WHY DOES ANYTHING MATTER AT ALL IN FACT?

Build a tiny box slightly larger than a foot, 32 cm long to be exact, 32 cm high and 32 cm wide.  Fill it with fine sand. Remove one single grain.

That’s it!

This grain is me soon.

Well the box to be accurate is probably much bigger in 2012 but apparently this was the size of the box in 2006.  Why hasn’t the data been updated? Beats me.

So does that give me a sense of purpose now?  Unlikely.

But I can see my blog, my poor little blog lost in so many other blogs dying slowly of inanition or lack of oxygen to its brain.

The stat said BTW that as of 2006, 200 million blogs were left without updates.

I love my blog or at least I used to.  

To me it was a barometer and it probably still is.

But things change, the old passions are still there 

but deafened, dulled, pooped out.

For instance I can’t believe it has been 6 months already since my rant on Cherie Carter-Scott.  Her trash keeps popping over and over on Facebook and I get as incensed and as irritated as before but too tired to bother anymore, too tired to fight insanity and stupidity and what not.  I mean she is definitely FOS and the world is a sad sad place but some things will never change. 

I am not even sure what irritates me so much about the whole thing: the fact that her trash is so popular or the fact that stupidity makes so much money while common sense starves.  It won’t be the first time nor the last for sure but I am still annoyed at this planet and my short stay on it.

Now on this subject there is a part deep inside of me that is totally absolute about my being right on this subject but then again wisdom is a fickle thing and hard to touch and reach and even harder to prove.  And why does it matter if no one ever sees it and everyone jumps on Cherie’s boat and the boat sinks or floats? 

WHY DOES ANYTHING MATTER AT ALL IN FACT?

VANITY OF VANITES, ALL IS VANITY!

So why can’t I just eat and drink and be merry and never give a fuck?

For one thing I am not quite sure what to be “merry” at to begin with: probably a great part of so-called depression and this whole existentialist crisis.

It seems to get harder and harder to find any merriness these days.

Like the song says: what kind of paradise am I looking for? I’ve got everything I want and still I want more.

Buddhists and Hamlet would say Aye there is the rub, I WANT.

I want, I need. What is the diff?

What should I concentrate my efforts, my energy, my breathing, my every breath on really?

Mornings are as always horrible and nights my, good ole nights, are not much better these days. 

The W5’s keep coming. 

Why, Where, When, What and Who or hoW?

I am not any different than the rest of the box and yet I am unique in my own kind of way.  This is all I got: This brain, this body, this temporary life, these thoughts

-         small electrons floating by the trillions.

Yes I have done my “share”, yes I have produced life on this planet and this life has produced other lives but monkeys can do that too.

All this Whitman excitement about LIFE does not excite me at all because life without consciousness is nothing, life without MY consciousness is no life at all as far as I am concerned and I need consciousness to be concerned. 

Hell I could be alive and not conscious and what would it matter:

coma or Alzheimer’s or what not.

If death is a long sleep as they say well where are the dreams then?

Death is a long non REM sleep if it is one. And here comes Hamlet again.

Soon all my zeros and my ones will be gone and what is left?

The zeros and the ones on my dead hard drives or on this dead blog?

It is all about my zeros and my ones: all those electrons in my brains with their trillion synapses producing all my crazy thoughts and entertaining my momentary consciousness.

One glitch in the zeros and ones in fact and all these last electrons vanish forever lost in space.  That feeling we have when a computer crashed in the middle of writing a long document no matter how important it is. One could refer to “With Honors” with Joe Pesci or StephenFry who retrieved the lost Oscar winning script from Emma Thompson’s computer.

So what is all this?

An old story of the wise envying the fool

or the fool wishing to be wiser then?

What does it matter to all the billions and billions of departed souls whether they are remembered or not?  What does it matter to one single still living soul? 
Two souls die every single second on this planet and the media play favourites on whom they will recall and whom they can’t be bothered with.

As I said earlier this week,

no one commemorates My lai or March 16^th, 1968

or any other drone massacre or collateral damage or what not,

not mentioning the millions and millions of deaths caused by economic sanctions or just some poor sap dying from poverty or even worse sheer stupidity.

