1988

I was wondering why the album Hysteria brought back such sweet memories to me.

10th of June 1988 (my 10th wedding anniversary) 

I "LIBERATED" myself from the grip of the cult I had been in since oct 12, 1976.

Threw my things in one bag in the back of the company pickup truck, left to a hotel with my last paycheck and muster the courage to go back to my house 2 days later.

The house was totally empty,
They left me one couch to sleep on,
one fork, one knife, one spoon.

Gave my 2weeks notice at work (in Toronto) and rented a tv to save my sanity in this long 2 weeks in this lonely house.
I didn't know where my kids were or my wife or anybody. I was completely OSTRACISED as it was the norm in any cult.

So went back to Montreal, pleaded my case with unemployment insurance and got spared from the 6 weeks penalty for quitting your job.
Got my cheques coming in two weeks and tried to recover from the stunning trauma.

Bought myself a sofa bed a tv and settle in the hottest apartment ever.  Went to bed at daybreak when exhausted. Went shopping at the depanneur across the street late in the afternoon early in the evening rarely saw the light of day.

Didn't see my kids for 9 months in fact first time I saw them was on TV.

After a few months of that again in order to save my sanity I went to work for my old boss, the locksmith I had left in a hurry 1o years back when we fled to Manitoba via Tennessee.

Not for the money as I was not making much more than on UI but just to get back to some sort of normal life.

But I can say that MTV or Musique Plus as we called it has saved my life, It was the days when Pour Some Sugar on Me won every video battle every week and I spent hours and hours watching Evening at the Improv Comedy on A & E.

So here is that bit of memory log all coming back to me now.

Them were the days.

HERD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE

 

Some woke archaeologist is trying to warn us that we are being herded.

Well as an archaeologist he should KNOW that we have always ALWAYS been herded.

We are the sheep, the sheeple, herd/mob mentality IS in our DNA.

Every time one is conscripted or drafted one is herded.

We are HERDED every single day by everything that surrounds us: parents, society, school, media and now ALGORITHMS.

In one of my old blogs I was quoting Oscar Wilde:

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation" - 

What part of 'us' is "us' is one of those sempiternal questions:
Free Will and What Not, Nature vs Nurture etc etc

And then there are those illuminated who THINK they are not herded, they are not the sheeple, they are holier-than-thou, wiser-than-thou, woke, illuminated smart asses of the world who have just fallen in their own little herd.

Some sort of self-righteous cult among all the other self-righteous cults.

WE for sure have fences and boundaries and so many CHAINS we CANNOT see.

As S & G said again:

A man gets tied up to the ground
He gives the world its saddest sound
Its saddest sound

We are tied by socio-economic chains, geographical chains (closely related to religious chains as well) educational chains

For instance it is nearly impossible nowadays to get the classical education one had in the past with extensive knowledge of past Greek and Latin writers.  It is nearly impossible even now to get a university education that is not TAINTED  by a billion political agendas and this joke only leads most students CHAINED to enormous debts to repay where they are going to HAVE to resort to slaving away and sell out somewhere to another form of slavery. 

So much for free will and free thinking,

PLUS PLUS PLUS nowadays we are completely inundated in this Huxleyan Algorithm which drives most of us insane on the borderline of ADHD.

It always reminds me of one of Ani DiFranco's Song:

In a coffee shop in a city
Which is every coffee shop
In every city
On a day which is every day
I picked up a magazine
Which is every magazine
Read a story then I forgot it right away
And they say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle
Is a surprise every time
And it's hard to say if they're happy
But they don't seem much to mind
(Yee-haw)
WE ARE A HERD.

A herd that rapes and pillages in every war.
A herd that foams at the mouth and gets outraged 
and stones and lynches at the smallest occasion 
when our self-righteousness 
and our hypocritical man-made morality are "offended"

A herd that cannot think, that doesn't have the capacity 
to get beyond war and destruction or even the wisdom
to get above self-destruction

8 billion of engineeringly defective beings not as far above
the other animals as we think.

And to think we are not a herd or just realised we are herded
well it is to think that the shadows in the cave are real. 
We have been herded in myths for thousands of years and
WE STILL ARE. 

To think there is such a thing as a HOLY WAR is
just HERD mentality to begin with.
To think we are the good guys is herd mentality.
To think Us vs Them is herd mentality.

O well I could go on and on and let's not forget 
that I am part of the herd too.

It is funny how we are quick to call others stupid when
we are not too high on the intelligence scale ourselves.

Maybe in the end we are all lost souls swinging in a fish bowl
YEAR after YEAR.

