From Forrest Jones

  “Experience has proven that the simplest method of securing a silent weapon and gaining control of the public is to keep them undisciplined and ignorant of basic systems principles on the one hand, while keeping them confused, disorganised, and distracted with matters of no real importance on the other hand.This is achieved by:

1. disengaging their minds; sabotaging their mental activities; providing a low-quality programme of public education in mathematics, systems design and economics, and discouraging technical creativity.

 2. engaging their emotions, increasing their self indulgence and their indulgence in emotional and physical    activities by:
     a) unrelenting emotional affrontations and attacks (mental and emotional rape) by way of a constant barrage of sex, violence, and wars in the media - especially the TV and the newspapers.
     b) giving them what they desire - in excess - “junk food for thought” - and depriving them of what they      really need.
     c) rewriting history and law and subjecting the public to the deviant creation, thus being able to shift their  thinking from personal needs to highly fabricated outside priorities. These preclude their interest in, and discovery of, the silent weapons of social automation technology.

The general rule is that there is profit in confusion; the more confusion, the more profit. Therefore the best approach is to create problems and then offer solutions.In summary:

Media: Keep the adult public attention diverted away from the real social issues, and captivated by matters of no real importance.

Schools: Keep the young public ignorant of real mathematics, real economics, real law, and real history.

Entertainment: Keep the public entertainment below a sixth grade level.

Work:  Keep the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think; back on the farm with the other animals.”


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Mack: Christmas

 

Thanks to Mack Hall for letting me print this.

 

The Arts of Christmas

 

Christmas is pretty.  Of all the holidays, both religious and secular, Christmas inspires more and better attempts at literary, visual, and musical art than all the others.  Easter, the premiere Christian holy day, ends its somber Lenten anticipation with beautiful music celebrating the Resurrection, but in popular culture is almost ignored.  Independence Day is red, white, blue, explosions, and John Philip Sousa, which are okay, but no one spends four weeks in preparation for the Fourth.  The religious holidays of All Souls and All Saints have been perverted into the ghastly Halloween, and Thanksgiving barely makes a nod at the Pilgrim fathers before dismembering a turkey and then yelling at a footer match on television.

 

But with Christmas comes art.

 

Arnold Friberg, who painted one of the most famous versions of Washington at prayer, wisely said that art which has to be explained is not art at all.

 

And so it is with Christmas.  A Christmas tree needs no explanation, not even to an infant – it simply is, with its colored lights and angels and glass globes and "Baby's First Christmas" ornament.  Adults argue whether Christmas trees are pagan in origin (they probably are), and certainly the aforementioned Pilgrim fathers banned Christmas trees (and Christmas itself) as Romish corruptions, but a child in his wisdom delights in trees.

 

Christmas music, too, never requires National Public Radio gaseous exhalations invoking such Charlie Brown teacher-isms as "fusion," "inculturation," and "textual analysis."  Handel's glorious music is as clear to an atonal simpleton like me as it is to James Levine of the New York Phil.  Fr. Franz Gruber's simple and sublime "Stille Nacht" and Gene Autry's jolly "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" as a contract piece for Montgomery Ward both have their places in the canon, one to honor the birth of the Savior and the other to honor the cash-register. 

 

Any time a Hallmark Christmas movie is broadcast an angel rips its wings off, but there is a lengthy catalogue of great Christmas films, including Holiday Inn, The Bishop's Wife, The Shop Around the Corner, Miracle on 34^th Street, and Christmas in Connecticut.  John Wayne's Three Godfathers, with its themes of sacrifice and redemption, is laden with Christmas allusions.  Every year Linus Van Pelt in A Charlie Brown Christmas reads to us the infancy narrative from St. Luke, and he doesn't need a voice-over narrator to explain it all to us.

 

And, hey, don't shoot your eye out.

 

In the 13^th century St. Francis of Assisi set up the first Nativity scene, forever giving serious sculptors and even more serious manufacturers a subject for artistic endeavors of varying quality.  Perhaps the best Nativity scenes are the cheap ones the children can play with.  Since World War II this Catholic tradition has become popular with other Christian faithful, just in time for public displays to be shut down by some local courts, who understand it very well. 

