"This makes me urge some entrepreneur all the more to open my KID SIZE theme park, where the houses, squares, stairs, funiture (not "furniture") all start out baby-scale huge and diminish as you go. Grow. Big park."
Call it Big Park.
"This makes me urge some entrepreneur all the more to open my KID SIZE theme park, where the houses, squares, stairs, funiture (not "furniture") all start out baby-scale huge and diminish as you go. Grow. Big park."
Call it Big Park.
The worth of a human being is beyond one's reckoning.
Yes, even your own.
I never went ice skating because I can't swim
I had a dream where I was on a social media site where this guy I never liked, barely knew or interacted with (we didn't see eye to eye) who had a long-running shtick of drawing vignettes from his life as a cartoon clown (Smelly Stinky Diapers The Clown) had left a big sour goodbye post in which he as usual touted the greatness and indomitability of his weaponized glum clown persona but fuck you and fuck IT - he's done.
I'm pretty sure the whole long-running thing was anti-comedy, since it didn't seem to be even trying to be funny. Just a clown in polka dot comically oversized diapers and blue nose (in the colored ones - most were b/w), huge frizzy clown wig that was a normal brown color, and makeup applied differently each time - in defiance of clown norms. You're supposed to be like a classic KISS member! Same face, bro! But it was not funny, nor trying to be, seemingly. Just sour human interactions and a grudge-filled thought balloon as he'd walk off each time pissed.
Anyway, I left a comment that was part sincere tribute and part lamentation on clowns, kind of anti-clown overall yet sympathetic? It was beautiful. I was touched. I don't think he'd see it - I scrupulously didn't look at the post date, but I sensed he was long gone.
When I woke up I realized I had no idea what that social media site was supposed to be, and as to this clown I'd never encountered him at all. Despite an immediate knowing of long if minor backstory and familiarity between us, and a seemingly deep memory of his (pretty well-drawn actually) cartoon clown persona hijinks!
RIP Smelly Stinky Diapers
It was weird. He seemed to be cryptically boasting how being a clown was excellent for getting laid by babes (he didn't put it so bold or vulgar, but pretty obvious) but because he wasn't getting the recognition he deserved overall - he was done clowning. Huh? Wait what are you a clown IRL, TOO?
I thought the clownification was an add-on for art's sake. A lens through which to view ordinary life, by a self-image that improves nothing.
"We lie because the truth does not meet our high standards."
Is it true or false that establishing an effective value system will pave the way for the development of your integrity?
This makes it smack of artifice, which is not necessarily apt.
Can we define “system” very, very loosely?
If so, then it is:
True.
But what I mean by that could be made more clear. An illustration is indicated.
Example of “value system”
Merely as an example.
You can see how a system like that would make it a piece of cake to develop, and even ramify, elaborate and elucidate integrity. A piece of cakewalk - and don’t mind the icing on those roughshod high-gloss spit-shined steel-toed sh!tkicker workboots you’ve grown into, at some well-missed point during all this dance!
You know.
I must cop to being a bit foolish, here. At first you spoke of system, and I was like “SYSTEM! PAH! IT DON’T TAKE ALL THAT! It flows in natural nested dovetailing of splendidly-dependent and radiant parts in sensible, even reasonable relation! It just happens.
Yes, well, so it does. But as I teased it out up there in steps…that thing IS a system.
Well, so is one’s heart plus all attendant vessels.
And so is one’s brain, plus all attendant nerves.
So yes.
A system like those two is essential. BOTH are needed. And a system like I laid out exemplar-style, as an example - that’s simply the natural outgrowth of those two, fed at need or want by eyes, ears, skin, tongue and…the other one. Nose. And it unfolds into place in a process of progress untamed and undesigned, mostly, with a bit of constant-gardener action throughout, in thoughtful pruning here and there as the whole thing - it does not tame, no - it trains.
The system trains itself, and you with it. And you grow yourself, with system well-schooled and unruly in your train.
So yeah. The answer is:
True.
There is a considerable profusion and embarrassment of other systems available.
