I have seen the second hand move backwards. I know most clocks aren't designed to move that way, but I swear I've seen it. It doesn't surprise me - clocks have always engaged in teasing and mockery. That saying "a watched pot never boils" applies to most people and their experiences with time, but for me I think it's more personal. Maybe I have offended time. I was not usually bored as a kid as long as there was something to stare at. The boredom started when I began working. With the exception of kitchen jobs, I have neve done a real day's work, and I feel guilty for getting paid not to work. I am paid for the full day which means I am paid to watch the clock. In return, the clock watches me. It's ironic that my current job is to attend the County Commissioner meetings and record them. My job is to literally take the minutes. It creates a strange relationship with those damnable tickers.
I do my best not to watch the clock, thinking maybe that will make time more gracious toward me, but clocks are everywhere, and they are all in on the scheme. Most people like clocks. Clocks are helpful. Clocks help you to know when you can leave work, when you have to wake up, etc. Other people seem to think they can trust the clocks. They don't watch the clock like I do; maybe because they have not experienced the clock watching them. The watch on my arm is broken and has been for a few years now. When the office clocks stop, I don't say anything. Still, that tracking is always with me. Once, when I removed the battery from a cheap little alarm clock it kept ticking while I held it. If you are close to an analogue clock, you can hear the ticking, and for your eyes it will display the movement of time, but that is part of its contemptuous derision. It shows that a minute has passed but I know it has been much longer. A second is one eighty-six thousand four-hundredth of the time it takes for the earth to move around the sun. Any other measurement, even the atomic clock method is less than accurate. Scientists know this, but I know it better. They say a rested heartbeat is about 60 beats per minute. Average up-tempo music beats can fit two of themselves into a second. The EPA-Satanists say a shower should take one second. Your boss probably wasted one full tick of the second hand looking at your resume. The second has become the beat to which the world moves, so why does the world not move between ticks of the second hand? Someday, maybe on my deathbed, I may see that time moves consistently, but in my experience, it only moves constantly and is highly fickle, preferential and variable; never to be trusted. We cannot truly give time or take time, we can only choose how to divide our energies while our lives are disintegrated before the altar of recorded minutes.
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We are all travelers in time. There are fantasies written about travelers who are able to move outside of the time that others are stuck in, but they are always on a clock of some kind, whether it tells time at the same speed, time seems to be a constant for whomever is experiencing it. The theories regarding relativity are based on the idea that the speed of light is constant within any different time frames. Distilled, you could say relativity explains how after a long day at the factory, Dave can travel home at the speed of light, while alien Bob can watch Dave travel from the factory to the bar and then home in the same amount of time that was reported to Dave’s wife. Alien Bob’s version shows Dave travelling a different distance within the same reported time. If both measurements are true, and if the speed of light remains consistent regardless of the bar stop, the clocks used to measure time would have to be working within a different temporal frame for the two distances to have been traveled at equal speeds. Actually, that’s called time dilation. I think some people experience time at a different speed, which, if the speed of light is constant, would allow them to live “longer” or “shorter” lives than others even though the clock says they’ve been on the same trajectory. At least, that’s how I explain feeling as though I’ve lived 5 hours after watching the clock move only 15 minutes at work. In music, the word for that is chromatic; when notes sneak in that are not supposed to exist within that diatonic scale, or setting. If time is a scale, and each temporal frame consists of different speed of clock (think of it as the set of notes), a chromatic person would be someone who doesn’t fit within the temporal scale where they exist. I don’t mean the concept of phasing: that relies on two congruent temporal realms interposed in such a way that one is slightly off-beat, like a song where two drummers are playing at the same tempo, but one is ¼ beat off. Nope, this idea has more to do with personal experiences within time where the body measures it at different speeds. The Greeks had a grasp on this concept with their two words for time: Chronos and Kairos. Chronos references the quantifiable scientific measurements of time - how much time - whereas Kairos measures the quality of time. When I am at work, staring at the clock, I have a fuzzy idea that the speed of light is not different for anyone in the office. I also have the idea that if I were to call Accounts Payable over to stare at the clock with me, we’d probably agree that my eyes could perceive the second hand moving at exactly the same rate as accounts payable perceived it to be moving. Why is it, then, that after that clock says we moved 15 minutes through time, I have completed all my tasks and feel as though I’ve been at work for 5 hours? Do I measure time the same way that accounts payable does, or do I experience time at a different rate, even though measurements in my time frame do not vary, and the speed of light is constant. Is my internal Chronometer actually Kairometer? Let’s go ahead and link the movement of clocks to the temporal frame. As long as the clock correctly measures the time it takes for an electron to make an energy level jump within that time frame, then clocks are the gold standard for speed relative to light-speed, which we assume is constant. That’s where circadian rhythms enter the picture. Do the speeds of our physical and mental processes always compliment each other? What if a person lives within certain time structures yet experiences different time qualities? Sometimes creatures within a biological category have different internal schedules. Many people have