Coming Soon…

Dear Friends,

Coming soon to an electronic bookshelf near you…

©SCS

Talk nice-like. At least be clever…

Dear Friends,

Willard "Mitt" Romney

A couple of days ago an old friend of mine posted a question on Facebook. It read…

Why in the world would white working class people support Mitt Romney? Besides any echoes of racism I mean.

I replied…

See, what'cha got here is the basic crisis in American public education. About half the folks in this great country presently suffering the Mystery that is Democracy thinking that it is a dandy idea to give a filthy rich criminal all of their money and turn over to him the keys to a nuclear arsenal so he can realize his avowed dream of ushering in a New Kingdom of Zion ruled by a worldwide Mormon theocracy as outlined by the lunatic Joe Smith while camping in upstate NY in the 1860s where an angel named Maroni from a secret planet gave him super-double secret tablets of gold that he could not show to anybody else but had instructions for making magical underpants and how to take a bath before praying and stealing the souls of dead Jews. It all makes total sense in this context.

To this a friend we have in common commented in no uncertain terms…

Romney’s a total fake-poser-moron. A fat-ass phony piece of shit garbage asshole. Thanks for reading. PEACE.

After some thought, I replied again… 

I'm thinking of your last post, my friend, and how we use words. I trade in words. That's my business. I like to toss them like the anvils that fall out of the sky on Wily Coyote or the pianos that tumble from skyscrapers to ring with a crash and a thud unheard in an old Buster Keaton movie as he walks blissfully down the street.

For me, some precision is needed in aiming these weapons of literary destruction and obstruction. Simply name calling and cussing will persuade nobody and reduce we of good heart to the level that thugs like Romney and Gingrich and their ilk live in; a scummy pool of vitriol. When you hurl those words, please gloss them with some wit. Be as bad ass mean as you intend, but keep your wits about you. Drench those words in a syrup so sweet that those that torment us, steal from us, cheat and lie can’t help but be embarrassed by the truer than true reality of your words and the fact that they liked them because they just felt right and true.

Those bastards know what is true; most of them do. They know that their own parents would be ashamed of their foul behavior. So, don’t give those creeps a break. Don’t lose discipline. Work hard with every word you utter and keep it out of the gutter no matter how pissed off you get… even if you are as angry as I am tonight.

When Gandhi, who Winston Churchill termed a little man in diapers, took down the British Lion and unlocked the chains on the territories of the empire, he did it without firing a gun nor throwing a single punch with anything other than well chosen, often clever words delivered with an unfailing smile. He embarrassed the mightiest nation on the planet into just going home to lick their wounds. In the little dust up we got with global commercial enterprises, the same tactics can work if we keep our wits about us and lend our queer shoulders to the wheel.

Thanks to Allen Ginsberg for the purloined line. Words are fun!

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Attention: Voters in the United States of America!

Dear Friends,

This man is a dangerous, unprincipled, compulsive liar and a religious fanatic He believes that it is his destiny to usher in a "New Jerusalem on Earth" to create a global theocracy administered by the priests of The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). This mission will be accomplished following an apocalypse in the ancient Holy Land. Thus it was foretold to crazy Joe Smith by an angel named Maroni and supposedly from another planet while the extraterrestrial angel was vacationing in the woods of upstate New York.

Willard "Mitt" Romney

We cannot allow this lunatic have his hands on nuclear weapons. Let me make it really plain: we do not want this bozo to have his finger on the button that will provide him with what he believes are God given tools to invoke Armageddon. If you doubt this, do your own research on The Church o' LDS.

I should finally add, I don't personally give a damn what anybody believes. I'm an atheist and all religions seem pretty whacky to me. From animists to onion heads in saffron robes, any stripe of Christian, the several of Islam, folks that pray to elephant headed fat guys, the several flavors of Jews that I grew up with… the entire spectrum. All I'm saying is that it is not a good idea to give a deceitful yokel who is looking forward to the end of The World the means to pull off such a stunt.  

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS 

A Little Tidbit From the Archives…

Dear Friends,

Below is a little piece of work from ages ago, put on this digital mantlepiece for safe keeping. See if you can tell what it is about…

Hint! Think Greek ;-)

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

The Crisis in America

Dear Friends,

There’s been a lot of talk, gnashing of teeth, sympathy expressed, and just plain foolishness spewed after the shootings in Colorado. I’d like to make a few points from my own perspective as clear as possible.

Hand guns and assault weapons are horribly imprecise weapons. Assault weapons, semi-automatic rifles of large caliber, make up for the deficiency in their accuracy by spewing a large number of lethal projectiles in a big hurry. Pistols are good for making hamburger out of human flesh at close range.