So maybe we are not a HERD, Just a Shoal or a School or a 
WhatNot of Fishes 


Funny how in the old days your herd was always the best and
your god was always the strongest
the good old my daddy is stronger than your daddy

After all the original Hebrew God was called

Yahweh Sabaoth:
The Lord of Hosts
The Lord of the Armies

And then when you got your ass whipped 
you had to find some poor excuse why Daddy let you down

So to conclude 
We are HERDED from Day One
and constantly after that Day after Day
oh we may transfer herd here and then but
A HERD IS A HERD IS A HERD







 

TIME IS TIGHT

Déchéance:

here is another French word that gets lost in translation

Bing tranlates it as: DECAY which is kind of lame

Google says FORFEITURE but also offers DEGRADATION which is better IMHO

Anyway that is the word that came to mind lately as I have been in the habit of watching this "new" chapters on Facebook called Reels and now on YouTube called Shorts.

And I feel the déchéance not only of the world in general
but also of my own soul when I watch them too long.

Thousands and Thousands out there if not MILLIONS trying to get your attention, trying to sell you some TRIPE as Van the Man would say.

And even though my attention span is getting shorter and shorter sometimes it is not short enough as
ALL I NEED is 5 seconds out the of 15 seconds short
to move on to the next one with some thoughts
like Fuck off you try hard or Get fucked you loser.  

(One of the most offensive to me being the cunt who uses a spray bottle on some stranger and pretends to sneeze as a prank: 

get a fucking life you losing wanker. Grow the FUCK UP.)

So many wannabe GURUS, SO LITTLE TIME.

It always reminds me of one of my fav Ani DiFranco song:

EVERYONE IS A FUCKING NAPOLEON.

There sure is a lot of "ink" time, or zeros and ones as I call them out there INCLUDING MINE.

DECADENCE might be a better word exactly
as in the decadence of an empire or of a generation.

You can't cancel YouTube or Facebook or even better TikTok out there. 
The market goes where it is wanted and way too often to the LCD unfortunately,
the Lowest Common Denominator.

P.T. Barnum was fully aware of that now.

I am sure there are excellent informative, educational wonders on the internet, pearls one might say, but like everything in life a bit à la Huxley they are utterly buried in a fuckton of manure making it nearly impossible to find, making the digging completely exhausting and the stench unbearable.

Anyway it seems to be a "new" trend from my POV and not one in the right direction if you ask me but then again I IS NO GURU either! 

People vying for their 15 seconds of fame in a pandemic world void of real contact and even real jobs these days.  

Easy money street aka the oldest profession in the world.

Mind you the oldest profession in the world gets more respect in my book.

So here is my two bits to throw on top the fuckton of existing manure already.

As Booker T. & the M.G.'s once said:

TIME IS TIGHT! :)

but that was FIFTY THREE years ago way way before the days of the internet

If I can dream

 Who you are!
Who you think you are! and
Who you would like to be!

Sometimes I think I was born too early and then again the future does not look so promising except maybe for a few medical advances but what would be the point of living a long life then?

At other times I think I may have been born too early.

I missed by a smidgeon a totally different system of education which I may or probably would not have enjoyed but could fantasize on or dream of.  (never finish a sentence with a preposition) 

When I was in primary school just before they opened the very first new "polyvalente" school my options for the future were thus:

1. Classical 

for the great brains who wanted to study humanities and languages and all the great classics, who wanted to read all Cicero or Plato  in their original languages: Latin and Greek respectively.

For the "bolés" as we called them in Quebec back then.

2. Scientific

for the other kind of "bolés" who liked maths more than english or french and liked to study maths, physics, chemistry etc

3. General

for the hoi polloi the riff raff and the rest of them that didn't quit after high school or go to a trade school

Classical studies has always been a dream of mine but then again it was never to happen for many reason a) they quit that system the very year I entered high school and b) I wasn't cut out for it having been ruined much earlier. 

There was a kind teacher in year 7,
Mr St-Onge (my mother's maiden name strangely enough) who tried to rescue me but he came a little too late.
The damage that the other St-Onge had done was irremediable.

Anyway 

I could of ;) done my own education and read all the great books but history says I didn't. 

Chose the Drugs and Rock and Roll road instead and look where that led me now :P

Speaking of that Mr. St-Onge I bawl my eyes
out every time I hear this song from
 Alexandre Poulin: L'écrivain.

I am always reminded of this story of this French Canadian girl who was trying to use this expression once I bawled my eyes out and said instead:

I cried my balls out! LOL

Over and Out

 

Chains We Cannot See

 

 

Holy Lord spirit, set us free

From chains we cannot see

~ Keith Green

Always loved this expression:

CHAINS WE CANNOT SEE!