 

Happily there was no Martha Stewart at Bethlehem to instruct Mary on decorating the Stable just so.  If Christmas begins with a stable, as St. Luke and Linus remind us, need it continue in a museum-display living room on the cover of Southern Living?  One does not imagine the Blessed Mother apologizing to the shepherds because "the stable is a mess." 

 

Nativity scenes remain simple, which is a small miracle.  In churches one sees other Christian symbols, including statues and crucifixes, which appear to have been beaten out of scrap metal by a disturbed chimpanzee with a sledge hammer.  Church committees are often deceived into paying good money for debris when a disciple of Billy Mays saliva-sprays them with polysyllabic adjectives explaining what his purported art means.  As with the emperor's new clothes, few people have the courage to say "I DO know something about art, and this ain't it, pal."

 

But art has left the humble Stable alone, not fitting it out with rocket pods or even running water, and a little child can place the Infant Jesus in His manger between Mary and Joseph, set the camels here – or maybe there? – and the ox and the shepherds where she feels they need to be, not where a decorator with a color chart and the rule of three says they must be.  Little children pretty much know how Christmas should be, and their play is the best art of all.

 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

 

Kitty Bokeh

DSC05175: Kitty Bokeh, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

This is Ghost, she is coming to live with me in Texas this weekend...

Christmas 2008
She was sitting on the bookcase looking out of the patio door. I love the tree in the background out of focus and the reflection of the lights from the tree to the right of her.

Exposure: 0.033 sec (1/30)
Aperture: f/1.7
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Just Say No To Facebook!!

Just Say No To Facebook!!, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

Facebook has unfair and cryptic policy practices. No communication with their users on violations of their cryptic policies. Just say no to their overloaded, cryptic network!! With “Customer Service” like they have, how can they expect to go public as a company and raise money? I say they can’t!! You can get Banned for no reason at all!! SCREW FACEBOOK!! Use Twitter!!

Mack re NPR

Thanks to Mac for letting me post this.

 

You'll Never Hear This on NPR

In an unsettled time when some discount stores will sell a customer only 100 pounds of rice a week (Oh, no!  How will we survive the coming winter?), one is strangely comforted by the eternal 1968-ness of National Public Radio.  Here are some observations that will never be heard on NPR:

 

We've polled everyone who works for the station, and no one here knows what "Hegelian dialectic" means.

 

Food prices are skyrocketing, huh?  Does this mean we have to scratch our files of stories about greedy, overweight Americans?

 

We really are being just a little too, too precious by bragging about how we don't have advertising but then really do have advertising anyway, and then spend hours and hours of air time begging for money because we don't have advertising.  We also receive hundreds of millions of your dollars in tax support every year, and voluntary donations are tax-deductible.  This message is sponsored by the Calvin and Ethel Plonk Foundation for a Greener and More Diverse Recycled America.

 

Have you noticed how cleverly we phased out global warming in favor of climate change?  Clearly the planet, which has been cooling and warming in cycles for millions of years, is little influenced by your lawnmower.  However, if today there is rain and tomorrow there is sunshine we can call it climate change and still blame it on your lawnmower.  Climate change – formerly known as weather.

 

Today on All Things Considered we're not going to feature a single story about some lazy oaf in New Orleans who can't be bothered to clean up his own front yard while whining about how the rest of you aren't sending him enough money.

 

Following All Things Considered we'll have Car Talk and then Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, known to radio professionals as dead-air time.

 

And now an interview with AlleeSHEyah von O'Hara y Gomez d'Raheem, the daughter of a Chinese-Irish father and a Spanish-Moroccan mother whose parents were persecuted everywhere else and who then came to America and received lots of freebies but were snubbed by a grocery-store carryout which is why AlleeSHEyah hates America and wrote an award-winning book of I, I, I, me, me, me poetry that doesn't scan detailing her existential angst. And, honestly, her book stinks. 

 

In the next hour we'll feature an award-winning musician, Friedrich "Stubby" Hamncheese who plays fusion Afro-German-Suomi on an Indian sitar hand-made by unemployed Sherpa draft evaders in Toronto, and, really, that doesn't make any sense at all.

 

You people need to get real about fair-trade coffee.  If some grocery chain re-labels a can of coffee with pictures of happy Colombians holding hands and dancing barefoot in the rain forest, and charges you two more dollars for it, are you stupid or something?

