A Murder of Crows for Today

A Murder of Crows for Today

* Guy just pulled into the Starbucks parking lot.  In a Jeep.  Huge, massive, dirt-whomping tires.  Deep waffle treads.  Tires are sticking out, at least, two feet past the Jeep frame (which is illegal as hell in a lot of states).  This vehicle looks like it could climb Mt. Killamanwhackadoodle in deep mud.  And, he looks like he’d have a bit of trouble climbing a flight of stairs – young guy too.

Give ‘em enough gasoline and most Americans can do just about anything.

* Last Sunday somebody shit (yes, shit) in one of the shower stalls at my health club.  Stunk up the whole locker room like … well, like shit tends to do.  Being as it was a Sunday, the club was pretty empty.  At the time I was there, there weren’t any men left in the actual locker room.  I went into the shower area and the stall with the poo in it had the water turned on full blast, pointed at this ethical mistake. 

Okay, it happens.  It happens.  Young father comes in with his toddler son, or daughter.  Gonna go swimming.  Comes out of the pool and the kid is freezing from the walk from the pool area to the showers.  An experience that can shift the lower track for certain.  He’s showering down the kid and the kid drops one.  It can happen (I’ve raised six kids) – it can happen. 

He’s embarrassed, really embarrassed.  Maybe this is his first child.  “Oh deary me, what to do?”  Dude!  Walkin’ off and leaving it in the shower?  No, that is not what to do.

What really bothered me though, is that my health club doesn’t seem to want to hire very many male attendants.  And so, on a Sunday there isn’t anyone on staff who can come into the men’s locker room to clean it up!  And, yes I did go out to the front desk and make the female teen-ager on duty aware of it.  But, really, what can she do? 

* My oldest daughter has gotten on my case about my observations about – fat (how else to say it?) people.  Heftiness is okay.  We all like a bit of extra pie from time to time.  Maybe, with today’s general lifestyle, we don’t get quite enough calorie burning done and a few extra survival pounds accumulate around the waistline.

But, when a visit to Walmart becomes like a carnival bumper-car venue because no less than half the people have to use those little battery cart devices, it has become something to pay attention to.  Pads of butt hanging off each side.  Filling up the whole aisle like that refreshment cart stewards use on airplanes.

* Speaking of which, on the airplane, you are asked if you would like a beverage.  “Yeah have you got Coke?”  “Yes.”  And, they pour from an open can of soda, or they open one and pour from that, into a small plastic cup. 

I get it.  The airline industry is struggling with costs.  No more meals, that is free meals.  I don’t generally drink soda anyway and being as I am a vegan, if I didn’t stipulate my veganism way ahead of time when booking the flight, I didn’t get anything.  Keep your bubbly and jerked dead animal.

But, isn’t there some other way to deal with the cost overruns than going so-o-o cheap on the snacks.  It’s humiliating.  Humiliating for the person in the customer’s seat AND humiliating for the stewards – parsimoniously portioning out parts of snacks. 

While the owner of the airline, and his or her dog, Freddy, gulp down full, non-portioned, cans of soda.

* Pretty soon, there won’t even be stewards on the airlines.  They’ll put some kind of vending machines in the back and you’ll have to read the little card about your seatbelt, yourself.  Can’t read, too lazy to read?  I hope you’re wearing a helmet.  And, instead of clean restrooms on the planes, they’ll have Port-a-johns duct taped to the sides of the plane – like maybe on the wings.

*Watching an old Indiana Jones movie.  Indy is on some kind of plane in South America and there are goats running up and down the aisle and people sitting there holding chickens.  I’ve been to South America and yes, people do take their livestock on public transportation.  So, while it’s kind of funny to compare that style of living and customs, as compared to the spoiled American standard, doesn’t it bring to mind something? 

Evolution?  Maybe, Science?

Several species of animals, inside a metal tube weighing in the region of tons {?}, flying.  Mother Nature has be looking at this, “WTF?  Hey, one of those animals is a fucking bird!”  (“I put wings and feathers on that dickwad!!!”)