sleep schedules suited more for Venus than Earth. Does that explain a person not needing to eat as often as other people? Take twins Dave and Jim. Dave has the same basic physical structure as Jim. Chemical analysis shows that Dave and Jim have the same activity and stress levels, the same blood sugar levels, the same insulin tolerance, the same T3 and T4 uptake rates, the same metabolic rhythms, etc, however Dave eats three squares a day, and Jim needs to eat only every other day. They should, according to medical logic, do well with the same amount of nutrients per day, however Jim maintains the same weight as Dave with one-sixth the nutrients. Is it possible that Jim’s metabolism is measured at the same rate as Dave’s, however it experiences a time quality that is six times slower in the same temporal frame, making him gain weight six times faster compared to Dave? Coincidentally, Jim has a problem with boredom and working too quickly. It might seem to contradict his slower metabolization cycles, but it actually makes perfect sense. If Jim’s Kairometer runs slow, he experiences the feeling that time is moving six times slower, needing to eat once every six times Dave does, feeling like he’s done six days’ work in one work day, and yet his brain is aware of the chronological key in which his lifesong is playing, which makes him feel as though he belongs in a faster speed. Dave feels it would help, but would it? If he lived in a faster time frame, the clock would move the way his brain feels it should. He would feel that he had less time in which to complete his tasks. His digestion, however, would be appear to be even slower, if his digestion is linked to the temporal frame. He would need to move to a slower temporal frame to be able to eat three meals a day. He would suffer mentaly when he looked at the clock. He has two temporal problems, but both are based on his awareness of the temporal frame in which he operates. If there were no night or day, no schedule for when to go to work, no people around him to compare his eating habits to, he’d complete his work, eat when he needed to, and create temporal resolution between his disjointed rhythms. Scientifically, no time frame will satisfy Jim’s desire to eat three squares with Dave while feeling fulfilled at work. Sadly, his Kairos will be measured differently than Dave’s as long as time structures are in place regardless of time frame. Twin Jim, there is no cure for you. I may not know you, but I know you are probably not doing what you thought you would do in life. Whether it’s a job or a lifestyle, we like it when we can use our natural skills to make money, but it seems like we who work are doing the jobs that were available, not necessarily what we studied in college, or even what we spent much of our lives learning. All the same, I would bet money that all of us, without exception, have used one or more of our natural skills on the jobsite even though it is not in our job description.
For instance, I am a Realtor now, though I have a degree in Visual Art. I also took a lot of music-ish classes where I had the opportunity to analyze certain songs, sounds, etc. Funny thing: when you’re analyzing sounds, you tend to play them over and over again. The result of that process of analyzation is becoming very familiar with a piece whether you like it or not. The sound gets integrated into your memories, so that if you ever hear it again, it will help you recall the past. When I hear any kind of Indonesian Gamelan, I am transported to a brick dorm-type housing complex where my little sister and I tried to distinguish one metallophone from the next. That brings back happy memories. I did not expect that certain work environments will force that kind of musical memory, except when it happens at work, it tends not to reinforce feelings of happyness. I really admire my boss for her patience. She (and everyone in the office) has listened to the same 5 or 6 piano pieces, day in and day out, for the last year and a half. Actually, it has probably been longer, but that’s how long I’ve been listening. I started listening to [mainly Pachelbel's cannon] just before Christmas the year we moved here, and now, just like one of Pavlov’s dogs, whenever I hear it in movies I think I’m at work. It’s more than memorization, it’s unintentional musical analysis through passive listening. I’ve been made into one of Pachelbel's dogs. What makes it analysis even though I’m musically inept is that I can hear certain patterns found in Pachelbel in other pieces of music. When my ear-probes positively recognize Pachelbel patterns I jerk in my seat and experience a light form of realtor PTSD. I’m fairly certain this, at its core at least, is one of the methods used in Japanese torture. Other than our exceptional musical exploration, many things in this office run on a schedule. I know when it is the beginning of a month when our front door is jammed with tenants asking me to take their money, and I know it’s the end of a month when I have to make calls to ask the rest of the tenants to give me money “or else.” We also submit our monthly new or sold listings to the print company regularly. I have rent taking and guide changes coming to me on such a tight schedule I’ve practically renamed the medieval calendar’s Nones and Ides as rent and guides. Those things ARE part of my job description, but I was never told I’d need to do so much fake smiling/caring. That is one of my skills, and even though I’m not that good at it, I can even pretend to be excited too, for example, when I see a house. Fake smiling should be on every job description, because in any circumstance where public relations is required, the public rela-tor really ought to be friendly no matter what kind of day he or she has had. Once, a long time ago, a “good personality” was a common qualifying characteristic for not just secretaries, but also grocery clerks, bus drivers, and mailmen. I knew working at a real estate office would require me to be excited about the mundane, but I did not expect I’d need to take faking it any further than the college smile. Not having gone to school before college, I entered college without that pre-developed hatred toward the human race that most people gain before graduation from elementary school. I was generally intrigued by people, and one of my favorite activities was watching them go about their activities, while they were blissfully unaware that someone was curious about their lifestyles, affairs, and thoughts. I would like