If You’re Not In The Posse, Don’t Wear The Badge

If You’re Not In The Posse, Don’t Wear The Badge

“If you ain’t sellin’, don’t advertise.  If you ain’t buyin’, don’t cut in line.”

A pick-up passes me on a bridge.  Not a big deal, but this particular bridge is one of those really steep ones.  The ones where when you, on the one side, can’t see over it to the other side.  Big hump in the middle.  Totally blind before you hit the crest of that bridge.  Cain’t see ANY of the on-coming traffic.  Now directly on the other side of the crest, from either direction, you can see a good quarter mile ahead and there is a broken yellow line indicating passing is allowed.  Most locals know this.  This is a well-traveled bridge; yes, it’s an old bridge, but using it saves dozens of miles.

It’s all fine, just wait to pass until you gets over that crest.  Nope!  There is this jack-asse behind me, who just assumes, I guess, angels are sitting on his shoulder.  Wham! Jamming around me, before the crest is this spiffy new monster tire nine-wheel-drive, really stupid pick-up truck.  There is a Huge rear window decal.  HUGe! Rear window decal that says – wait for it… HARLEY-DAVIDSON !!!!! (???)  Really?   This monster-truck idiot has a motorcycle brand company decal flashing away in his rear window,  he’s slamming past somebody (an old man – as in me) on a motorcycle, on a narrow old southern bridge (absolutely no skirt – no place to get out of the f*ing way)!   Oh, he’s a biker jock – oh yeah!  Look at the biker-guy in his monster truck!  Almost killing somebody who is actually riding a motorcycle.

Now, sometime after this … there is an intersection in the very small town in this local, right in front of the only SuperMart (rhymes with mega-store paying minimum wage).  It’s a big four-way eight-lane thing; actually each direction also has two (2) left-turn lanes.  … Ya gotta picture this.  All of these funnel into two-lane cross streets.  Re-e-ed light … green light. ,  yellow light… f***ing RED LIGHT!!! 

Got it?  Light change and it’s a stock car race, a true southern “Git thar first!” 

‘Nother pick-up.  ‘Nother four-wheel drive monster-tire hunk-o-penis comes zooming past me right through the RED LIGHT!!!  On his rear tailgate, big as a real fish, is one of those Christian fish symbols.  (???)  Turn the other cheek, love all mankind Christian badges?  Just arearin’ (ready) to mow down enybawdy (anybody) who gits (gets) in ‘is (his) way. 

?????

Two examples … I once stopped a fellow in another mega-store (rhymes with mega-store paying slightly higher than minimum-wage), which is famous for all of its associates wearing red shirts.  This young man was wearing a bright red shirt.  I asked for directions to some item, or other.  Don’t remember anymore.  He responded, somewhat indignantly, he didn’t know because he DIDN’t work there.  He said something like, “I’m never gonna wear this shirt in this store again.”  I thought, to myself, “Well, that would be a good idea.”  And, “Unless you feel like being more civil to other people.”

Back to motorcycles … under the guise of the developed nation’s religions, or general theologies and/or deeply-felt cultural mores (morals) as depicted by television, or wifi streaming entertainment.  I make note of how many really cool, and stylish, motorcycle jackets – and, obviously yugely expensive – jackets appear in the wardrobes of the actors.  Who never get within spitting distance of a motorcycle at any time during the programs.  ???

One more;  Dogs left in windows-closed, locked cars in the summer heat, with, “I heart Dobermans (or some weird breed of dog – Shitzhus?)” window decals or bumper stickers.

Really?  My thinking is, “If you are not actually on-the-team, why are you wearing the uniform?”

Note: for the brave among my dear readers, I offer a new, separate but different blog:

Equations for the Joyous Mind

A study in a matter of theory and conjecture about human brain-mind development towards retaining ever increasing meta-cognitive development.  Based on Mathematics, and I refer to Base 3 Calculus. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of people to give it a try.  But if you are in any manner open-minded and intellectually curious, the Math used is truly only a tool to condense the theory proposed. 

Thank you Dear Reader and Joy be unto you.

