BARREL OF MONKEYS: "GENESIS" in Reverse


I consider myself a Democrat. Been called a Socialist. Definitely a bleeding heart liberal.


As a child from a traditional southern family, playing Barrel of Monkeys on the floor, church every Sunday, doing well in public school, learning a trade; in every sense privileged .........


Comfortable in middle age, an avid news reader, on learning the tragic story of a full grown chimpanzee destroying the face of a woman who offered a toy, only trying to help it's owner coax her surrogate child back into his cage......


Today being confrontational, ribald, offensive, restless, rebellious.......


How did I get here from there?


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Saturday, January 30, 2010

DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS & QUEENS!


Below is a link to a video that has always fascinated me.
Couldn't help noticing, how the people talking in the background,
seem to be mere spectators instead of.....
participants.

Battle at Kruger



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

It seems there are two laws that govern the universe:

Law of Nature
Law of Human Nature

The later believing we are exempted from the previous one.


Thursday, January 28, 2010

Fatally Flawed Primate: Just a Theory



Slang Dictionary
smart ass
n.
someone who makes wisecracks and acts cocky. (Usually objectionable.) : Don't be such a smart ass!

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.

Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.



Natural Selection
of
Sarcasm

A long time ago, two relatives of ours
were being chased across a field
by a lion!

One monkey turns to the other and says,
"We having fun yet?"

The other monkey stops,
and
scratches his head.




I can be a bit of a smart ass,
but that's not my fault.

In a nutshell;
don't let it distract you from the point
I'm trying to make.

Perhaps the one thing most widely insisted on in the literature of the oppressed is the need and right to tell one's story, both one's own and the community's. This is implicit of course in all of literature, as we have seen. But it is even more urgent in the literature of the oppressed because.....
that right has so often been denied.


In the foreword to Fontamara, a novel dealing with the exploitation of Italian peasants, Ignazio Silone argues for the right of everyone to be heard: "Let everyone, then, have the right to tell his story in his own way."{7} Both aspects are crucial-to tell one's story and to tell it in one's own way of speaking-and both have ethical implications. Suppressing people's stories, whether consciously (as when slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write) or unconsciously, is immoral. But so may be presuming to speak for someone (as well-meaning reformers often have done) or requiring them to speak only in the public language. The black poet Langston Hughes understood this:

. . . someday somebody'll Stand up and talk about me. And write about me- Black and beautiful- And sing about me, And put on plays about me! And I reckon it'll be Me myself! Yes, it'll be me.

One of the problems with telling one's story in one's own way is that the oppressor often controls language.

 "The exile of a poet is today a simple function of a relatively recent discovery: that whoever wields power is also able to control language and not only with the prohibitions of censorship but also by changing the meaning of words. . . . [W]hole zones of reality cease to exist simply because they have no name." This is why merely telling one's story can be a revolutionary act-and it is not only Communists who suppress stories.



The opportunity to tell one's story is at the heart of our sense of justice. All legal systems call for the airing of stories, including that of the accused, as the necessary precondition for justice being done. The right to speak is given to the vilest criminal. (God even allowed Adam and Eve a chance to tell their side.) But there is also an ethical responsibility to listen to these stories, and to listen without prejudgment. We recognize that a court which goes through the motions of listening to the accused but which has already made its decision beforehand is not a just court. As there are ethical implications in allowing the marginalized to tell their stories in literature, there are also great implications in how we listen and respond.
 
The literature of the oppressed believes not only in the right of and need for storytelling, but also in its power. Storytelling can change things-within the storyteller, within the hearers, and, perhaps, even within the larger society. Most of all, storytelling has the power to heal. A battered woman in the opening line of a short story by Jane Augustine reveals the psychological necessity of bearing witness: "If I don't tell someone, I'm not sure what will happen. I'll crack perhaps."




"GENESIS" in Reverse.




They called Monday and said they wouldn't need me this coming Wednesday; that Dr. J was going to work the rest of the day.  I have a feeling it had to do with the political argument we got into the previous Wednesday; me being the lone bleeding heart liberal in the middle of a conservative hotbed.  By convention, I'm suppose to be outside my comfort zone,  keeping my mouth shut;  but,  I don't.  Instead, it gets uncomfortable for all at times.




Being the day after we lost the Senate race in Mass., was the worse place for me to be working.  It got pretty heated.  Even the head technician, someone I have much admiration for, angrily exclaimed I was the most opinionated person she's ever met as she stomps out of the room.  Not sure if it was me taking up for blacks (who could blame them for having an attitude/wasn't that long ago a black man got hanged just for winking at white women) or me getting frustrated, calling them a bunch of monkeys.


And there you have it.......GENESIS in reverse......my BLOG "Barrel of Monkeys."


I read somewhere that it's wrong to express your opinion because it put the other person in an awkward position of having to express their opinion. Someone has got to do it. Once had a friend say, "Jim! You make such a martyr of yourself!"


Wasn't my intention; just works out that way.

:^(

Not sure exactly what a blog is myself so this is my way of learning.  I understand it's a way to expose yourself online. If you got anything worth looking at, you become viral, then maybe the ability to make money off of it by placing links and ads.   LOL (or so i hope)


******


Hero to Conservatives

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said he and his staff were recently invited to a Friday afternoon “happy hour” on the terrace of Mr. Brown’s office.


“If you had to pick from a handful of Republicans who you can work with and who will be predisposed to do something together,” Mr. Schumer said. “He is one of them.”

Political reality suggests that Mr. Brown must now position himself in the center if he hopes to be re-elected. On Thursday, in the Armed Services Committee, he voted against repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that bars gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military — a stance certain to anger some voters in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal.

“I’m a fiscal hawk and a security hawk,” Mr. Brown said. “On the other issues I am going to look at every one of them and make a decision accordingly.”

hackable!
(damn)
Scott Brown only won that election because the gay community in general is pretty superficial!  And in Massachusetts, he was fair game. 

Even my own tribe disappoints me!

Monday, January 25, 2010

An innocence lost.





"You're not as nice as you used to be!"
-my mother-

My mother likes to tell a story she heard from an elderly lady who was choir director at our church, United Methodist Church of Prescott, Arkansas.

Having been approached by a couple lost and needing directions, this elderly lady answered,

"Can't get there from here."
(everyone laughs)

I'm sure the choir director was just making herself the object of the joke, and the couple got to where they were going.

But did they?

Should this be funny without being sure?

Mother hates it when I question her stories.

My version of the same story.
(hypothetical excercise)

While working in front yard ,
a car pulls over to the curb where this elderly lady is planting flowers.
Inside,
 a young woman
obviously frightened and alone,
is lost and needs directions to
an abortion clinic.
Made uncomfortable by the question,
the elderly lady answers,
as she turns and head back toward the house,

"Can't get there from here."

****

I'd like to believe this choir director would have shown empathy.
Maybe, 
even offering to go with her;
if only,
to just hold her hand.

****

It doesn't have to be my problem,
or
even real
 to
understand the feeling of being alone
and
on your own.

****






"A child is nothing more than a blank page that everyone leaves his mark upon."


-chinese proverb-


"One thing I like about the Digital age: having the dictionary at my fingertips, how easy it is to look up unfamiliar words as I go along reading." "At least....... until, I played my first game of SCRABBLE on the internet. Wow! I had no idea you could spell so many words with seven letters every time." "Now I feel pressured to catch up!"