to think I have not changed that much, but I believe I’ve started to satiate my people curiosity. You see, I discovered a fundamental truth about the human race. I can see now that we are all very talented in one area, and I can guarantee that we all use that talent even though it was on absolutely zero of our job descriptions; namely: being stupid. Enter my new personality: Reluctant Realtor. I really do hate showing houses. I never expected to love it, and I even tried to grow to like it, but after my employers helped me get a real estate license, I really didn’t give a damn about a single property. In fact, when people ask to see a house my guts instantly seize up inside. No matter how boring life at a desk becomes, I can’t appreciate the concept of a “buyer.” I find myself physically sick at the thought of having to drive to a listing, unlock the horrors inside, and stand around like a dunce, conspicuously uninformed about its history while “buyers” take their sweet time. Usually they will start complaining about the designers or contractors, turning up their noses at “the state of the place” ultimately saying “we are looking for something… something... well, ELSE. ” The thing I truly resent is the callback with a new list of appointments to make. I hate that the phone rings. I used to dislike the phone, now that siren of doom signals the possibility of a showing. It means more phone calls, more gas used, more of the Chevy’s ignition wearing out. More corpses of people’s lives being opened, ridiculed and locked back up just to sit on the same block where they were born, probably for another lunar year, just begging to be the right one for our infamous “buyers.” Who knew how many spidery histories lie behind those lockboxes? We who dislike our jobs often think about our futures, or what we guess they hold. I usually imagine leaving my current working environment, which is not an uncommon thought. But we don’t always leave when we think about it, do we? We stay at our jobs, because as cool as it would be to get a job that does not include “buyers,” frequently, we actually need this job, or we feel responsibility toward our employers. Like you, I turned another year older this year, and if I looked at myself and did not see any fruit from a degree and all these moments of working accumulate into a title like “realtor,” I’d feel like a total failure. In all honesty, I’d probably be just as bored in most careers. Besides, I think buyers also exist in every kind of work environment. There’s no escaping the hounds ready to throw money at you and gobble down your product. It’s not the kind of money you’d LIKE to see, but it’s enough to morally bind you to servitude. Suddenly, if there’s the prospect of money to be transferred, it is your JOB to fake excitement about another door to unlock, to look happy about another scary basement to force yourself through, and to put another bunch of miles on the old engine, even if the money never appears. Realtor is an endless job, chasing the fickle, farty clouds of “buyers.” Honestly, I should be ashamed. I AM BEING PAID, though it is by the hour, not the job. My peers and I are of the generation who expect work to be fun. Our mantra: “If it’s not fun, we won’t do it!” If we have to do it to pay rent, buy tacos, or renew Netflix subscriptions, we will do it, but not happily. Shame on me. This job has even helped me. For example, because of this job, I have learned how to knock on doors. Before all the showing practice, I hated knocking on doors. The anticipation as we step onto the porch, the hesitation, wondering if we should ring the doorbell or knock. We think it’s too late to do either with any class, because we’ve waited so long they must have seen us. We try knocking, then wait. When nothing happens, we wonder if we should try the bell and run the risk of being obnoxious. If we walk away, we’ll look incredibly impatient, and we’ll have accomplished nothing, especially the goal that brought us to the door in the first place. The door remains unopened, the porch remains occupied, and the goal stays un-accomplished, so we try hesitating for another moment and take special note of features like the bits of moss crawling over the cement foundation, or the color of the mailbox. Finally, we have no choice but to knock/ring again, wait awkwardly until someone discovers us, or walk away like the cowards we are. It’s a lose-lose, but it still beats dealing with the door actually opening. Not only have I grown a thick skin about confronting doors, I also have access to keys for nearly every property in town. If the office doesn’t have a key, it takes a phone call and an appointment to get inside any given listing. I also maintain a small amount of people-curiosity thanks to my tenant-screening duties. I enjoy catching felons when they lie, and I loved the feeling of finding a solitary responsible, timely, fun tenant. There was only one who seemed to be without renterly fault. The shock was so bad I started looking for things that could be wrong with him, but I found nothing except a reawakened interest in the human race, or whatever race this one may have been. Obviously, no aches and pains known as rheumatism could be anything other than a build-up of uric acid. No, I'm not talking about gout. That's why you need to take Dr. Pierce's Anuric available as a free trial. Let Dr. Pierce convince YOU like he convinced "eminent physicians" that his Anuric will melt your pain like hot water to sugar!
2020 was the best year I have ever lived. There's a trend, one that I hate, to call bad things a "2020." Using last year as a descriptive word for catastrophes is so wrong. It was a fiery year. A cleansing, revealing, character-building year. It is the year in which problems with American government all came to the surface after being buried for 40, 50, maybe 100 years. Pedophiles are exposed, corrupt elections are coming to light, and the whorish, false, communist media is naked in the street. Bad friends have shown their true colors. Yes, the events in 2020 were planned, from "COVID" to mail-in ballots, but the China commies were not the only ones who knew what was going on; they were hoodwinked by the most brilliant man alive. Trump, our true leader, the greatest leader in History, was on top of all of it from the beginning. Like God, he knew these things needed to play out and he used the Chanamen-Liberal plan against them to clear the swamp in a way nobody thought was possible. This has been my favorite year of all time.