How many CHAINS WE CANNOT SEE do we have?

We don't know because WE CANNOT SEE!

There are countless chains of the mind, innumerable.

All of Freud's defence mechanisms
plus the numerous logical fallacies we believe,
all the confirmation BIASES we have
and great lacunas we have in epistemology.  

IQ is never enough to overcome all of these.

Another big one seems to be
not as much socio-economical sometimes
(even though this one is a big one too)
as GEOGRAPHICAL.

Americans all fall in the same holes,
so do French and Italians and the whole world. 

Strangely enough the best religion always seems to be the one you're in where you are.
More than often the best political party is the one your father was in and all your ancestors.

Children are bound early by extreme cultural pressure and don't dare to fly on their own. 
Especially that flying on your own in many different culture will just get you KILLED.

Ostracization ALSO plays a huge role in controlling your peers.

Basically we ALL are horses with blinders
 to keep us away from being distracted or separated from the holy flock,
the holiest flock there is, if one likes being a sheep.

Our vision, our understanding is awfully limited and even more limited by the fact we don't know we have these blinders we're a bit like Plato's cave dwellers aren't we?

The most intelligent of us know nothing. 
They can't save us.

While I am on this subject

My next blog should be titled:

ALGORITHMS? Good or pure Evil?

I realised as I was watching an enlightening video on nutrition on YouTube that I was going to be inundated now with every charlatan on the planet trying to sell me his tripe.

Hard to decipher anything to start with but even harder when 

THE GAME IS RIGGED and you are spoon-fed partial information for the only purpose again to sell you MORE TRIPE.

The bowling alley is NOT levelled
and you ALWAYS end up in the gutter.
It's like trying to win at these claws machine
or beat the house at the casino.
THE HOUSE ALWAYS WIN.

So if no one can't see a thing why am I trying to see through the mud and darkness now?

Maybe even the belief that there is an answer (a truth) is a delusion itself
another chain that keeps us down
a bit like the matrix,
we need the challenge to feel important
but we are not important:

WE ARE INSIGNIFICANT all of us.

The word seeker and searcher being mirages to keep us going in this desert.

Mind you the blue pill of delusion seems tempting sometimes because who knows what reality really is?

MORPHEUS (cont’d): What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life—that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?

NEO: What truth?

MORPHEUS: That you are a slave, Neo. 

Like everyone else, you were born into bondage.

 

Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch.

 

A prison for your mind.

So like Creed and Scott Stapp I ask?

Have I created my own prison?

Or was it created for me?

Or are we born a slave , a serf, like Morpheus says?

Are we born in a prison?

And the only Great Escape / Freedom is Death Itself?

Give me freedom or give me death?

Give me freedom BY giving me death?

From my poor limited POV no one was ever free.

Not Einstein, not Oppenheimer, not Proust, not Oscar Wilde, 

no poet, no scientist , no one ever.

(funnily enough the Creed song is now followed by Don't Fear the Reaper lol funny algorithms again)

Shit tons of ink has been poured

 a gazillion of zeros and ones have been wasted 

(digital communications)   including mine

and still we will never know.

I will never ever know but I will keep asking 'til my last breath.

The pursuit of knowledge and wisdom is probably the most futile waste of energy while this planet exists.

Because after all the short passage of consciousness in this universe in infinitesimal in cosmic time
and prophet Farrokh Bulsara was right once again and came the closest to the ultimate wisdom and knowledge:

Nothing really matters, 

anyone can see

Nothing really matters

Nothing really matters to me

Any way the wind blows ♫♪♫

on a last controversial note one of the biggest blinding prison ever is RELIGION

We live under the grand delusion that we matter...

 We live under the grand delusion that we matter...

... partly because our conception of time is extremely myopic.

My great great grandfather married 3 times had 21 children 

and I am the product of his number 17 

There is already an infinitesimal chance of "our" sperm winning that race multiply this now by an infinitesimal number of "what ifs' and well here we are against all odds.

‘O me! O life! Of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?’

Answer: That you are here - FOR NOW

 that life exists, FOR NOW

and identity; FOR NOW

that the powerful play goes on FOR NOW

and you may contribute a verse. FOR NOW

That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

What will your verse be?

in 9 billion years ( the total existence of the earth if we are to believe some scientists, considering the solar system may not survive the Andromeda / Milky Way Collision)

in 9 billion years from now what will your verse be?

I'll tell you. Your little verse if you ever had one will be

ATOMISED, VAPORISED, ANNIHILATED and scattered all over the universe with no records left and no one to measure those records like this tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it.

“I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.”