“Try mine!” I pointedly do not say.
“Use your judgment not mine,” I say.
The system I outline is rightly called a consciention (or “consciension”) system. It’s purposeful aim: to do all that is right and necessary to the case, case-by-case, catch-as-catch can. Naturally spotting wrongs is a given, pfft. Avoid or oppose or destroy those, they are neither right nor necessary.
There is also the flip-pole of conscientious: scrupulous. Here the emphasis is on BAM. STOP. EYES WISE for bad and wrong, and DON’T.
Neither way is more childish. Either way serves. Each ways top aim trails the other’s bottom in its wake, and is not necessarily neglectful of it, it’s just not the focus.
The system you find or make to embrace suits your strengths and weaknesses to a “T,” ideally: to feed grow and train the former to better and farther aim. To stunt and whup and disdain the latter like the mutt-mongrel inobedient domestically and hunter-gatherly USELESS nondogs they are, only perhaps gentle it up a bit.
To find what suits is the key to unlocking all your coping, thriving and defense mechanisms (most of them taken off the shelf at Culture Nurture Mart) and disassemble, upgrade and weaponize them - preferably in a nonviolent way, but you get the idea. Hard, horrible world betimes we’ve got to stride with feet or roll upon, fly or set sail over with device. It takes strong kung fu to walk this world without armor and armament.
Well, you’ve got some in you. Integrity is its mastery.
Mastery is effortless aim to whatever end’s desired, in one’s chosen field.
Let yours be life.
Morality is any concern in right and wrong, to tell between in order to further right or oppose wrong.
Morality’s deepest, highest aim has always been self-control. For it’s always been we, each individually, who have to find, cobble, design or practice to discipline (rising towards mastery) such aids and guidance.
Self-control doesn’t work on others.
Self-control is made in two main parts: self-restraint, and self-aim.
Some do it all one way. Some do it all the other. Most rock an interesting mix.
I am an original, unscrupulous but highly conscientious unprincipled moralist.
A value system is one way to get to integrity intact! There are probably others I haven’t properly noticed or known. These things are clearest on the inward glance, if you care to look. Another’s is harder to judge.
Cheers.
Don't think "There's somebody out there for me." Think "I'M somebody out there for somebody!"
I remember when I first heard it, nah, second heard it (because it was after the first full listen-through*) I was like, “This is the weakest song on the album.” To be fair: the album was Back In Black. Even still.
*If it’d been the first time I’d heard it, that would’ve been pretty impetuous. It’s the second track!
Even still.
I can’t tell you how many concerts I’d go to and the band (usually AC/DC) would play “Shoot To Thrill,” and I’d be like - again? Then I’d be like, “It’s the crowd’s fault. Stop encouraging them you guys. Save your cheers!” Save your berserk revelry - it’s only “Shoot To Thrill”! Later (it kept happening!) I was like, “It’s because it’s a song from Back In Black. A case of great-by-association, clearly. They’re cheering the idea of the band playing songs from that album.” Which I could get into. Great album.
Much later, when they put it in that Iron Man movie (2, I think), I was like you assholes. WHY?
So many better songs to choose for this. Why not Live Wire? Flick Of The Switch? Heatseeker? Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap?
Big Balls?
Whatever. Shoot to thrill, Tony. I mean it fit pretty well, as used.
After that something in me broke down. I figured “There’s something in this song people actually like on merit. Shoot To Thrill qua Shoot To Thrill.” I’m not ashamed to say I knuckled down a bit. Read some modern philosophy. Found out about qualia. I mean, I already know about qualia, but it had never occurred to me…perhaps this was the key?
Every time the song came on after that, I gave it a chance. Then just now (after about five further years of openness), suddenly I realized the song was on in the background, and it had just shifted into full gear for the first verse, and I without consciously noticing was totally on board - off and away!
I had been rockin’.
So I let it roll. By the guitar solo I was like, yeah! “What are people’s problems? It’s a fine song.”
And I came straight here for a vigorous and spirited defense. Set the record straight. Folks, the verdict’s in. This is an okay tune.