Yesterday at work we opened a bottle of champagne at 4:45 to celebrate New Year's Eve, and the departure of a coworker. I had a tablespoon. We weren't supposed to have booz at work, but I thought it was apropos. Never work for a boss who follows all the rules perfectly, because most rules are dumb. If I learned anything in 2020, it was to appreciate our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. I might also understand what Dickens meant when he said "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I learned that free men don't ask permission, that as Voltaire said: it is dangerous to be right when your government is wrong. I know that Ben Franklin was so right when he said "anyone who would give up essential freedom to purchase a little temporary safety deserves neither freedom or safety." -or something like that. I know that slaves protest and freemen protect, that real men are defined by the burdens they place on themselves. We lost people at our church because they want to live in fear, and I tried many times without success to be fired from work by standing against tyranny. I learned that tyranny is hypocritical, and I still have my job, the only maskless, free American in a county of slaves. I moved, Mom broke her foot, both sisters got pregnant, Connor went to jail unjustly, and life goes on, even though our century clock moved another digit overnight. I expect nothing less from 2021. Walking to work in the winter means walking in the dark. It's usually cold, and there are usually clouds in some stage of frozenness, but when it's about 1 degree and the fog is pressed to the surface, all the stars look the way they do in those Christmas cards with the Maji. When it's around zero Fahrenheit, the air is much thinner which allows our perception of light and sound to seem different. Snow gets squeaky underfoot, or even crispy, like walking on old leaves. Lately, the atmosphere has allowed beams of light to shoot up vertically from random sources all around town. They go very high, like the Batman signal. Sometimes the light beams are caused by lights outside homes, but those are not as strong as the ones downtown. Another source of light comes from the early-bird hikers on the ski hill, skinning up and poaching fresh groom before the hill opens. The water in the sky turns into atom-sized sparkles and floats past the head lamps and street lights. It seems magical, at first, like a Norman Rockwell scene.
One day I realized the taller and stronger beams were created by the lights that banks and governmental buildings are required to have in order to keep their permanent flags lit. Looking at the signals pouring up into space and realizing they each represented a flag spot felt so ironic and contradictory. The places that install those lights are usually the most anti-American establishments; I work at one of them. When I finally slip and squeak my way to the administration building and arrive at our beam, I stop and look up at our flag hanging quietly on its pole, surrounded by glittery shards of glass, and I blink my frost-coated eyes at it before going into the lobby where a tiny picture of our president is hung near the top of the wall. Those two things are the only American symbols in a structure plastered with communist propaganda, which pumps out million dollar checks every Monday to fund socialist agendas, whose inhabitants, for the most part, seem to blindly follow the edicts of their leaders while forgetting more each day how we got our flag and what it stands for: why we keep it lit. Turning back to the window and looking outside, you realize those pools of drifting light on the ski hill are not headlamps; it's the fluorescent glow of the ski-people's whitened teeth. It hits me especially strongly on these days: the quaint ski town is a sanctuary city for China-money celebrities and their slave class. I don't belong here, and neither does the flag. Alllllriiiiighhhht...... It’s time to finally say this, not that anyone will listen, because I’m not a doctor. “Doctors” do not seem to know this, but I do: cancer treatments never cure cancer. There are two main problems persisting in the medical community that are helping cancerous people to become further cancerous, and helping doctors to keep killing people. The first problem is that people are getting diagnosed with cancers that they do not necessarily need to know about. The second problem is that the two main treatments, radiation and chemotherapy, are better at killing people than cancer is. The first problem, testing for cancer, is the major issue that ends up killing many people. When you look for cancer in a human, you will find it, no matter what. Part of the human condition is being cancerous. I’m not a doctor but I have seen almost every cancer story go something like this: 1. Testing “Trudy has her annual exam on Wednesday.” 2. Results “Trudy’s doctor is testing for cancer, they found something disturbing.” 3. Diagnosis + FREAKOUT “The lab results show she has cancer of the ____________ (fill in the blank).” “SHE’S GONNA DIE! WE HAVE TO KEEP HER FROM DYING!” 4. “Treatment” “Trudy’s treatments start on Monday. They are doing a round of radiation then finishing off with chemo.” 5. Death “The treatments are working!” “She is losing hair but keeping up hope.” “The latest scan shows more cancer, but she’s staying positive.” “Trudy took a turn for the worse.” “One more big treatment, we hope this will do it even though she will be sick for weeks…” “After a heroic battle, Trudy succumbed to cancer.” Some variation of that usually happens. It is very common to see incredibly taxing, expensive, painful “treatments” followed by worsening health and finally, death. It’s such a common story, in fact, that a scientific mind might look at the results and ask himself: “do these treatments actually help with cancer?” The problem of radiation and chemo can be better understood when you know exactly what they do to the body. We're all familiar with radiation. In some forms, it is harmless, in others, lethal, such as radiation from radium, or uranium. You know what toxic radiation usually causes? Yeah-huh; cancer. The history of chemotherapy began with the world war II chemical weapon, mustard gas. Similar to Agent Orange, used in the Vietnam War, people exposed to mustard gas