books, creativity, language, medicine, relationships, solitude, take it easy, work

the Law of Conservation of Energy

Law of Conservation of Energy.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. Edgar Allan Poe.

No, we’re not going to talk too much about Physics. maybe toward the end there.

Maybe I’m a weak writer. But I like to think that I am stingy with writing because women were always stingy with sex. Well, except that one time.

What I had in mind was writing a tale about a fellow who progressively does less.. and less, and less.. until he turns into.. some kind of plant. Some oak trees live for centuries. Did I get that from somewhere? Someone? I don’t know.. Probably. Let me know if it sounds familiar. nothing comes to mind right now.

What is it now.. almost 40. Well. Like I said before.. I’ve outlived J.K. Toole.. and that guy who wrote Leaving Las Vegas. O’Brien. I still like to see a doctor once a year. He usually says something about my liver enzymes. The only real question I have is if I’ll live long enough to get Social security. Free money, at last.

Almost daily I am horrified by things my parents say. Horrified. But, they’re the employable ones in this household. Explain that to me. It is only by confusing and distracting these “normal” people do we get to avoid Apocalypse. They never get enough time to put their foolishness into action. I do. they always have some fucking appointment.. or bill to pay.. some equally insane relatives to talk to.

I do not bother my head about these things…

I watch people run around as if they have cancer (terminal), but to me it seems like they really just forgot to water their plants. Once. Why do you need so many plants?

So, you see, for all practical purposes, I have cracked immortality. I have something like 8500 days left until retirement. What.. what haven’t I done. Always wanted a boat, I guess. But the nice ones are expensive. Would I like to travel somewhere? No. I don’t…

A few weeks ago I figured out I can pee and brush my teeth simultaneously. I used to not brush my teeth at all for weeks.. sometimes. but now, I realized I do have a free hand for most of the time that I am peeing. So I can be slightly more presentable. Remember that? We always get what we need. But not always what we want. Peeing, in the bathroom is a pretty hard requirement. Everything else is kind of a wish-list item. I don’t really see what I get out of it.

What. what are we Really here for? I watched one of the movies about Yogananda recently. As the prospective disciple bows, the great Guru asks if he struggles with Sex, Wine or Money.

No, sir. Not a problem at all. if there’s money, I usually buy Sex. And wine. Hehe. He didn’t say that. I did.

No, I suppose I’m not monk material. But I always had some suspicion that there must be some logic behind all the insanity I see. In the mind of God, at some quantum level, if you go far enough back.. or deep into the cells and atoms, maybe I’ll figure something out and things will make sense. Maybe I’ve got to help the person I screwed over 7 lifetimes ago. and THEN I would feel complete and satisfied. But where is this person? I need a sign.

Time to go see the Doctor, I guess.

imdb.com/title/tt3197802/

books, communication, language, relationships, take it easy, work

Part III

Wrapping this up, I guess. Also, Something fun for election season!. Part 2 was somewhat popular. 6 likes from people. I was humble enough to include myself in this last list.. heh. Thanks! I want to say I’m at a good stopping point.. but we haven’t reached 360 yet, have we? You know.. these past 10 years, I tried a lot.. and hard to find something else to do.. but.. of all the things.. this isn’t bad, is it? Collecting quotations. See, with enough good ideas.. I get to poke holes in most of the bullshit people try to baffle me with. You want me to get a job? Really? You really want me to be EMPLOYABLE? Well, you know that will cost a lot of money. Life’s short.. and I’m expensive. Because I have self esteem. that’s right. I dont give a fuck about the MARKET. it doesn’t work. the fucking market doesn’t work. I checked all the boxes…… No. I guess not. But I checked enough boxes. heh. Going down to New Orleans last year was great. I logged something like 900 miles running this year. This shit’s getting boring also. I don’t know. I don’t see any Good ideas. but that’s no reason to surrender to… coloring spreadsheets.. or buildings sandcastles.. or some such nonsense. Remember.. every few years.. 40.. 50.. 60.. 70… we all get a little bit dumber. There’s no going back.. hehe.. they say. If I ever make it that far.. well, I’ll always need this arsenal of Wisdom to make a good impression.