DAMN OKAY.
In fact, (belated retroactive spoiler alert for the post title) it’s pretty great. And I don’t know if you’re savvy on the rankings, but that’s a damn sight better than pretty good.
It may even be great. Jury’s not quite in on that one.
No need to rush truth, people.
I think a principal flaw of humanity is the refusal or failure to grant the other’s expertise. I mean here no stupid human trait mastered to trick level (magic trick, in radical effortless cases). Nor do I mean mere boom erudition magnetized by and alchemized in application and practice to depths incapable of sounding for the comparative layperson.
Both of those are excellent! They spice life up like whoa, and leave us often wondering for more. Both are entirely beside the point, here. Exclude them.
I mean the primal expertise we have. I believe we all have. It is expertise that comes will-ye or nil-ye in a sustained and continuous navigation of self into, within and all through reality. Only a fool would balk at acknowledging yes, this one has had dire plight experience and lived to tell right from wrong, stupid, impossible and unworkable plus plain misguided or mistaken aim - and in all candor, it wouldn’t even occur to most fools. To bother balking at so obvious a duh! Or to decisively withhold such acknowledgement, it wouldn’t occur to them. And in saying this, please know: I myself am a fool. Sorry. Too obvious?
It is never the other’s intelligence one insults with the obvious, but one’s own. Maybe. Most fools (being the only ones who could so balk or refuse) remain inconsiderate of it. Insensate - justly so! They have their own hands, fool! And overflowing in all moment, mostly. Or else all too empty, and such others-assessments ring truly hollow then. A vain procession of bells, tinkling as they take their toll unheeded in a mind occupied by emptiness. I’d disregard that, too.
So I do not assign fault let alone blame, here, but cut us a break. We do what we do because it saved us for this moment. We have much misaligned in us, much unexamined - and very much well-known in experience good, bad, ugly, and rare: brightly, brightly and with beauty! Those last flash to mind when we recall who we see ourselves being. In our best moments, and at our best. Who we are, which is also: what we are capable of.
Which is a mark well-missed and rued in mess-up and deferred untangling, basis-banging and hard work reasoning back up from where we fell - finding why, to aim from thereby. Hard work indeed, and few hark to a clarion note of joy in’t! And so unharked, the note unsounds. Joy never was unless felt and known. Joy never is, unless opened and surfed in a sense innocent and driven curiously to wonder. “Why not always such joy?” BECAUSE, STUPID.
Because: stupid. Yes.
Yes. I am too hard on us. Yet in fairness to myself, and with a mercy I’ve learned to my grief is all too well-deserved (wretch that I am, and do) I am also too hard on us. I mean for us. I have a hard on for us, for persons more than for humanity, that no amount of fad ice bucket challenge could droop, except for occasional tension relief as one’s organ of inexorable jut for humanity must needs exhale.
It exhales blood, but I mean the whole thing spiritually. Not in a gross, physical way. Far be that sh!t from me - and don’t get any on you, either. I assure you it is psychologically impossible to me to mean such things such ways. I find nothing gross in that sense in the physical! Rest assured this lil’ pure boy knows no shame in what’s only natural. Wow. Kill this tangent please, buddy.
Let’s bring it home, buddy. We must be buddies to each other, yet first perhaps: we must buddy ourselves, in a truer and more peaceful buddiness. A peace which finds its purpose within us: a place which exists to buddy from. A root which shoots to trunk and branch in spreading canopy, twigging like mad in budding that blooms not to fruits, so much, but in…bears.
Okay never mind I lost it.
IT’S THIS.
Others views, routines, coping-thriving-and-defense mechanisms and drives, values, tendencies, habits - all their inner array! Its greater splendor blissfully unknown to us (thank God). Which to our cocked eyes, all-askance in the pants and panting for understanding, may yet seem twisted - slipped, far too far-fetched to be fetching, ground to dust and metal shavings in an acrid burnt chemical smell of mismatch and disproportionate exertions, slipped and caught locked gears, perverted, stupid, dense or too-fancy-flighty, or in any other way disarrayed - are not so.