were found to have lower white blood-cell counts. (Oh yeah, and survivors got what again? You betcha, the big C). When a tumor was found to shrink after being injected with mustard gas and other alkylating agents, the chemicals were tried on other forms of cancer, typically giving the result of lower white cell counts, which is thought to help in the shrinkage of lymphomas and the restoration of blood marrow in leukemia patients. Cancer can be thought of as over-productive cells, so it almost makes sense that modern “treatments” share the job of reducing white blood cells by literally destroying your body’s cells. With these agents, an anti-cell environment is created in which your immune system is destroyed, and your body’s ability to regenerate cells is temporarily impaired. I suppose if you need to get an intruder out of your house, one way to do it is to destroy your house. Doctors do that to your body. Body with cancer? Let’s throw out the whole thing and the cancer problem goes poof. We're gonna use chemicals known to cause cancer doing it, too. Sound good? I know that people have survived cancer with treatments. That’s why everyone continues to think the treatments are the cause of survival. They see that there was chemo and radiation and they believe it’s the chemo and radiation that helps. THEY’RE USUALLY WRONG. I’m not a doctor, but entertain me for a moment and let’s use our observational skills. Is it true that undiagnosed cancer can go undiagnosed for years and years, never affecting the person? Yes. Is it true that sometimes people survive cancer and cancer treatments? Yes. What makes the survivors different from those who do not survive? Not sure. What do all survivors seem to have in common? Well, it seems to me that they all experience a lack of appetite and/or weight loss. Is that true for you? What have you seen? Ask yourself these two questions: why do we have more cases of cancer now, in modern times, and why is the cancer-survival rate no better than in the past even though we have these great new "treatments?" I have concluded that it is not the therapies that have helped in some cancer cases, but the indirect effects of the therapies. It appears that, as a result of chemo and radiation, many people have decreased appetite, inability to keep down food, inability to eat, mouth sores and other problems the results of which create a weight-loss effect in the body. When the body begins to starve, certain things happen which allow cells to regenerate in a way that they can’t when insulin is present and other digestive processes are happening. On a cellular level, the body benefits from short to medium lengths of fasting. Just as sleep allows the brain to dump chemicals, fasting allows the body to rejuvenate its cells, many recognize the process as “autophagy,” and it’s all the rage in a new type of diet plan. I have seen that patients who were forced to fast saw improvements in their cancer levels. Do you really have to get agent orange injections or subject your cells to scorching radiation to create that effect? Why not toss the bathwater and keep the baby? Why do people not see this? What do doctors do anymore? They certainly don’t seem able to diagnose us: instead they have adopted a process by which they reduce the possible diseases we could have by ruling them out one by one. It’s trial and error diagnosis followed by trial and error medicine. Trial and error has been used for centuries, just look at Egyptian medicine. It can work, but only if the medical practitioners doing the trialing and erroring are also applying the scientific method to their results. From what I’ve seen, most doctors today couldn’t even describe what the scientific method is. They do not know how to observe and take note, so why do we keep using them to help us? The general public appears to put full trust in anyone with an “MD” next to their name. The general public makes a big show of being health-conscious while they continue to frequent the offices of quacks and dump prescribed chemicals down their gullets while throwing all their money at malpracticers who are published with lauds and kudos for making bad conclusions about medicine. It’s a comedy watching people go back to their doctors like dogs to their vomit, eventually dying at the hands of incompetent, unscientific minds. It’s no surprise they take health advice from all forms media now. Don’t blame the doctors. If a man holds out a sword and an idiot runs to fall on it, who killed the idiot? Don't you love those moments when you can answer your own questions by using simple perception and observation? Big questions, like; why are these peanuts at the dollar store when you can get the same size container for two dollars at a regular store....? Answer: because they are not salted as advertised, also the container contains only half-peanuts, no wholes.
In these moments of clarity, life just makes sense, and you forget that everyone around you is making themselves sick by wearing masks, pretending the mask will protect them from a plague that doesn't exist. Maybe the peanut answer applies to everything in life. Maybe, when you ask why people are doing the things they are doing, the answer is: they are unsalted, and they are halves, not wholes. As a normal Wyoming citizen, I’ve never thought of myself as gruesomely ugly, but thanks to the county-wide mask mandate, one could get the feeling that one is Frankenstein’s monster in this town. Every day, if I pass someone anywhere - even the open air - and they see that I don’t have a mask on, they will make an absolute scene out of dramatically clutching their face, backing away, gesturing frantically, looking visibly affronted or terrified and/or ready for physical confrontation. A few have even screamed “NO MASK!” I have seen some of the most impressive performances in these last past months. We should have the COVID-Globes awards. I am not out to scare people. I would even care that I am offending people if I knew they were actually afraid. I’m not out to make people sick, and I’m not trying to make anyone angry. The thing is, the majority are far from terrified. They are the ones that wear the mask for show and want you to do it too. It is just a symbol, and they know it. They are acting, so I don’t mind that I cause that reaction in them.