* I love comedy and listen to a lot of it on my cellular device.  I have become somewhat exhausted with the joking about vegetarians and vegans as being some sort(s) of weirdos, strange … jeeze, what-the-fuck-ever.  I haven’t eaten dead animals and their by-products for most of my life and I’m really, really old and not tired or anything.

Do whatever you want.  Eat dirt if you want.  I’m not even going to make a case for not eating aminals.  Just don’t try to milk funny out of your own dumbidity.  Let me just turn the turn-around.  First you mow down a rainforest, that has the only natural cure for cancer in some endangered orchid.  Then you stick wa-a-ay too many cows on it.  You pump them full of enough estrogen (to gain artificial weight) to grow tits on a rock AND jugs of anti-biotics to keep them from dying – diminishing your own immune system to zero.  Keep ‘em fat and stupid (where have I seen that before), drive a steel bolt into their brains, hike ‘em up overhead and strip ‘em down to the bones.  THEn, more chemicals, sprays and food-dyes, rat poison to counteract all the rats that crawl around on the carcases, pooing everywhere. 

And, then, and then, burn it to kill the remaining scurvy all the chemicals missed and to render it more easily digestible.  Allowing for your own body to gather hardened fat in your cardio-vascular system, destroy your colon and, and, and (here’s the bonus) shorten your lifespan by a significant level.

“Yeah, well I couldn’t live without bacon!”  First of all bacon comes from pigs, not cattle.  But anyway, take all of the above stuff to get beef on your plate and triple it to put bacon on your plate.  But, but, but then, anyway WTF!  When humans had to survive - like - glaciers in the backyard and hike across a continent to get fresh water, high-end protein was pretty important.  Those are no longer real issues, for most of us.  Bear in mind, those guys lived about 25 years.  You can’t even get a motorcycle license, or a tattoo, until you’re 18!  Can’t legally buy a bottle of beer until you’re 21.

“Hey Dad! Can I have a sip of your antelope beer (whatever)?”

“You can have the whole thing.  I think I’m back into the cave and die.”

There is no real point to the this vegan/megan battle.  I don’t drink alcohol either, so after you’ve had your steak and four gin and tonics, we can still be friends.  I’ll drive you home.

© Dale Peterson 2017

Getting Fired From a Bad Job, Can Be a Good Thing

Getting Fired From a Bad Job, Can Be a Good Thing

So you get a job.  It pays just fine.  Could be better, but it’s scale and okay.  Checks come in every week, or month, whatever – regularly.  A person gets used to that.  With intelligent planning, a person can learn to live within a budget and make it work.  And, time goes by.  Times goes by and soon enough, a lot of time has gone by.

Any thoughts of a career – or, at least, a career that has an upward curve, begin to fade.  “As long as you can’t be replaced, you can’t get (or the bosses, won’t) promoted.”    You fill a niche, you become a special cog.  Your life becomes the ole treadmill.  Same time every day, same days every week, same weeks every year – year after year.

It seems life becomes a plod.  You become a plodder.  Driving the same road, the same times, back and forth.  Coffee becomes a food group. 

Then, one day, somebody says something; they say something in particular that forces an epiphany down your coffee-sore throat.   Nobody above you in the employment situation you are in, respects you.  Nobody.  Bosses, Supervisors – nobody who could project your career path upward, gives a damn about you. 

No one around you can do what you do.  Years of dedication and experience are totally taken for granted.  You get the scale salary upgrades, the minimum raises every year, but not really anything else.  Mistakes are reprimanded; amazing accomplishments are looked at as passé (rarely, almost never, any praise).  And, then there is that thing somebody says that just slaps you upside the head – “These people don’t really give a shit about me.”

"Epiphany" (Series #11)

And. And. And.  And, that stews in your brain for a long time.  Too long, really.  Your conversation starts to become a bit sharp.  Your patience becomes razor thin.  Soon enough, they not only don’t they respect you, they begin to actively dislike you. 

