the more they stay the same.

Links to the New Yorker, also the article is a bit long.

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As Homo sapiens we tend to identify ourselves with the tools we use. Our earliest ancestors chipped flint and so we call it the Stone Age. Later, mankind learned the smelting of ore and so the Bronze and Iron Ages were born. Man’s understanding of tools continued to evolve and deepen and so came the industrial revolution and with it unprecedented wealth and terrifying poverty. Now we live in a time of instant communication, ideas flit down miles of fiber optics at the speed of sunlight and so we call it the Age of Information.

Throughout all the many ages of mankind one truth has remained consistent; the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Most of us have never encountered a handbasket filled with anything more sinister than a few overripe Easter eggs. Still we insist, with certainty and fervor, that the world is bound for a diabolical hand basket that almost no one has seen. If fact, there is only one person in the history of the recorded word to claim an encounter with this readily portable scrap of damnation, a thirteenth century Italian poet named Dante Alighieri. According to Dante, the handbasket can be found in the inner most circle of hell. This fiendish satchel is allegedly reserved for ungrateful children who are too busy pretending to be big shots to give their poor forgotten mothers a call. Those familiar with Inferno will know that Virgil balked at the thought of leading Dante into that twisted realm and so the mind-bending tortures that await these vile sinners remains a topic of great controversy among theologians. Some say that the inside of the hand basket resembles an overheated station wagon with a broken radio, others claim that it is a dimly lit sitting room were all the furniture is covered in plastic and everything smells of cat feces. Most theologians will concede that the realm is likely populated with lonely grey-haired demons in housecoats.

It speaks to the durability of the world and our species that it and we can go to hell in a handbasket for going on now 250000 years and still be here with nary a singe to show for it. Despite this track record of continued existence in the face of hell held in a basket, apocalyptic cults continue to thrive. I’m not just talking about the sort of wackiness that our wise and benevolent President ascribes to either. Environmentalists tell us that the planet will die, economists tell us that China will own our government, and baseball fans have been nearly as disillusioned by steroid abuse as they were by the last players strike.

The thing is, all these chicken-littles are right. The world will end, is ending, has ended. But even as the world dies it is reborn; sorry rapture candidates, there’s no easy way out, you and yours are stuck here with the rest of us until the sun goes dark. It’s past time to stop worrying about the end of all we know, instead lets prepare for all that is to come.

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You may want to skip on down to one of the, ahem, “entertaining” entries because in this post I’ll be dealing with thoughts and concepts that hopscotch along the border of my conscious and unconscious mind. Philosophy is a slippery creature. You have this thought about truth, beauty, the divine, life’s purpose, and whatever else; but you can’t communicate it, because it’s a pure abstraction, it has no context outside your own skull. Try and tell people about your brilliant idea and you leave a trail of glazed eyes and misconceptions.

So then what? You could become a hermit and write long rambling screeds on clay tablets decrying the debauched state of petunias. Of course to keep the riff-raff out you’ll want to write in your personal shorthand; start with a Basque grammar and a dictionary of Sumerian hieroglyphics and get creative. Unfortunately this route won’t get you far; petunias will remain damnable decadent and a diet of tree nuts, grasses, and squirrel will make you constipated. Option two is to build a bridge of thoughts. You start out with ideas that anybody can understand and then you add convenient assumptions, strange little diagrams, and classical allusions until you arrive in triumph at the big thought. Make sure the big thought is something catchy like “I think, therefore I am” or people will be just as confused and perturbed as they would be if you had told them about your strangely sexualized demonic cat dreams. Keep that freaky shit to yourself.

What the point of all this? Well I have no intentions of going hermit and I never dream about cats, demons, or demon cats. I guess that means that this is the start of my thought bridge, “But it hasn’t started traversing anything.” True, but you can’t just go building bridges willy nilly, you need some sort of crevasse to cross, and if one doesn’t exist, well you go and pile up dirt and dig holes until it does. So consider this the construction of the crevasse soon to be bridged for your convenience. Really, just as soon as I remember where the hell I was going with all this.

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An actual train of thought lifted directly from my cortex earlier tonight.

Hmm I’m hungry, but dinner won’t be done for another half an hour. These bananas are too green eat. I know I’ll have a beer, that’s a healthful pre-dinner snack. That beer was cold and delicious, but dinners not ready yet. These bananas are too green to eat. I know, I’ll have a beer, that’s a healthful pre-dinner snack. And so it goes.

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I've gone through the settings and it should now be possible for anyone to add a comment, not just those with google accounts as was the case before.