I will continue to not wear a mask even though I recognize the power of the state to authorize such orders. It is certainly the power and the responsibility of governments to maintain public safety. I do not agree that any governmental entity should have the power to make us stop breathing, but apparently that is also one of the powers of the government. I do, however, take issue at the method by which our orders were implemented, and I recognize that this order is not law. I'm no lawyer, but when people try to tell me it's a law, I know they are wrong. It’s quite simple; the Wyoming State Constitution says: "no law shall be passed except by bill." The due process of the law was not implemented in the mask mandate, so it is not a law. It is an ordinance, like parking rules. If you break parking ordinances, you get a ticket. Do you get a misdemeanor with your parking ticket, though? We are being threatened with misdemeanors and fines if we are found to be in non-compliance with the mandate. Disobeying the mask order is unlawful in the same respect as disobeying parking rules because as citizens of this state and land we shall, by law, comply with ordinances put forth by the government. However the fact that disobedience is unlawful does not make an ordinance into a law. One could argue that creating such a rule with that harsh of a punishment is unconstitutional. Even though the state has the power to do these things, it should never be an action of the state to restrict any otherwise law-abiding citizen’s right to personal health and vitality, aka, life, liberty, and happiness. Remember how article 1, section 1 of Wyoming’s Constitution declares that all power is inherent in the people, all free governments are founded on [the people’s] authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness. The government serves the people. Public safety is a part of that service. But when something which is proven, or even supposed to be unhealthy is ordered to be done in the name of public safety, that is an inappropriate use of governmental power. Some would argue that I should not be allowed to endanger my fellow man by walking around with an un-diapered face. That argument fails due to lack of evidence that I am dangerous. I have no history of killing people with my own breath, and there has been no proof that I, or any human being could spread a virus to a masked or unmasked person in normal situations under normal social distance when I have absolutely no symptoms and no contagion. They never provided sufficient sources to prove that: A. there is a virus which can be undeniably identified as COVID-19, and; B. proof that masks mitigate the spread of said virus. Whereas there is a sufficient body of evidence, growing daily, to support the fact that prolonged and improper use of masks is more harmful to your health than any virus masks may stop, and that people who wear masks are far more likely to catch viruses such as SARS-COVID-19 than those who do not. The CDC which has led the recommendations for COVID mitigation published a study reporting people who always wear masks have a 70.6% risk of infection whereas those who rarely or never wear masks carry a 3.9% chance. Why do they continue to recommend masks? Are they actually interested in public safety? If the safety of the public is not forefront in their actions, should they be allowed to act in a capacity of power? When will government overreach stop masquerading as public safety? Answer: it will stop when the people, in whom authority is inherit, stop allowing their government to control their private health. It is so simple. Remember that absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty, and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority (Statute 97-01-07). I am not breaking a law by disobeying this ordinance because the ordinance does not recognize my freedom to have life, liberty, or happiness. I do not recognize the authority of the government in cases where that authority is improperly practiced. Take off the mask and the “virus” will leave, in more ways than one. We are not slaves to the government; we own the government. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6936a5-H.pdf If loving Trump isn't enough, another thing Italians have going for them is Mozzarella, the only cheese with two Zs.
As far as we can tell, Mozzarella began in Southern Italy, Naples region, and stayed there due to its poor transportability. Due to the lack of aging, it did not last for long without refrigeration. Traditionally made with Buffalo milk (BTW, Italian Bison have red, green, and white coloring), the legend of the first Mozzarella claims some curds were accidentally dropped into a pail of hot water and the stretchy, rubbery, traditionally unsalted white cheese was discovered. If that is true, Naples' water must have been extraordinarily acidic, but that is possible, as one of Naples' water sources is/was Mount Somma. The word comes from L. mozzare; to cut off. The process of making Mozzarella is fairly easy, you simply need to acidify the milk (which will allow it to become elastic), warm slightly, add rennet to coagulate, and heat the resulting curd in warm water to make it workable and stretchy. The first recorded use of Mozzarella comes from a 1393 recipe, giving the year of my birth the unique honor of being the 600th anniversary of known Mozzarella use. Anyone can make it. Unlike other cheeses, a specific location is not required - sorry cheese snobs! Why is Mozzarella so popular if it is so simple? Maybe not all cheese needs to lounge about in caves, wrapped in wax, growing mold or attracting maggots to be worth eating. Maybe appreciating the magical properties of proteins is all it takes to accept Mozzarella as a legitimate, albeit peasant-y cheese. The Italians certainly do. We look at the past fondly, usually. "Oh remember the 1970s? Everyone was still in American-made jeans back then." "You had to go to a concert or turn on the radio to hear music back then." "Remember when there was good music all the time?" "Remember when people still read books?" What were they saying in the 1970s? Were they nostalgic about the 1930s? The 1950s? "Remember when there were no speed limits?" "Remember when people helped each other?"