 

We use words like existential, ethnic, fusion, diversity, and fair-trade a great deal because that makes us sound, like, you know, smart and stuff.

 

And now, commentary by grumpy old Daniel Schorr, who disapproves of everyone.

 

In the end, we at NPR are just a bunch of otherwise unemployable white liberal arts graduates who play old records and subtly sneer at people who have real jobs and love America.  We even think Al Franken is an intellectual. So why would you send us money?

 

-30-

 

Prom night -- tattoos, cell 'phones, and rented clothing. Why?

Good Place To Purchase Books!

I know that many of you read books and novels from many of the big name authors.  I like as much as any to read them as well.  If you go to Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, or even Wall-Mart you can pick them up in hardcover for a premium price.  If you wait for a little bit, you might be able to get them at your local Goodwill outlet.  We went there and have bought several books for a little money. They price hardcover books at $3 and paperbacks at $1!  I purchased a coffee table book that retails for well over $60 at the local goodwill for $3!  They are all donated to the stores and they resell them for profit to help the needy. We have found all the big name authors and the books are in good condition; most of the at least.

 

I read a book by Brad Meltzer about 6 months ago called “The Book Of Fate” that I purchased at Wall-Mart.  I found his first book  “The Tenth Justice” and I got it for $3!  It is in excellent shape and in hardcover.  So if you are looking for some bargain priced books, Goodwill is a great place to go look and it is for a good cause.

 

RMStringer

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You have no conscience and it seems you never will - Cyberaktif

 

Morality Play?

I live in America. It used to be at one time the greatest place on earth to live. Now Rape, Robbery, and Violence like Pastor John C. Hagee in San Antonio said one day; they are the norm on the TV and the Evening News. Is America the fabled Babylon? I think so. With the evening news being about Brittany Spears and her latest romp; where is the real news? We have a whole generation of little girls that want to be like her. We have a whole generation of boys dressing like they are from prison with the saggy pants that do not fit them. Urban music is the programming media for the next generation. The media is owned by corporations and they filter what we hear and see, only letting out what is in their best interest. The declining morals of our society have been occurring for many years but I think it can be traced to a critical point when Madalyn Murray O'Hair filed suit to stop prayer in school.

We used to be a God fearing society, that is no longer the case. The United Stated was founded on Biblical Principals and we have gotten away from them; it is expressed in the moral decay that we are experiencing in our society. With our nation being flooded by illegal immigrants and the business relocating to foreign countries, what will keep us afloat? Where else in the whole world can you go and have a baby and it become a citizen with all the benefits of a true American? Nowhere ELSE! I would go back to the isolationist principals of the early 1920s through the 1940s that lead us to another war. For if we do not look out for ourselves, then who will?

We were once the shining star in the world. Now no country, save a very small few, are our friends. We try to stand for all that is good and right but clearly fall on our faces. The level of decay we are facing is in my opinion paralleled only by Rome before its fall and decay. Where else in the world will more people vote for a singer on TV than will vote for the Presidential Elections? Only in a culture, so decadent as ours can that luxury be had. People use TV as a way to escape from their real duties. People use TV as a baby sitter instead of raising their children like in days past. TV is not the answer.

Do I claim to be any better? No, I struggle each and every day to make myself better and to try to rise above the quagmire of moral morass and decay that infest the country that we live in. I am no crusader like in the days of old. I am just one voice against the ever increasing wash of white-noise generated in cyberspace.

What is your opinion?
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American Idull

American Idull

More people watch and vote on this show than they do for the Election of The President. What a shame! This just shows that America cares more about a person singing than they do on who is running the country. Perhaps, we should make a show called “The Next American President” and make them do a Dog & Pony Show to get Americans to vote for the next US President. It sounds like a viable option to me with several categories like dancing, singing, political issues, general health and mental wellbeing.

Where r they now? Perhaps the only one that has made a career from the show is Kelly Clarkson. She rode the fame and became a true Pop Star with good music and lyrical content. All the way from working in a theater to top of the charts. Where are the rest of them? Ruben Studdard(2003), Fantasia Barrino(2004), Carrie Underwood(2005), Jordin Sparks(2007)

Carrie Underwood has made some impression on the music scene. With her cross over hit from Country to Pop and some success on the Country charts, I would place her as the second most successful act to come from the show.