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I was coming home from Germantown the other day and I saw an abandoned car. It was a rusty brown Buick LeSabre with the hood propped and three blocks for every one wheel, which is not the ratio recommended by Buick. It’s not unusual to see a cannibalized car in Germantown but this particular car has been lodged in my head. Partly because it had been abandoned in an intersection on the main road leading to RT 1, the primary way of getting the fuck out of Germantown. All I wanted to do was leave Germantown. I didn’t want to deal with the traffic snarls that immobile Buick can make if put in just the right place. But more importantly I didn’t want to think about the implications of a car with mostly no wheels and probably no battery in a busy intersection. Who wants to be confronted with evidence that the world is filled with the kind of assholes who would put a car in a really inconvenient place and then remove all possibility of it being moved without the aid of some sort of super badass tow truck. Then I saw it, the blue and white calling card of our fair city’s most dedicated service. Yes, an intrepid member of our beloved parking authority had with unwavering devotion to his mission written a parking ticket for a car that will never move again. That ticket is a metaphysical earthquake; follow this sequence of events:

1) Oh no, your car has been stolen.

2) It is left abandoned and abused in an intersection. Does god not exist, or does he just not care?

3) Your abandoned and abused car got a parking ticket. The car is going straight to a junkyard so you won’t find out about your ticket until the PPA tacks on a few late fees. The divine demonstrates itself in events big and small. This ticket is as much evidence of god’s existence as is the whole scope of the cosmos. It’s reassuring to know that there is a master maker, an all powerful being that is guiding his creation; too bad he hates you.

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Gather round children and listen to an ancient tale of dark days and darker deeds. I speak of the time before the Green Queen selected her first drones and formed the benevolent and all-knowing hive mind. Go back even further to the days before the retreat of the great ice and the formation of the Amniotic Sea, before even the mighty orca learned to hunt the land. Yes children I speak of the chaos age when man ruled himself with governments and the collective delusion called money guided his path from birth to death. These were dark and strange times children. I know for I was there.

Verily children it was in the first decade of the last millennium and the people of my time were consumed with a sort of madness. For you see, in those days there were no squidbirds dripping delicious hot frothing guano from their tentacled orifices.  Instead we were beholden to a strange and secretive sect of wizards known as “baristas” who, with their arcane knowledge and mystical machines, produced a dazzling array of beverages from humble beans. At first the people of my time were grateful for the baristas' drinks and the baristas, bathing in this good will, expanded their holdings until one could walk from ocean to ocean and pole to pole without being in want for a hot beverage. It was at this moment that the full fruit of baristas' plan was revealed. For what once had been a humble cup of coffee was now a triple shot dulce de leche latte with 2% and extra foam. And with the name came an increase their price until it was many times what they had asked before.

Now the people of my time where a hardy bunch and not easily cowed and they said unto the baristas “You ask to much; we will do without.” To which the baristas calmly replied “Do as you wish.” The people, confident that the matter was closed went about their day. But now the people struggled in their tasks, they were beset by headaches and fatigue until early in the afternoon one of them cried “Enough I will take a short break and indulge in one of the baristas’ concoctions for my mind is filled with a fog.” He went and paid the price asked and drank of the drink and all that was besetting him lifted. Those who worked with him saw that he was refreshed and they cried “Brother, tell us how it is that you do not walk into solid objects and that you sing along to the radio as if in a euphoric state.” To which he said, “I have partaken of the baristas' drink and it is good.” Thusly informed the others likewise partook and found that their own symptoms faded as a bad dream in the light of day. And the baristas smiled for they knew that their drinks were highly addictive.

Things continued in this manner for many years until half a man’s labor went to the barista in exchange for hot drinks. Perhaps mankind would have been enslaved entirely had not the baristas been destroyed during the Atlanteen migration of 2025 but that is a story for another day.

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When you start a blog you have to ask yourself “why?” What is the goal, the editorial prerogative that you hope to achieve? In my case the answer is simple. I need a place where I can get my “Babylon 5” erotica to the people. Now, if you’re wondering where to find the “Babylon 5” erotica here is what I would like you to do. Take the laptop off your chest and get out of bed. Put on some pants and head for the nearest exit. Walk to the Greyhound bus station and buy the most expensive ticket you can afford. You’re going to have a lot of time to think while you ride the bus; use it to invent a life story to tell all the interesting people you will meet in your new life as a short order cook. Never tell anyone about this day.

As I’m sure you gathered from the previous paragraph that this is going to be the same sort of onanistic exercise that most of these pages are. I see things. Then I think about them. Then I write about them. Not always in that order of course. I hope that in reading these pages you find a fraction of the pleasure that I take in writing them.

With all due sincerity
Les
 

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