At long range, except in the hands of a well trained shooter with good vision, time on his hands and a clean shot at a well lit enemy; well? They are not reliable at hitting the intended target. This ain’t like it seems watching western movies.

I can tell you this most assuredly, as I have had the opportunity to train on hand guns. I’ve also had the stimulating experience of being fired upon. I am grateful that pistols make very poor weapons at any range aside from those circumstances found on a target field.  Else wise, I would not presently have a head on my shoulders to make this report.

In any case, the idea of arming ordinary citizens without real training, I mean REAL TRAINING as a deterrent to psychopathic criminals or even just plain thugs is absurd. First, a nut case who is intent on spraying a crowd with bullets, tear gas, and is wearing a flak jacket, helmet and a gas mask, is likely not afraid of seeing his corpse on the evening news. He’s wagering that he won’t be around to see that news and/or is so far gone that he really hasn’t thought things out all too well.

Second, letting loose more lead flying in a darkened theater full of panicked and wounded people is only likely to cause more carnage. Even in simple situations, a home burglary, a bored perimeter guard on duty at a Marine base in Guam, a kid trying out his new BB gun, whatever, four out of five gun shots are taken in accidents. It is seldom the intended target that gets the bullet. More often it is either the baby sleeping in the room next door or the terrified homeowner plugging his own foot.

So, let’s please get a grip. More weapons of carnage, good for nothing but making holes in people and most likely to kill the innocent, are not going to make anybody more safe. We can honor the spirit of the 2^nd Amendment in such a way as we do the 4^th (we do allow folks to have their car registration and driver’s licenses revoked) and stop this homicidal nonsense.

Oh, one last thing! This guy Holmes, this mutant freak, this damaged child managed to get thrown out of one gun shop while trying to buy weapons acting “weird and making monkey noises”, got thrown off a rifle range for the same sort of simian gesticulations and behaving like a “frightened animal” in the weeks before his attack. Nobody called the cops. No. The gun shop owner referred him to a web site to get his six thousand rounds of ammo. His neighbors watched him tote in enough explosives and grenades and weapons to blow up the entire building and kill hundreds of people. Nobody called the cops.

I’m no fan of the cops where it concerns my own ill behavior, but they are there for a reason. Next time you see a kid toting heavy weapons, an old guy taking a little kid into the shower, don’t keep quiet. Don’t call the guy’s boss, a football coach. Screw your head on and don’t wait for a neighbor to make the call. You are the neighbor or the friend or the coach. It will be less embarrassing to be wrong, if your judgement is not right, than see a little girl shot or another ten year old boy raped in the shower.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

A Furthur Experiment?

Dear Friends,

Well, I'm still noodling about with Flying Meat's Acorn image editing toy with my Mac's iSight Camera. I'm getting a grip on the palette of filters and controls. I might actually know how to do something on purpose in the next few days, but I think that I'll take a break to do some writing. Hopefully my fingers, eyes and what constitutes my still existing cerebrum will retain what I've learned in this digital finger painting. Anyhow, I recommend Acorn to anybody who doesn't always need the full features of PhotoShop, and will be happy for a lightweight and easy to learn editor.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

More Nonsense with Digital Photos…

Dear Friends,

I am slowly getting a grasp of this excellent, cheap piece of imaging software; Acorn from Flying Meat, a purveyor of excellent and cheap software… um, that is redundant and superfluous and hence required no repeating again over again. Whatever.

I am a big fan of "good-enuf" tech. In most situations a left-handed crowbar will solve whatever problem confronts you. When I have more time I'll tell you about getting my uncle Murray straightened out. We did not need any iPhone crapola and fancy pants waterproof bumpers. Just a crowbar that fit snug in my left dexter which is, to you lay people, sinister. Yeah, that's another story and another topic that entails some lexicography which you don't want… or so I am to presume.

Whatever. In playing around with various filters in this $50 piece of fine  digital junk in my juvenile way, using nothing but the crummy iSight camera on my new MacBook Air and that previously mentioned excellent and cheap software, I have created the following image to annoy my long suffering beloved, a fine art photographer of great repute who remarkably puts up with my infantile verbal and digital antics with or without photographs and pictures nor being redundant again once more again.

She took one look at this and sniffed and walked away all haughty-like, like she knows art when she sees it or makes it with her camera all filmy-like and okay, right, she has more talent in her pinky toe than I do in my whole skull. Whatever. I did manage to turn myself here into an alien feline without actually having to do the genetic transformation after getting probed by those aliens that keep landing in my back yard. I don't believe that they really have any lollipops on that ship and I am not going to follow those big eyed, big headed little silver bastards up that gang plank for an extraterrestrial enema.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS