Life's a Bitch

I’m 90, as you likely know. So, periodically, my thoughts turn to . . . Death. Yeah, I know. Bummer, huh? But not just Death. Rather, What is Death? And I have concluded that Death is a peculiar state. It is a state, when I do not just lose consciousness. Or I just lose “awareness”. No, I no longer “Know” anything, because my brain no longer functions. I don’t know if you have thought about such a state . . . when your brain no longer works. You are dead, but you no longer know you are dead . . . because you no longer “KNOW” anything. You do not even know that your brain does not work. Nope. YOU are gone. And, you are not GONE into that Heavenly space where you meet your grandfolks. Or maybe that hot place where you meet Satan. No. You simply no longer exist, and you do not know that, because you have no brain.

It’s hard to comprehend such a state of nothingness . . . a state where you no longer are aware that you are not aware. Try thinking about such a state. It ain’t easy.

Yeah, but I’m 90 and you’re not, so you may not be having such exotic thoughts. UNLESS . . . yeah, I’m thinking about the parents of those little kids who were shot AND killed in that school in Minnesota, The mom, who’s grieving now, may well be thinking about all the years her little one will not experience.  See, parents don’t think about such things normally. Instead, they think about what their little ones are having for lunch, or maybe what they are learning that day at school.  See, thinking about a state of Nothingness is not on her mind.  Or at least, we hope it is not.  We hope she is having Happy Thoughts about what she will do when her little ones return from school, and maybe, what she may fix them for dinner.

See, that young man who got out his guns and went over to that school he once attended and then began shooting at the place, was also not thinking about the possible states of non-being he might be imposing on some very young kids who had most of their lives in front of them.  See, he was unlikely to even be aware of the Death State, and what it really means.  See the young ones he killed were not thinking of that state, and now are not thinking anything. He took that away from them. Killing someone is a weird thing to do. Most people who do the killing have no idea what they are doing, because their brains are malfunctioning when they are in that act of killing.  Maybe it’s a good thing that young man was killed in the act. Now he cannot think about what he did. We might prefer it were he able to think. But his brain was malfunctioning anyway. No normal functioning brain would allow such a cruel act. And it makes me wonder what his Mother is now thinking. But more, it makes me wonder about the Mothers, and the fathers, of those dead children and what they are thinking.  “Life’s a bitch, but then you die”. Yeah, but NOT THAT WAY.   NO. Parents are supposed to be thinking about their kids graduating from school, and maybe even college someday.  They are not supposed to be preparing a Gravestone for their kids.  That’s just wrong.  So, what do we think about guns, and about malfunctioning kids having possession of guns? Not such a hot idea huh?

Well, let us all think about those parents of the little dead kids.  Send them your thoughts and prayers, even though they won’t bring back their kids.

Life: Control It

Gee, Facebook does nothing to alter its behavior if it might get in the way of its profits? And we didn’t know that? Facebook is a for-profit corporate entity. It’s what they do.  Maybe folks haven’t been paying attention, but it turns out that commercial firms, which are legal entities owned by rich dudes, or dudes hoping to become rich, actually consider profits more important than morality. Huh, who knew?

Oh and then there’s that cute story about the Church’s involvement in ignoring/covering up the abuse of hundreds of thousands of kids by church officials. Why would they do that?? Well, church profits and church control over humans. Turns out that churches are no more moral than commercial entities.  If action might affect either profits or control, then church officials see no evil, hear no evil.

We humans seem not to understand the role of money in our universe. AND, that role is growing not becoming moderated. Apparently, since nobody ever wishes to entertain the idea of controlling the influence of money, then money continues to grow in influence.  This latest thing about folks parking their money in tax havens, now in places like South Dakota instead of far-off places, only convinces me that we have ALL BUT GIVEN UP ON CONTROLLING MONEY. It controls us apparently.

So, when people get all uppity about Mark Zuckerberg being unwilling to control the nasties on Facebook, et al, because that might interfere with his money-making, I’m sorry, but it makes me laugh a bit.  And apparently Instagram, yet another of Zuckies’ creations, is proving to be hostile to teenage girls.  And everyone is up in arms. Goodness, teenaged girls coming acropper of a social media site that publishes nasty stuff about them. Uhhh, did they ever consider dropping out of that social media site???  Or did their parents ever consider exerting some parental controls over their teenager use of social media? Well, no, that’s all on Mark Zuckerberg. He should be controlling his sites such that they don’t make teenage girls do nasty things to their teenaged girlfriends.  Wow, I never realized Zuckerberg had such power that he could control teenage girls.

Yes, social media sites are potentially dangerous, both to teenaged girls, but also, frankly, to everyone who uses them.  Yes, we have Nazi’s using social media to bad ends (see republican party). Oh and then we have perverted individuals who wish to scam you in some way. They might use Facebook, but there are so many ways we communicate that the scammers of the world have an open field. My wife got a text message, telling her that Person X (someone known to me) had sent her this link. And she was supposed to click on that link. Now who should control that text communique? Shouldn’t the phone company (e.g., Spectrum, or Verizon) be monitoring such texts to assure that they are real? No?? How come? Oh, you mean, it’s up to us to control what we do—to click or not to click, that is the question  . . .

Oh, and then who should control the Trumpies (or their surrogates) who send me 10-12 text messages each day, asking me to join them at a rally, or oh, by the way, how about sending them $25? Me, asking Me, to send money to Trump? Maybe the least likely human on the planet to send Trump money???

So, why doesn’t Verizon, or Spectrum control who sends me such idiotic text messages?  Oh, cuz they expect me to censor my own text messages?

So, yeah, it would be nice if teenaged girls didn’t have to put up with all this social media crap, especially the nastier stuff aimed at making them feel like total POS. It would be nicer yet if the world didn’t contain so many nasty little idiot-malenfants. But apparently it is not to be. If God created all these idiots, then how incompetent is she??? Nope more evidence, as though we needed more,  for Darwin at work here. It does make me wonder actually, why Darwin seems to be so hard at work creating so many total cretins in America. How did we turn into a country of human-haters?  I mean, people actually still support Donald Trump??? Really??? Darwin, you’re really a badass.

And then I was drawn to thinking again about one of my favorite theories: that Nothing Follows Death. See, when we take our last breath, and that light goes out, we don’t know it, cuz nothing follows something. And, you might think, that’s awful right? Yeah, no bus to the heavenly gates, nope. Nothing. We just zero out, almost as though we never existed. Awful, huh?

Well, but stop to consider. We are all stuff that arrived out of nowhere. Yep, first there was nothing. Then suddenly a creature arrived, breathing, and eventually yelling for food and a clean diaper.  See, out of nothing came something. And we are in charge of how that something turns out, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing for the rest of humanity.  So think on that before you do something good or bad for humanity.  Sniff the flowers, check out that bumble bee who is wandering around your flowers. Oh, and do talk to your teenaged daughter about the dangers of social media—it’s worse than trying to cross a crowded street in Manhattan, and you talk to her about that, right?  So, remember, you both suddenly appeared out of literally nowhere, and you will eventually return to nowhere. So, all you have is this thing we call life, the here and now. Act like it matters, even if only briefly. Act like you can exercise some control over that life. And smile. You look much nicer that way.

The Granfaloon Called Life

Yesterday, I was driving along in our downtown area, and I noticed a car ahead with a sign, more than a bumper sticker, plastered on its trunk. The sign, in big bold letters said, “Death is coming. Where will you be going?” The sign summarized for me one of several fundamental reasons organized religion makes me alternately laugh or cry—it’s focus on death and the aftermath. It seems as though organized religion keeps telling its body faithful to hold on, death is coming, and then everything will be just grand. Apparently, being dead is way better than living. Life is simply a necessary step to achieving death and its aftermath—Maybe life is just one Granfalloon, whereas we treat it as a karass.


I keep wondering. If life is really so shitty, and death so wonderful, how come the body faithful don’t just all up and off themselves (some do, of course-see Iraq)? Oh, but then I keep reminding myself. The lords and masters of the real granfaloons—the high priests—frown on offing yourself; mainly I think, because it would cause them to become suddenly unemployed, and without a fawning public.

One would think that this far into the 21st century for heaven’s sake, mankind would have come up with something preferable to “life’s a bitch and then you die” as its mantra. But the power trip experienced by priests everywhere keeps the game going, I guess. It surely is the explanation for the Beckhole’s constant search for religious infamy on TV. I mean, in any rational universe, he would be pond scum. But here, we treat him as though he has something to say . . . oh and we pay him obscene amounts of money to con us.

It’s enough to discourage anyone.

And meanwhile, on still another planet, Sarah Barbie is still wriggling to free herself from her own verbal gaffes.