If I have to live long enough to look back at this period of History, what will I think of fondly? I'm talking about ethos, not personal trials or joys. For the last four years we have had the best leader in the history of the world, second only to (MAYBE) Solomon, so there's that. Will we remember our great Chinese products with joy? "Ahh, remember when we could buy cheap crap for a lot of money that was good for a single use and was impossible to recycle?" It feels like we are ruled by tech and media, like our social media addiction has irreversibly sewn itself into our lives and made us dumb. It feels like we are constantly being followed, recorded, tracked. I know Twitter and Facebook are the secret foes destroying what our great president would have let us keep, but what if we are headed for something worse? What if I will look back at this time in my life and say "Remember when we were LESS monitored?" "Remember when we were LESS tied into technology?" There has also been a massive push, party thanks to tech platforms, to incorporate politics where they never would have been before. Go to your local grocery store's website and see their friendly reminders: "don't forget to register to vote!" Go to basically any platform that used to perform a non-political service, such as music streaming, photo-editing, or online shopping, and see the friendly reminder "Your vote matters! Get out and vote!" When does the political enter every aspect of personal society? Oh yeah! In socialist systems. When your connection to the state is as hardwired as your connection to humanity, when you are told to serve your country's government, not your country's people, when you are daily reminded to do your "civic duty" by every single corporate entity, you have to wonder what that means for your ethos. That invasion of big heads making public service announcements that fall in line with a "societal good" is one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen. I don't want Albertson's telling me to vote. I don't want my local government putting out propaganda posters and PSAs telling us that it's "no big ask to wear a mask." I don't want little governmental pep talks about "staying active" or "staying well." When personal health and wellbeing are addressed by the public as a public issue, there is something sick happening to our ideals, and it's just one short step to the Orwellian reality of the loss of individual freedom. When I think of the 1940s and 1950s, I remember a post-war "we're all in this together" attitude conveyed in government-issued videos that told members of society how to behave. That is nothing new. We have seen it before, we are seeing it now, and we need to fight the idea that we are cogs in a machine that make the government run, and make our country look good to other countries. "Trim your nails straight across. Keep your posture and comportment all day. Women should wear a little lipstick or blush. Men, shave every day and shower twice a day. Mow your lawn so it looks as good as neighbor bob's. Don't shout when in public." Those are lessons that should be taught by our parents, not our government. Those who want the nanny state don't understand what it will mean. It leads to death, for any government that sees its people as its servants or wards is a poor parent indeed. The Julian Calendar (Yep, it's an old Italian thing).
Sure, Julius Caesar was arguably not the best guy, however the nearly 500-year old Roman Republic only fell at his assassination, so he may have done a few things right. He led the conquest of Gaul, built Carthage, founded Roman territories outside of Italy, and was generally outstanding in military and civil achievements. His longest-lasting act, however, was the proposal of a new calendar system, named after himself, of course: the Julian Calendar. This new way of counting months did away with the pre-Etruscan remnants of a 10-month solar year, effecting a more accurate accounting of lunar events. Though it was still inaccurate, it replaced the old Roman calendar which had very low accuracy. The greatest difference was the introduction of the leap-year every four years - a novel concept that seemed odd, but it was based on good science that prevented the dependence on new moons to tell time. The word calendar comes from "calare," meaning "to call out," since it was a tradition to have to call out the occurrence of a new moon. That tradition is no longer necessary thanks to Julius' improvements, but the word stuck. Any study of Medieval manuscripts shows multiple examples of "calends" pages (short notation: Kl.) in books of hours, journals, even in hymn books and other types of manuscripts. Though medieval calendars relied heavily on Ides, Nonnes, and Kalends as parts of the month, they were using the modern Gregorian system (which accounts for solar events as well as lunar) which is based on the Julian Calendar. That achievement allows virtually every part of the world and outer-space to know exactly when to head to the deli when someone says "let's have lunch on October 9th." Next time you see the little new moon on your iCal or google-cal, remember that you do not have to hear a man screaming "NOVILUNIUM!" while you are trying to sleep. Thanks Gaius Julius. THE FLORENCE CATHEDRAL The whole cathedral took about 140 years to complete with the dome as the main final step. Many know it as the largest dome made of brick, which is an amazing structural accomplishment for the 1400s, however most do not know the story behind it. A trio of young Italian metalsmiths and sculptors, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello Niccolo, and Philippo Brunelleschi began their relationship as rivals, having entered in a competition to win the commission for creating bronze relief doors for the Florence Baptistry. Ghiberti won and Brunelleschi was the runner-up. The fierce competition didn't stop them from becoming friends and eventually collaborating to solve some of the greatest architectural problems of their time. Donatello and Brunelleschi traveled to Rome to improve their knowledge of art and the world. They got their hands on one of oldest books in existence; De Architectura by Vitruvius (see the "Vitruvian man"), and proceeded to ingest every writing about structure, form, and geometry involved in building. From there they learned how to create a structurally sound dome. Upon their return, Brunelleschi presented his design plans to the council of Florence. The problems he faced in building scaffolding that could hold up thousands of tons of brick WITHOUT the traditional flying buttress seemed unsolvable, but with the use of gears and pulleys, it was possible to lift massive loads with a single team of oxen. They remained friends, but Brunelleschi receives credit for the completion of the dome. Each of the three craftsmen deserves his own Italian Pride entry, but their story, the way their work is woven throughout the city of Florence, and the amazing things they accomplished together should not be ignored. Today's reason to be proud of your Italian heritage is Bernini.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini contributed to Baroque art and architecture in many ways, however to me, he is simply the creator of the most powerful sculptural moment of all time. A small moment, compared to the drama happening in the rest of the sculpture, but (in my mind) the focal point of the piece. The work is the Rape of Prosperina; a sculpture depicting Pluto having his way with the goddess of grain as he drags her to the underworld. The work is full of motion and action. Their hair is tossed about wildly, the muscles bulge, a certain back and forth symmetry is established as their bodies tangle in pulling and pushing, but if the viewer looks to the side he will see a quiet little sphere of its own created by Pluto's hand on Prosperina's thigh. Bernini was only 23 years old at the completion of this work, but he was able to accomplish what none others had before (or ever have since) - he turned marble into supple, elastic flesh. You know something is weird when it starts to get darker after first light. It was 7:15 when I started up the hill. Typically, the sun would have been "up," as much as it can be up when the mountains block the direct rays, but I had expected the sky to lighten as I went uphill. On the way to the ridge in the thicker parts of the forest, the path was very dim and I felt like I was hiking at dusk. It was the smoke.