― Dorothy Parker

LIKE TEARS IN RAIN

 

I was born too early.

Or too late who knows? lol

I had a nice "stream of consciousness" earlier and all in French funnily enough and I let it pass and didn't write it down and now It's all gone... like tears in rain. 

I feel a bit like Pharaoh and his lost dream.  

Funny how heroes of the past were basically 

mentalists and tricksters: 

Joseph my homonym.

Anyway had I been born later brings a gazillion maybes. 

I am expecting the day where they find a cure for adult neuroblastoma and go nice timing assholes.

Also it may not all be as good as it seems as Charlie Booker has shown us time and time again.  

Recalling every single auditive and visual memory may not be as good as one thinks.

Prolly a bit narcissistic in fact to want to do so 

to use the n word again.

Trying to remember a bit and it might lose something in translation it was about a comment I got on my 4th booster and me using the word holy trinity and offending a holy roller.

How moot it was to try any debate or discussion on this subject since I HAD been there for years and years and there was no argument back then that would have convinced me whatsoever. 

My self-righteousness was an impregnable fortress.

I was thinking how much I hate the word "SIN" 

since this word has been used for thousands of years 

by every charlatan and control freak on the planet to use a non existent power to CONTROL his peers his equals if not superiors.

But if there was one SIN and only one well it would be this one:

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS.  

It's a hideous ugly beast impossible to tame.

So here it is in a nutshell: diluted vapors of past vapors.

If meditation teaches us one thing is that thoughts are pretty well just that coming and going or RISING and FALLING as this monk says just like our BREATH... RISING... FALLIN... Risin'... Fallin'

TIL ONE DAY it falls and never RISES again no matter what delusion one might have about the afterlife.

THE original words for SPIRIT AND SOUL in Hebrew and In Greek are just that BREATH!  HOT AIR.  And when it's gone YOU'RE GONE.  

No AIR No Life an inexorable law of nature.

Harsh reality I know to realise that the best person you have ever known and the evilest person who ever existed are just EQUAL now.

FLATTENED even by the Great Equaliser personalised under the Grim Reaper.

That feeling reminds me of that French Canadian Poem I quote once in a while.

Devant le feu

Émile NELLIGAN

Recueil : "Émile Nelligan et son œuvre - Le Jardin de l'Enfance"

Par les hivers anciens, quand nous portions la robe,

Tout petits, frais, rosés, tapageurs et joufflus,

Avec nos grands albums, hélas ! Que l’on n’a plus,

Comme on croyait déjà posséder tout le globe !

Assis en rond, le soir, au coin de feu, par groupes,

Image sur image, ainsi combien joyeux

Nous feuilletions, voyant, la gloire dans les yeux,

Passer de beaux dragons qui chevauchaient en troupes !

Je fus de ces heureux d’alors, mais aujourd’hui,

Les pieds sur les chenets, le front terne d’ennui,

Moi qui me sens toujours l’amertume dans l’âme,

J’aperçois défiler, dans un album de flamme,

Ma jeunesse qui va, comme un soldat passant,

Au champ noir de la vie, arme au poing, toute en sang !

the first half being life as a delusional believer

the second being facing reality.

You can do your own translation if you'd like
to all my non-readers.

Anyway if I have learned one thing lately is that all debates are rather sterile moot and utterly  pointless:

All these intellectuals proud giants wielding their humongous dicks publicly and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM after hours and hours of debate goes back exactly to what he was before the debate.

Obviously Paul Simon was smarter than all of them.

Now the years are rolling by me

They are rockin' evenly

I am older than I once was

And younger than I'll be

But that's not unusual

No it isn't strange

After changes upon changes

We are more or less the same

After changes

We are more or less the same

Lie-la-lie...

Mind you I am not the same...
I have gone from devout choirboy (in Latin and all)
to zealous fringe evangelical maniac
to now a staunch non-believer / atheist
(some prefer the word agnostic, semantics, semantics)

It just SEEMS to me the only logical outcome to all this madness we have created and an unfortunate twist in our simian evolution to make things so false and so complicated with as many  different versions of "TRUTH" as there are individuals. 

TRUTH SUPPOSEDLY BEING ALETHEIA or A LACK OF CONCEALMENT  AND FUCK KNOWS THIS WORLD IS CHOCK FULL OF CONCEALMENT AND TREACHERY EVERYWHERE

not counting the very things we conceal to our very selves.

I guess we all belong in the Twisted Sisters band :P

So here it is my latest addition in this pandemic to my struggling poor blog 

for no one to read again 

nowhere men 

all on the road to nowhere...

halfway there 

just like Supertramp's RUDY.