than any gods do but we all know that now don’t we? 

The ultimate common quality of life, the universe, and the gods is to be utterly speechless.

That ultimate quality is given to us baboons to translate to interpret these mute masters we have invented and  to Ka-Ching all the money for them too since not only don’t they have any tongues, they don’t have any hands either poor things.

So go on then. The world will always be full of shamans and charlatans.  

It’s a profitable business and the fringe benefits are awesome.  

Not everyone can become a rock star after all.

Or you could question everything and stay poor. :)