And that brings me back to another song I guess, having started with Grey from AniDiFranco, I’d like to end, pardon the pun, with Tom Waits and “Dirt in the Ground”.

Voila for now.

A

HTFU? WHY?

I always resent the “suck it up” and the “harden the fuck up” and the man up expressions so common down under.  Ok I was a soft kid, a fat geek and in some ways I still am but the HTFU’s and their gurus are not very attractive to me.

What suck it up and become like you?

A hardened heartless mindless hard drinking loud talking bozo who on the outside can take anything live by the sword and die by it?
 Thanks but no thanks.

I even Resent the Resilience word apparently necessary today especially in school and well all over the world now as we see bullying infiltrating all social medias.  Callous mindless heartless primitive bullies again forcing us to become a little more like them.  And we are supposed to have evolved, moved up, and moved AWAY from monkeys apparently.

It is a necessary attitude in a bikers gang maybe but what if one does not ASPIRE to be a biker?

I know it is and always will be impossible but I still dream of a world where everyone will be ALLOWED to be his or her own self, warts and all, weaknesses and all but in this jungle we call human kind it will never happen.  As Tom Waits I think once said: The Human Kind is NOT Kind.

As a group we have an innate tendency to ridicule the different, to harass the sensitive and laugh at the weak. 

So keep on dreaming dreamer and try to get the absolute minimum of resilience necessary to survive in this jungle we call the world.

Maybe it is a sign of nature that our minds have to match our bodies which also have to be quite resilient is this chance-happening-chaos-fighting-and-breaking we call LIFE.

I still wish all the HTFU would just STFU.

WTF is it with that Stardust shit?

WTF is it with that Stardust shit?

Stardust! Stardust! Stardust! Whoop Tee Fucking Doo! 

Dust is Dust is Dust is Dead is Dead is Dead.

Ashes and Gone Baby Gone! Does it really matter what kind of fucking dust you are?

Will dust do your thinking? Your Feeling? Your  Loving even your hating? 

Your Tasting and smelling and thinking and enjoying?

A big empathic NO!

Dust is dead and cold and lonely in the universe it doesn’t give a shit, it is shit.

I don’t understand the greatest minds and scientists and the poets and potheads going goo goo gaga over fucking stardust.

Dust will have plenty of fucking time dontcha worry.

Look in the mirror and think (while you still can) 

one day soon all this will be gone: all dust

-no eye reflecting eye,

-no face reflecting face,

-no thought reflecting thoughts,

-no nothing,

gone forever and ever in a happy little fucking pile of stardust somewhere. 

To some it might be a deliverance, to many it will seem too soon,

‘tis always too soon

someone somewhere might miss your pile of dust while it was moving and thinking and sometimes farting and annoying the hell out of you.

Some will leave other little piles of dust of their own behind them.

Is that good or bad now?  Fuck knows.

Some will leave no other dust than their own some would say this is sad but who knows really.

Eventually in time (what is 4 or 5 billion years really) there will be nothing else but dead dust all over with no history no achievements no one to tell what was and what was not.

Well not much different than today really since what was and what was not is never quite clean cut. Much if not most of it being lies, myths, distortions, fairy tales, and delusions or media bullshit or ugly greedy spin.

So stardust of tomorrow enjoy the air of today, the food and water of today if you have any, the love and the pain of today because I have an inkling that dust limbo is no fun at all.

All we have is this moment, 

right here, 

right now.  

The future is just a fucking concept 

that we use to avoid being alive today. 

So be  here 

now! 

Brenda Chenowith (Character)
from "Six Feet Under" (2001)

EXTRAPOLATE PEOPLE! EXTRAPOLATE!

EXTRAPOLATE PEOPLE! EXTRAPOLATE!

So much ado about less than nothing!

Vanity of Vanity all is Vanity!

Hot Air of Hot Air all is Hot Air!

Bullshit of Bullshit all is Bullshit!

We Humans are so funny! Taking ourselves so seriously really.

For one thing as a very beginning Stephen Hawking is definitely  not my god, my guru, my mentor, my all-knowing, my guide.  

NOBODY is really, 

as we are all absolutely without a single miss full of shit and hot air yours truly included.