They are fit.
In the sense of “best fit.” With the understood tacky tack-on “…available.” With the further sad cynical note of “or any way, available to examination and trial, largely unexamined, largely untried. ‘Unavailable’ in that sense.” Yet don’t we know? Others are all too painfully aware of the misfit and misalignment that clangs within them, as it echoes out to ripple and widening flood in consequence of their choices and acts. In consequence, mostly, of unexpected outcomes. Unpredicted (well, unpredictable surely!) response.
We know. We know too well the dissonance within, and where and how it meets and fails often to mesh with the dissonance without. We know where and how we don’t fit better than how we do. Either way “why” remains elusive.
Herein though lies our expertise.
It should not be dismissed at all, let alone lightly. Yet we do. And so often, without passing thought so much as only passing through.
The symptom observed is this: the other, apparently, doesn’t know any better. The tart remark scribbled in our interview pad is: how the hell can they not? We know better than that. Please note the glint of humility peeping out! We really cannot credit or fathom that another’s ability is less than ours to grasp what we’ve found-and-valued obvious. We almost entirely neglect to note: obvious is a valuation that a) depends entirely from the found thing’s fit and pop once nested in one’s complex of inner frames, metrics and ironmost assumptions! Obvious pops a certain way within the known. But b) also depends on actually noticing the thing. Whereas invisibility to notice is practically the main superpower of the obvious! I digress. Again.
Shift the interview. Self-examination room. The symptom observed is this: of all the potential ‘better’ coursing and circulating abundantly to be known upon this specific problem we note we have, this too-frequent clash of gears-and-lenses within, HOW DO I KNOW which IS the better piece to install? And which will fit with what I’ve got? And not force too much inner wrenching discard and revision? OH DUH-FVCKADOODLE DODGE!
This specific misfit mangle-clash is not after all that bad. Perhaps it does not need fix? Perhaps it ain’t broke, so much as baroque. Just part of my unique and dare-I-say jaunty setup! Others have worse, and don’t even know or seem to deal with it. So complacency okay?
Yes, complacency okay overall - but on how many individual points, now? And the dissonance of misalignment between our points-complaced and theirs grows, nobody knows how much or how far. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Everybody knows how much and how far. “Why” remains elusive.
Yet upon the spike of the moment, we’ve declared a point insoluble and moved on. We must, to be okay with our imperfectible selves. Another gold star on the benevolence-charged kindergarten report card of our own known well expertise.
The flaw is this. Couldn’t we risk seeing others in the same way? THEIR report cards look like sh!t in our mind half the time! We grade not on the curve of a bell, but on some absolute per-point pivot system where faults must be ganged by redeeming qualities in quantity to offset - or the other falls in rankest rank! Yet really if we step back detach a bit, surely the work they do is not too dissimilar to our own. A difference in substance rather more than kind, and to scorn to see it is…rather less than kind.
By my lights anyhow. Important disclaimer: I only think this. It may be no more or less real than thoughts others have, for all I know. Sorry about the digression, up there by the way! It was no dick joke, merely a metaphor perhaps too equally fulsome and sincere. I need to learn the lesson myself:
Work not too-assiduously the first metaphor that comes to hand. Chances are, that bird should have remained unmolested in the bush, where its worth could be charitably graded “unknown.” Not bushwacked and carried high back to civilization in triumph! “Please! It’s a bird! It’s worth so much in my hand!”
With this post I award myself the coveted Master of Subjectivity degree. Note 1: self-coveted. Note 2: “award” is slightly off. More “I both accord and afford myself” - unanimous decision with one abstemious, begrudged assent to no opposed. 2: it is one degree only. There are at least three-fifty-nine others, and may be as many as 7.8 billion odd. Go get your own. Mine is taken, and indeed too far.
"Defecate" is to rid oneself of feces. "Fecate" then is to attain feces. Fecation is eating.
(please note: this is a children's book. Each line appears subscript or superscript upon a full-page gorgeous yet fetchingly casual illustration).