  1. We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves. William Hazlitt
  2. When we forgive, the slave we free is ourselves – Edward Hallowell
  3. Men to whom God is dead worship one another – Harry Crews
  4. I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do. – James Baldwin
  5. I have never voted in my life… I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it’s certain they will win – Louis-Ferdinand Celine…
  6. If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing. – Pirandello
  7. This cultural Left thinks more about stigma than about money, more about deep and hidden psychosexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed. – Richard Rorty
  8. The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself – Jane Addams
  9. The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved. – AJ Ayer
  10. The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision – Hellen Keller
  11. what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts – Thomas Henry Huxley
  12. Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men – George Patton
  13. The toughest bullshit to cut through, is one’s own – Joseph Galloway
  14. You can only solve what you have the courage to see – Dylan Ratigan
  15. Certain experiences you can’t survive, and afterward you don’t fully exist, even if you failed to die – Nic Pizzolatto.
  16. I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease – Barbara Ehrenreich
  17. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf – Orson Scott Card
  18. Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing – Clarice Lispector
  19. You need to find a way to live your life, that it doesn’t make a mockery of your values – Bill Ayers
  20. No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
  21. The reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has. Ted Chiang.
  22. There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace – Aldo Leopold
  23. I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament – Christopher Lasch.
  24. Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought. – Lord Acton
  25. the human mind does not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol – Rory Sutherland.
  26. It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit Noel Coward
  27. What I’d like is to meet a man I could take off my hat to and say: “Thank you for having got born, and the longer you live the better – Maxim Gorky.
  28. The idea that freedom is merely the ability to act upon one’s whims is surely very thin and hardly begins to capture the complexities of human existence; a man whose appetite is his law strikes us not as liberated but enslaved . Theodore Dalrymple.
  29. If truth is what you seek, then the examined life will only take you on a long ride to the limits of solitude and leave you by the side of the road with your truth and nothing else – Thomas Ligotti
  30. Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality – John Gardner
  31. Yes, one can take a handful of crisp one dollar bills and practically water your mouth over it, but this is a kind of person who is confused like a Pavlov dog, who salivates on the wrong bell… – Alan Watts.
  32. One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen – Philip Wylie
  33. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot—it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. – Joost Meerloo
  34. Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. – Bono
  35. Choice implies consciousness – a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice – Eckhart Tolle
  36. Every society produces its own cultural conceits, a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrive in the face of all contrary evidence – Jack Weatherford
  37. Within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue – EO Wilson.
  38. Most therapy programs do little more than provide psychopaths with new excuses and rationalizations for their behavior and new insights into human vulnerability… – Robert Hare
  39. The takeaway from all these observations is that our species seems, somehow, to derive more benefit from speaking than from listening – Kevin Simler
  40. Law is neither a divine revelation nor a scientific discovery. It is a wholly human creation that includes the contribution of those who claim to study it and who cannot remain blind to the values implied by their interpretations … Alain Supiot
  41. While economics is about how people make choice, sociology is about how they don’t have any choice to make. – Bertrand Russell
  42. Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles – Bernard Suits
  43. The only real struggle in the history of the world… is between the vested interest and social justice – Arnold Toynbee
  44. Intersectionality? I’m not sure but I think I have it. DMITRY DYATLOV.
  45. History repeats itself because man remains at the same level of being—namely, he attracts again and again the same circumstances, feels the same things, says the same things, hopes the same things, believes the same things – Maurice Nicoll
  46. The history of the twentieth century encourages the thought that the easiest way to generate productivity in a modern society is by nourishing the motives of which I spoke earlier, namely, those of greed and fear. But we should never forget that greed and fear are repugnant motives GA COHEN
  47. Brown University’s Student Services helps students answer the compelling question: “How can I bring sex toys into my relationship?” – Heather Mac Donald
  48. We can’t believe what we believe to be untrue, and we can’t love what we believe to be unreal. – Peter Kreeft
  49. the only people who have proof of their sanity are those who have been discharged from mental institutions – Marshall McLuhan
  50. “In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best.” Marvin Minsky
  51. Have you ever considered the possibility, said Rumfoord, “that everything went absolutely right?” – Kurt Vonnegut
  52. A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue – Daniel Webster
  53. Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message – Malcolm Muggeridge
  54. When people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past – Austin Kleon
  55. Both tolerance and respect are empty virtues until we actually understand whatever it is we are supposed to be tolerating or respecting – Stephen Prothero.
  56. Asked to resolve problems in a language that is not their own, people are less likely to depart from standard accounts of rationality – Cass Sunstein
  57. Good God, if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of days, it’d die of remorse on the third – Malcolm Lowry
  58. It’s a very funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get – W Somerset Maugham
  59. You can’t make history all the time, Dougie. Sometimes the best you can do is make money – James Ellroy
  60. This finding or inventing of words for incomprehensible things has nothing to do with understanding. On the contrary, if we could get rid of half of our words perhaps we should have a better chance of a certain understanding. – P.D. Ouspensky
  61. As soon as you concern yourself with the “good” and “bad” of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. – Morihei Ueshiba
  62. Bad things happen when good people pretend nothing is wrong – Corey Taylor
  63. if your Problem is someone else’s behavior, you go to a program for the solution, because the solution might be to do nothing. Whitney Cummings
  64. All I know is this: nobody’s very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down – Ken Kesey
  65. a little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation – H H Munro
  66. Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits. – Studs Terkel
  67. Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows. – R.H. Tawney
  68. The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all – Kurt Gödel