For one thing Stephen Hawking is totally wrong today and not one percent as much as he will be in a hundred years and not half as ridiculous as he will be in a thousand years and even then our standards and knowledge if we still exists will be eons and eons away from any resemblance of real knowledge.

Stephen Hawking is ,number one, dead wrong comparing the brain to a mere computer as human brains alone are capable of much more stupidity and harm than a computer will ever do.  Human brains alone are also only capable of countless mindless empty hot air debate one after another.

I do realise that by writing all this I am of course part of the problem rather than part of the solution: the solution would simply be to shut up and move on but sigh oh sigh I too am part of this apian race so go on monkey do your trick.

Plus Mr Know-it-all here was highly refuted and proven wrong by a name hardly anyone hears on the atheist circle, that little cult of worship of the party of "reason" and know it all; that name being Leonard Susskind who blew Mr H''s pet theory right out of the water and ultimately proved that even the best minds are often full of shit and also the biggest problem in this universe "FULL OF THEMSELVES".

What else is there to say on this whole mind exercise and somewhat interesting reading this morning?

1. For one thing yes atheists are very dogmatic and as doggedly fierce and feisty as any dogmatic religious nut out there.

2. NO NO NO NO NO NOT Everything can be explained by science.  ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Science of today is the barbarism of tomorrow and I would not even advance that Science is in its infancy.  Universe? Multiverse? Dark Matter? Dark Energy? 3?4?9? 1000 dimensions?
4 billion years ?16? 28?  WE DO NOT KNOW! WE CANNOT EXPLAIN! SOME of this we will just NEVER know and that is the bottom line.  If the top scientist of today can be proven wrong today and if Einstein certitudes of yesterday are highly questionable today what do you think it will be like in a thousand years people? in a million? This known civilisation and its RECORDING is barely 10,000 years old. 

EXTRAPOLATE PEOPLE EXTRAPOLATE.

3.  The burden of proof is on the idiot trying to make non-existent PROOF to begin with.

There is NO PROOF! DUH! NO! NOT ONE! NONE! ZILCH! No such thing as proof for anyone on anything.  You breathe or at least you think you breathe and you die and that is about it.

If there was one ultimate proof DEATH would be it and thank fuck no one can come back from this one and be a neener neener asshole. Almost a proof that there is Wisdom somewhere. :)

Oh well here is my little piece of personal hot air for now :)

Now on a final note here empirical may not be all that it is hyped to be for anyone and there has been plenty of discussion on this vain philosophical subject again but attitudes speak higher than facts and talents sometimes as we just saw on AGT lol but to come to the rescue of Sue we have to give her the benefit of the doubt and if she said that she has seen facts we have to believe she is honest and true.  It is NOT hallucinations if one can tell EXACTLY what the doctors were doing in the room and how many cc of what was given and other details impervious to hallucinations.  And I am sure this testimony is repeated quite a few times through history and books for sure.  There is no hormone to explain that.  Hormones could only explain feelings and emotions and some activity inside but not OUTSIDE.

The human mind is funny that way as Paul Simon says: A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.  Many so called conclusions start by remaining firm on OUR assumption i.e. "I" believe in atheism and "I" will hear everything against it and try to demolish it with proof going backward or "I" believe in Creationism and will do the same etc etc . 

The great almighty "I" here as always.

Anyway I digress and could go on forever but then again 

Paul Simon was a prophet of The still unproven or proven imaginary friend of many :) 

when he said

Now the years are rolling by me
They are rockin' evenly
I am older than I once was
And younger than I'll be and 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

I have gone from Catholic to Protestant to Agnostic to Curious

but change after change I still remain Curious if not outright Strange!   :)

One last note I realised I found some of the conversation offending but yet not as offending I suppose as my reaction to it would seem to some. I find it hard to find Serenity Peace and Harmony and keep a backbone or a brain in my head at times yet many feel the same.

Job 32:2-22  Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram: against Job was his wrath kindled, because he justified himself rather than God.

Also against his three friends was his wrath kindled, because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job.

Now Elihu had waited till Job had spoken, because they were elder than he.

When Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, then his wrath was kindled.

And Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite answered and said, I am young, and ye are very old; wherefore I was afraid, and durst not shew you mine opinion.

I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.

But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.

Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment.

Therefore I said, Hearken to me; I also will shew mine opinion.