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson

Just published  “Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”

Mathematics – A Beautiful Thing, Really

Mathematics – A Beautiful Thing, Really

As follows – mathematicians are

“misled by an undue brevity. He (sic they) appears to think that, at this point, the advocates of infinity are content with a vague “and so on” – a sort of etcetera which is intended to cover a multitude of sins. But etceteras, common as they are in ordinary mathematics, where they are represented by rows of little dots, are not tolerated by the stricter symbolic logicians.”

Bertand Russell from his “Axiom of Infinity” (pub. 1904)

I hope I don’t loose a bunch of readers with this.  As, I have known a vast number of people in my life.  And, having been a true nomad for all of my life, I have known quite a lot of people.  Also being kind of gregarious and having one of those faces, I guess, where people just come up to me and start talking.  Sometimes it a bit strange.  On that – another day.

I was never particularly fond of Math as a young student.  At least until I started to seriously study Art and then wound up getting into pottery, which led me to glazes, which led me to chemistry.  I discovered that if you learned chemistry, as it applied to ceramics and glass compounds, you could develop lots of cool colors and other effects to apply to your pottery.  I found it fascinating.  This was my initial discovery of what I think of as “Everything is pretty much a matter of systems and when you can fully get around in any particular system, you can somewhat control it.  And, thereby achieve things you never quite thought you could achieve.”

So, one thing, then another thing … and I got into computer technology and computer coding and it epiphanized on my brain that the binary system was a fraud.

So, in reference to my own small curiosity, a tendency to “question everything”, I spent some pondering this religious reliance our modern world has placed on the binary system, or Base 2.  I am of the generation where “computers” were in vitro, in their gestation stage.  So, it occurred to significant number of politicians that, in order to keep up with the balls-out science of the Russians during the Cold War, steps needed to be taken.  “Sputnik” was spinning around the planet and, yes, you could just step outside on any clear night and see it pass blinking overhead.

Whoah!!!  Amerkans can’t let that happen.  Can’t have our – oh, enough of that nonsense.  Anyway, us American High Schoolers were tossed into a new hair-brained notion that we must learn “New Math”.  Let us just say that after a couple of years of totally disastrous results, where a major number of Baby Boomers learned to really, really hate Math, things went back to previous mediocre pursuits of American High School Math.

But, right from the beginning, I thought, “Wait!  Hey – how can you have something you are calling Base 2 when the only numbers you are using are “0” and “1”?  I don’t see no “2” in Base 2?”  Now, I was a teen-ager during a historical period where American married couples were shown on the primitive TV’s, we had at the time, as always sleeping in separate beds. (Huh? !!!)  Now what just a minute!  You got two people and together they can produce another person and yet there is always a constant distance between them. 

“Just how does that work?”

To me, it says right off that distance is something that exists and is often just sort of thrown out of a lot of Math – and, obviously out of the plots and scripts of all of the super-dumb sitcoms of that era.  As Bertand Russell points out, it becomes a kind magical element.  Or, instead of working out the details, and hence the full logic, of a given calculation, you simply throw in an “etcetera”; an, and-so-on.  Assuming thusly, “We got this far, so quite plainly, we get to infinity in the same manner.”  Once again, “Huh?” 

I would take all of this and propose my own view; the only element, and this not being composed of a single entity, but more of an element composed of a compound structure and represented by an acceptable symbol, could that element that conceived of the initial proposition; i.e. infinity.  Or, the only element which can possibly actually be infinite is that which attempts to conceive of infinity.  A circular thought, or theory?  OR, is it more of a fractal “the study of continuous but not differentiable functions”; initially proposed by Gottfried Leibniz in the 17^th century.

At any scale, the math remains the same, whether drilling into is assumed to be details or out scaling toward an overview.  Take any part of a fractal, drill it and drill it and drill and the complexity remains constant.  So remove the restrictions of scale, remove the notion of vector points and all that is left is of what is assumed to be a line is a construct of fractions of fractions.  It becomes no longer possible to say, “What is the distance from point X to point Y?”  The only question possible is, “What is the relationship of point X to point Y?”