And. And. And.  And, one day it snaps.  You are pushed out of the car; moving at a high speed you are shoved out of the moving vehicle.  Scraping, tumbling, chewed up by the roadside gravel and trash; you eventually slam into the curb and realize that “it’s over.”  What was a good job became a bad job (for you, anyway) and then you are no longer in that job.  Once the wounds are cleaned, the bits of gravel are removed, the cuts and bruises have healed or scarred over, you have another epiphany; this was actually a good thing. 

A sack of sand has been lifted from your shoulders.  When you wake up in the morning, the concept of driving into a tree has become sort of faint.  Although you now have a new set of problems, mostly financial, there is a sense of destiny you had not felt in so long.  While life has suddenly become kind of scary, at least life has now become living again.  The scars from being chucked out of that moving vehicle will remain with you forever, but now there is a future that has become a real future.  It is now up to you to find that new future.  Being ignored actually feels better than being disrespected.  And yes, not being respected does feel like being disrespected.  One and the same – really.

You have to become the warrior again.  You have to stay in the game and you have to fight back hard.  But, the ones who win are the ones who never give up.  Progress is only made by forcing yourself to go around the next bend in the river. 

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson
Peterson ArtWorks on Etsy

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. 

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

Learning Must Be An Active Activity

Learning Must Be An Active Activity

When the person who mows your lawn makes more money than the person who teaches your children, well … soon enough, your lawn doesn’t get mowed anymore.

What is the function of education?  Unbeknownst to what seems like many people, the actual function of education is allow any person who can get one, is to expand their world.  It is my belief that the human mind is much like a tree (the tree of knowledge – get it?).  It must grow.  IT MUST GROW.  When it can no longer grow, it begins to die.  And, anybody who lives in, or near, any kind of forest or woods, will tell you, when trees die, they go down fast.

Now manual labor is a dignified way of life, or it can be anyway.  There is nothing wrong or immoral about working with your hands and the strength of your back.  Of course not.  If you pace yourself and use your brain about whatever you are doing, if it involves keeping your heart in good shape, you will live a long time.  Working hard is not a punishment.  BUT, never loose sight of the fact that the whole show is run by the brain, which basically formulates the mind. 

I do count among my many friends, and I tend to be a gregarious and friendly guy, so I do have a lot of friends, gardeners and plumbers and others who work at fairly manual labor jobs.  The older ones do read a lot, as I do.  All this really means is that they, first of all, can read and that they have the ability to focus on something more time consuming than belching.  Secondly, it means that they can formulate an image derived from one modality to another modality.  And, to do this does require actually thought, with a touch of acquired knowledge.

And, you simply cannot acquire that type of knowledge, without being taught.  It is really not practical to expect young people to learn how to read, without being taught how it all works.  In order to accomplish that, you must have people who know how to read to teach the young ones.  Not only do these knowledgeable people have to be able to do something, they need to learn means and methods of how to teach it.   My belief is that much like Medical training, to become a Doctor, prospective teachers need to go through various rotations as assistants to those designated as Master Teachers.  And to me, no one can actually be designated as a Master Teacher until they have run a classroom for no less than 10 years.

After around ten years, students have been taught and seen every school day up until they have graduated and then gone through college, or other job training, and even begun careers.  A track record of many successful students is the greatest testimony to a teachers teaching ability.

As much as I believe in all that, from 30 years in the classroom as a teacher, there is more.  Today – in this day and age and employment market – students need to be taught that learning (the requirement of continuous learning) will be a requirement of their futures.  Somehow it has got to made clear to the young students of this time, that learning must become a goal, in and of itself.  While it is true, you can’t force the horse to drink, once you get it to water, with young human beings the message that, “If they happen upon water, it would be to their great benefit to drink it.  Since, you don’t when the next bit of water might be available.” 

They, them, as individuals just have to aggressively learn.  Actively and aggressively grab every single opportunity to add to their base of knowledge.  As automation and computers replace what is believed to be up to 80% all manual and repetitive work tasks, the only employees worth employing will these types of people.  That is the ones who want to learn and want to add to their skill set every day.  Intellectual passivity will be the kiss of employment death within a decade.

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson
Peterson ArtWorks on Etsy

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. 

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