Behold, I waited for your words; I gave ear to your reasons, whilst ye searched out what to say.

Yea, I attended unto you, and, behold, there was none of you that convinced Job, or that answered his words:

Lest ye should say, We have found out wisdom: God thrusteth him down, not man.

Now he hath not directed his words against me: neither will I answer him with your speeches.

They were amazed, they answered no more: they left off speaking.

When I had waited, (for they spake not, but stood still, and answered no more;)

I said, I will answer also my part, I also will shew mine opinion.

For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me.

Behold, my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it is ready to burst like new bottles.

I will speak, that I may be refreshed: I will open my lips and answer.

Let me not, I pray you, accept any man's person, neither let me give flattering titles unto man.

For I know not to give flattering titles; in so doing my maker would soon take me away.

The Invisible (Imaginary) Teacher

skepticism...a dying art ... really... no one even questions anything at all anymore... I've got a thousand questions just for these 10 little commandments by new age YAHWEHS...  from the lessons of Frey and many others, one should know that bestselling has nothing to do with truth

  Signed Tired Curmudgeon here

Ok! Let's look at these cute googoogaga "RULES" at all this Science Woo here one by one.

1.	You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.

Talk about stating the obvious here.  Almost scientific but definitely not a revelation to start a religion with and this art alone certainly won't sell any books.