It then becomes impossible to measure distance.  All that can be done is to plot relationships.  In order to do this we come to a project I have been working on for many years and here is the link to that new blog:

Equations for the Joyous Mind

Since this study is a matter of theory and conjecture based on Mathematics, and I refer to Base 3 Calculus, I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of people to give it a try.  But if you are in any manner open-minded and intellectually curious, the Math used is truly only a tool to condense the theory proposed. 

Thank you Dear Reader and Joy be unto you.

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson

Just published  “Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”

Tough Going – The Tough Never Stop Going

Tough Going – The Tough Never Stop Going

“Shadow puppets are not real puppets.  They are the shadows of real puppets.”

Everyone gets knocked down from time to time.  And we always hear the tired old saw, “It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get back up.”  Well, of course that’s basically bullshit.  Because pretty much anyone, or everybody, is going to get back up – eventually.  They (you) have to get back up … I mean you can’t like stay down.  At some point you are going to get back up.  Even if it’s to just run away.  Even to run away, you have to get up; unless you’re really good at running on your hands and knees. 

I supposed that’s been done, but I don’t see it working very well.

Now, I am not pretending to be some kind of example of a hero, or a person who has all this wa-hoo-wa-hoo courage and gets back up like a gladiator or anything.  Yeah, I have been knocked down a lot – and I mean I have been really really really knocked on my keester (kister …SP).  Face down in the shit, as it were.  Stepped on, stomped on, pounded to jelly quite a number of times.  Not to be confused with my being cowardly, or soft, or lacking in spine.  Not that that really matters.

Then comes, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  Hmmm … not so much bullshit, but kind of missing the obvious.  What I have noticed is that those who are tough, generally have always been tough.  The tough are accustomed to going, being tough, or at least have learned to recognize tough going.  (This is tricky to verbalize in text.) 

Some people are just simply lucky, maybe.  Some, maybe a lot of people, have not had many tough situations, so when their particular goings take on high degree of difficulty (toughness .. ?), all of a sudden they either have to accept it and knuckle down, or give up … I assume.  And, if they do knuckle down, as it were, all of a sudden they are heroes for this?  That’s the bullshit part.  People who are actually tough, never stop going. 

In fact, people who are actually truly tough, I conjecture (rarely) much notice how the going is going.  They just get up, if they’ve been knocked down, and keep going.  As a veteran Boys JV Soccer Coach, I could always tell which athletes had a good chance to move up to Varsity.  When they made a mistake, or got knocked down (for real), the ones who were truly tough, always hopped right up and got right back in the game. The posers, or players who weren’t actually very tough, would put on some kind of childish show – stomp their feet, yell at the ref, make sure everybody saw that they had been roughed up or whatever.  We called ‘em showboaters, you know like actors.

Shakespeare said, “Life is a stage and we are but players …” or something close to that.  I have read a lot of The Bard, as was required in my education, and while I totally give huge snaps for his contributions to literature and culture and all that, it doesn’t mean his stuff is gospel!  I’m sorry, Bill, but truly true life ain’t no stage.  For most of us, life is tough.  Life ain’t no make believe.  There are no rest periods  between acts.  When we flub a line in the script, or miss a mark on the stage, or screw up some part of our assigned bit, there is no rewind or do-over.  No mulligans in real life (a mulligan, if you don’t know, is a kind of freebie, off the books, redo stroke in golf – like if you really top the ball).  None of that in real life!  Screw up and it’s forever on your scorecard!

And, of course, being bipolar, I know that for a fact!  Since I’ve screwed up a lot.  This does reinforce my conjecture here, though.  For some people, maybe a lot of people (also), life is just simply tough ALL the time.  When you get knocked down, it’s like, “Well, this is familiar.”  Getting up after being knocked down becomes more second nature, than any kind of act of heroism.  When things get tough, you just push harder.  It’s what you’ve had to do in your entire personal living memory, so it’s not a big deal.  The thing is, nobody really notices it.  They only seem to notice the showboaters; the ones like the kids on my soccer teams, who acted all hurt and put upon.