Taylor Hicks (Soul Patrol)(2006) from Alabama has done a big whopping ZERO in the charts. Why and how did Americans pick such a dud? His soulful vocals were better served in some bar in Louisiana than in front of 50million people voting for his gray haired ass. He is not even in the charts and yet he is an American Idol for this year.

Katharine McPhee would have been a better choice as her voice was good and she really had the looks to make it. She was a very promising upcoming star but due to the draconian contracts they are placed under to do tours and with a major percentage of most of their profits going to the producers, she will not see the light of day for a while either. I wonder if they know they made a mistake in not choosing her? She was much more saleable than Hicks.

Now, about the hosts (from Hell). The Tool(Ryan Seacrest)Train wreck(Paula Abdul), Asshole(Simon Cowell), and on the level(Randy Jackson). Paula, as we all know was a choreographer for Janet Jackson way back in the 80s and at best a B-List star/musical act with her dancing and animated cat in her videos with at best 3 number one hits. Hush-Hush or Lush, Lush little Paula. In some of her actions and looks on the show, you could clearly see that she was trashed and on something by slurring her speech and some of the random comments. In my opinion, she makes no contribution to the show at all, perhaps she needs to go to So You Think You can Dance on ABC and trade with Sharron Osborne. Her randomness is not a good attraction and makes for good conversation. I will give her one thing; she has a good voice, too bad her voice did not carry her through.

Simon Cowell; He is notorious for his unsparingly blunt and often controversial criticism of the contestants. He is estimated to be worth about 200million US dollars. Not to shabby to be an asshole on TV. His personality is that of a piece of cardboard, not too impressive to me and I think that he gets off on slamming people on the show. That is all I have to say about him. Now on to the next one.

Randy Jackson in my opinion is the only one who gives the show any sort of clout. From Wikipedia: “Jackson played bass in violin virtuoso Jean-Luc Ponty's backing band and toured with rock band Journey in 1983 and 1985. His numerous credits range from playing with Aretha Franklin, George Michael , Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Billy Cobham, Blue Öyster Cult, Herbie The Car, Richard Marx, Billy Joel, Journey, Bon Jovi and Bob Dylan to playing at the Grand Ole Opry with The Charlie Daniels Band. His production/songwriting work in the San Francisco Bay area with Narada Michael Walden and Walter Afanasieff led Jackson to be quite in demand as a producer himself.

While in the Bay Area, Jackson played in bands with Carlos Santana and Jerry Garcia. He moved to Italy in the late 1980s and produced a record for Italian pop star Zucchero. The record Zucchero and the Randy Jackson Band produced one of Zucchero's biggest hits, "Donne". Jackson was bass guitarist for Tracy Chapman featuring on several Tracks on her 1992 release Matters of the Heart. He performed on the single "Bang Bang Bang", "Open Arms", and "Dreaming on a World". Jackson has also recorded, produced, or toured with many well-known artists and bands, ranging from Mariah Carey (whom he knew when she was still a teenager; he was in her band at Live 8 in London in 2005) to *NSYNC, Céline Dion, Wild Orchid, Bruce Springsteen, Stryper[1], and Madonna (he played bass on her # 1 hit "Like a Prayer"). He has also worked as an executive, spending eight years as vice president of artists and repertoire (A&R) at Columbia Records and four years heading A&R at MCA Records.

Jackson also hosts a radio top 40 countdown known as "Randy Jackson's Hit List" syndicated on hundreds of stations nationwide by Westwood One. Every week Randy counts down his top 30 Urban AC and Mainstream AC hits, gives us a peek into AI with American Idol Underground, and shares what's currently in his iPod.”

So he has the real credentials in the music industry to actually know what the hell could/and should make a star and for what qualities they should look for. He is the leveling factor between Cowell’s cynicism and Abdul’s childishness. Where as he has the clout in the industry, that does not make a star, only gain access to the keys. The final vote is from the viewing public and I think that the three should have more of a final say so in the end. Kind of like a Veto or final vote, but hey, I am not the show’s producer. This is just my two cents worth with a gracious helping form Wikipedia.

What is your opinion?