2.	You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life." NO YOU WON'T! Billions don't! Life is NOT a school for you or the chimp or the ant. Life is not a person or an entity or a wilful force. It is the very temporary success of order vs chaos but remember that chaos always win, 100 % of the time. You are not enrolled and there is no school and life is not a magic force anymore than the universe or gods or any other imaginary friends.  The universe does not give a single hoot about you and life is very capricious and whimsical and what does not kill you now will kill you another day and it certainly does not make you stronger.  You DO NOT become stronger everyday quite au contraire. Pink Floyd had a better view of life than Cherie Carter-Scott ever did.  The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
3.	There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work." There are plenty of mistakes one of them being this whole goulash of excrements here. This whole idea is a western madness of prosperity and success, success of course always being spelled $ucce$$ where the one writing about it makes a lot of $$$$$$$$ usually spent by the idiots sending their $$$$$$$$ to the original guru of prosperity. It only works in places where idiots have too much $$$$$$$ to begin with.  It NEVER works in countries where most struggle for their next meal or just plain drinkable water.  Seminars and Books are working the same way pollies and church ministers work and get rich: the power of empty words and only words.  When a man like Rush Limbaugh makes 50 million a year for hot air you know hot air sells well in America. David Letterman makes about 31 to 40 million a year so Hot Air sells as long as there are buyers.  That principle works too in India and in Mexico for some but it doesn't work so well in Congo or Burkina Faso unless you are a corrupted exploiter.  It wouldn't work in more than half of the countries of the world and I can't imagine that too many Chinese even or any of the BRIC would succeed very well at selling new age hot air bullshit like this. Let's move on.
4.	Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson. Again absolutely no evidence whatsoever and no clue to real life. Only an emotional appeal to a fat and rich crowd of Oprah's watchers.  How to be the "empress of empathy" and STILL remain a billionaire.  Quite a conundrum and dichotomy here.  A special knack at splitting, denial, projection and a few more defence mechanism to excuse the inexcusable to rationalise the irrational.  Should I point the absolute obvious here too that the author's only expertise is MARKETING.  P.T. Barnum was ALSO an expert at this Marketing business. Everything is so so wrong with this statement. For one thing it assumes, infers, implies, transfers that there is a great benevolent FORCE OUT THERE that is in charge and truly cares for you in fact it cares much more for you than the millions starving in Africa because they have no money and no oil and no hot air to offer.  It is highly narcissistic at best.  There is NO SUCH THING and not a SHRED of evidence to prove that there is anywhere on this planet, quite the contrary chaos is always willing and ready to take over at any given time.  It is based on the other wrong assumption that "there is a reason for everything". Insert buzzer sound here!   Wrong again!!!  There is no more reason for anything that there is a reason for the last steak you ate, the last ant you stepped on, the last fly you killed on your windshield or the last fish you or some other fish ate.   Lessons ARE NOT repeated, no one is in charge, there are no lessons and even less a teacher and the only thing we move on to is another day alive on the planet another short victory of order over chaos, and chaos will always win one way or the other in you and all of your family. I hate to mention this since it is very close to home right now but that dreaded word of cancer is nothing but the victory of chaos over order and it can hit ANYONE at any given time whatever book you read. And please do not come to me and tell me it is a FUCKING LESSON or I will teach you one for sure. What rubbish! There is no WHY therefore no Lesson.  No rhyme nor reason nor explanation nor true consolation Unless one prefers delusions and falsehoods all unproven and unprovable. The only lesson to learn and understand IS that Death IS inevitable AND INEXORABLE. Literal meaning of INEXORABLE: It CANNOT be prayed out of.  There is no god to listen to you on this one (or any other thing as far as I am concerned)   Doctors have a way at times to delay chaos and they do, unlike many charlatans who just prey on chaos and try to make a very greedy and cruel profit of its laws a bit like this Carter-Scott book does here PREACHING bubbles of delusion AND making a killing at the same time too. Next.
5.	Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned. Where does one get all that ineffective gibberish? At cult centres or Inspiration and Success Seminars?  Inspiration & Success BTW was a true pyramid scheme my dad was involved into at one point in time.  Again these success charlatans always find their suckers like Barnum allegedly said.  It sounds to me like one of those Scientology speech where you cling to your wallet because you know in your guts that something bad is going to happen to it.  Once again there is NO Teacher in charge "out there"!
6.	"There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here." All that white picket fence and grass is greener story to appeal to some emotions deep down and say oh wow this is so true therefore everything else she just says must be so true as well. It feels like one of those old clichés  " You are NOT using your full potential" and the fool goes oh Wow! How did YOU know?  If you think of it for a second you would realise that you can tell this trite to anyone and anyone and everyone will nod and agree in awe.  Every religion and every cheap salesman use these tricks.  First destroy what was considered a truth and then build on anything you want on the empty foundation and call it truth, YOUR truth.  It reminds me of Lenny Bruce saying, Let me tell you the truth, the truth is WHAT IS, and what should be is a fantasy, a terrible terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago. Nothing new here, old principle of AA's and Zen and Buddhism.  Serenity and non-attachment and what not.  Carter-Scott did not reinvent the wheel here and is not selling something original.
7.	Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. Oh YES I CAN! I can hate bullshit and charlatanism with a passion and it reflects on you and not me.  A thief is a thief, a lie is a lie, a con artist is a con artist and that's it.
8.	What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. Again try to sell your trite to someone who was born of no choice of their own without basic needs and without even potable water.  Without wealth or means to it. Even more without a brain and access to it.  The humongous genetic and social and superstitious baggage one is born with is more than often unsurmountable and evidence shows here that it will rarely ever be surmounted.  A low social economic non educated child is bound to repeat the terrible and sad wheel of life allotted to his parents and to him. Again some western moronic wannabe philosophy that is totally unaware of the immensity of some unfathomable forces out there in the natural world always trying to sell you something, sell you something, sell you something, sell you something that is HOW THEY break the wheel by preying on others.  A lot of people are not ready to pay this price, to them it would be pure whoredom and true piracy and downright wrong.
9.	Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust. There is NO answer, only questions! Socrates told us that for nothing, free of charge.
10.	You will forget all this. And the sooner the better this one needs to drown in the Lethe River, the Ameles Potamus ASAP. Unlike the comedy channel this one is not even time well wasted. Since I have not been in other generations I can only assume that this kind of trite has been sold forever and that this eon is not worst than the others when it comes to dullness and lethargy of the thinking mind but I cannot help to shake my head at the adulation these vultures get.  How can one worship a bottom feeding predatory scavengers feeding on the dead or the nearly brain dead anyway?  Vultures and Hyenas should be naturally repulsive for all living creatures. O well my only hope is that a few will have just a little more thinking next time before they go woo or googoogaga! :) Maybe we need a Ten Rules for Thinking instead! Critical  Thinking that is.

Ten Rules for Being Human 

by Cherie Carter-Scott

1.	You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.
2.	You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."
3.	There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."
4.	Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5.	Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6.	"There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7.	Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8.	What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9.	Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10.	You will forget all this.