So maybe, if “Life is a stage”, then it ought to be realized that most of the real work is done by the stagecrew and not the actors (or players).  And, when the going gets tough, don’t expect anyone to keep going unless they are already tough.

*** Dear Reader, please share my blogs with your friends, if you feel they are worthy (I mean my blogs being worthy.  I’m certain your friends are all worthy.)  Also, please “Subscribe” to my Blog Site – it just helps keep it going. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson

Just published  “Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”

So here is Merck sleeping – and, as I said, he’s not dead.  It’s just how he looks when he’s sleeping.

Definitely weird, right? 

Are Those Dogs Dead? : Merck and Craige IV

Merck and Craige IV

Are those dogs dead?

“Those who don’t study history are condemned.  Just condemned.  They wouldn’t know if they repeated stupidity, so they just do.” 

You may not think so and you may not like it, but old dogs do tend to show their age.  Yes, they do.  If you know dogs very well; if you have been around dogs very much, you will know when you meet and greet a dog that’s got a long resumé.  Old dogs just look at you differently.  If fact, they look at everything differently.  There is more of a, “Yeah, I know that thing, whatever it is.  Been there, seen it, sniffed it.  Yeah, yeah, so what else is going on?”  A touch of canine wisdom sort of glints in their eyes.

Really old dogs have a kind of resigned look.  The only questions are, “Is it worth getting up to investigate?  Is it worth sniffing.  Can’t see it, but the odoure is familiar.“

The next thought you can just see, is, “Nah … Maybe if it doesn’t go away in a coupla minutes … ? … then I’ll …. Zzzzzz ….. “  And, being an old man, I know how they feel.  And, knowing the dog world pretty good, I know the old dogs know that I’m an old guy; no threat to them.  There’s a bit of instinctive camaraderie between us.

I can tell, if he bites me, it’s probably not going to hurt; or hurt enough to worry about.  The old dog is thinking, “If he kicks me, it’s probably not gonna hurt, or hurt enough to worry about.”  So we’re usually cool.  Of course, old dogs prefer old women; doesn’t matter if the dog is female or male.  I’ve noticed, in general, dogs of all ages seem to like women better than men.  (Not that I can find any fault in that.)

Merck and Craige follow my wife around like … dogs … ?  Seriously, they just HAVE to be the same room with her.  When she’s at home, it’s like no one else really matters.  She says, “It’s jut because I’m the one who feeds them.”  Our youngest daughter is the one who actually feeds them and puts out their water.  So that’s not it – really.  Walks.  We all take them for walks.  Although if she is on the walk, the only person they will obey is her.  And, my wife is not at all a pushy or aggressive person.  Not like she’s all alpha or anything.  She is better looking than me, but hey!  should that really make a difference?  I mean – they’re dogs!  Can they even tell?

I have talked about how Borders tend to stick the end of their little pink tongues out.  Just this little tab hanging out between their front teeth.  Generally all the time.  If it wasn’t a bit weird, we have lived with many dogs over the years and this is not really normal, it might be kind of cute.   Plus, now get this – they both sleep with their eyes open! … !!! …  at least about half the time.  Now both of them have pretty noticeable cataracts, not uncommon with old dogs (or people, for that matter).  But it costs thousands to get them removed and several vets have said that it doesn’t really help them much.  So we figure, they can’t see much anyway, so why bother to waste the energy on closing them … I guess?

These two tendencies, along with the gray around their muzzles and general oldish mannerisms, is very strange.  A bit tricky to get used to.  We had only had them living with us for a few days the first time I witnessed this. 

I kind of panicked, saying to my wife, “Damn! Are these dogs dead!!!”  And, “Gawd, we just get them and their both dead!!!”  And, “Debbie’s gonna kill us!”  Debbie is the name of the lady who had them working for her before she retired them to our home.  Debbie la-huvS  her animals. 

She said, “No.  That’s just the way they sleep.  Look their breathing’s fine.  Pet ‘em, they show they’re not dead.”  And, she had a nice little chuckle at me.  Which was nice for her, but it took me like ten minutes before my heart rate returned to normal. 

To be continued ... 

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson

Just published  “Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”