The dangerous thing about being outside when it's so smoky is that you can't tell what the weather will do. Behind the smoke there were clouds, but I couldn't tell what kind. I had been watching Teton Pass in the distance; there is a gap in its crags where you can sometimes see headlights as they mount from the Idaho side and start the steep descend into this hole, but usually it's far too light, even in the early morning to see that. Today I saw a lot of headlights because above the crest where they were hurrying into Jackson there was a mass of purple clouds sitting quietly about 30 feet above them. It looked like an inversion was keeping them from dropping everything they had, but after a while a thick, billowy fog crept up toward the purple weight and puffed and swirled its icy way over the pass and enveloped the vehicles. That and the incredible wind helped me decide not to go further than the ridge. I just turned around at the top. The bushes and shrubs were all yellow, which is usually a bright, happy color, but when the sky turned green, the landscape took on an eerie quality. Where I usually saw sunbeams in the forest that faces East I saw only dark blobs and grey flat surfaces, then where the open spaces usually guaranteed temporary safety from the fear of wild animals, there was a new kind of feeling that a mountain lion may be moving along in the dry, rattling underbrush along with you. All the birds were in a frenzy. They seemed nervous, and they were all heading in one direction. Weird weather really brings a weird mood with it. Known to the Enterprise computer's database as "a contemporary form of Talarian music," Alba Ra sounds at first to be a deep-pulse gothic electric orchestra. Unfortunately, we are only allowed a small sample before Captain Picard puts a stop to it. The clip may be heard HERE.
Without the benefit of extensive musical study, I've been trying to dissect the elements that are essential to Alba Ra. There is a definite rhythm with Western Earth-type time, probably 4/4. A synthetic instrument (All the instruments seem electric, synthesized, or sampled in some way), keeps that time with a repetitive series of just a few notes. There is a set of two other instruments that work together, following similar pitch changes in the same beats; a definite synthy guitar sound throughout, an it is joined by what sounds like vocals. The synthy guitar contains pitch modulation that could be done on a keyboard with a modulation wheel, or it may be a stringed instrument whose strings are being pulled, as is common in guitar playing. For the sake of the analysis, I am calling it electric guitar. The electric guitar is mimicked by an almost operatic sound. If that is not another synth, it may have been actual vocals with filters and tuning applied, perhaps even auto-tune, though it ends smoothly when the electric guitar takes over again. Today I find myself asking, "just how casual is casual Friday?" I think I will wear a T-shirt so I can hike when I get off work. It is 9/11; the anniversary of a massive terrorist attack, otherwise known as my half birthday. It makes more sense that my birthday should be in September than March, since all my horoscopes are consistently wrong. They are always wrong anyway, but I've never felt well represented by March. The Fukushima nuclear disaster happened on March 11 a few years back. This year, on March 11, the United States proclaimed a COVID-19 state of emergency.
Today I will probably participate in a 9/11 memorial activity that involves climbing the town hill and carrying to the top a picture of a first responder who died in the 9/11/2001 muslim attack. I used to think stuff like that was pointless or stupid, but I see a bigger picture now. I see that there are many similarities between the actions of the terrorists in 2001 and the actions of my town leadership in 2020. In the People's Democratic Socialist State of Jackson Hole there is a massive gap between the Constitution and our local government's actions. There is a steady implementation of communism, which supports anti-freedom ideas, like defunding the police, defunding first responders, and pushing funding at housing for healthy people who have been given false-positives for a false disease who need to be "quarantined," away from those who are "high-risk." In our town, it is important to show some form of resistance to the tyrannical government, whether it is disobeying the mask ordinance or going to that rally on Sunday afternoon to support local law enforcement. It will have no effect on the government, but it may help one or two people to see that we are not all sheep in this town, and we do not all listen to wealthy democrat women. The devil often has boobs. Take they our life, goods, fame, child or wife, we do not need to be afraid of them or their sicknesses, and it makes no sense to appear afraid by wearing the COVID burka. That is all the COVID mask does; it signals that you are either afraid of a chest cold that may not even exist, or you are afraid that the local tyrants will hurt you, thereby granting them the power they wish to possess. Every year the serviceberries explode on numerous bushes around the southwest part of town, especially on the bike path and at the base of the mountain. The bears love them, and as kids we always collected large amounts to take home and eat or make terrible seed-filled jam imitations with. They aren't deliciously juicy like blueberries or flavorful like raspberries, they are bready, almost, and kind of tough with a half-sweetness that can be nice if you need a snack on a hike. I know what they look like. Last week when I stopped to look at a favorite serviceberry bush to see how they were coming along a guy rode by, not bothering to stop he yelled: "those aren't edible."
If he had been legitimately concerned for my safety, it would have been nice of him to let me know I was about to poison myself. It struck me as disgusting though, because that little phrase yelled as he rode past on his bicycle epitomized the new acceptable societal behavior that we call being a Karen. First, Karens make erroneous assumptions without correctly assessing situations. Using bad science or no science, he assumed I was going to eat the berries because I was looking at them. He decided without any evidence that I was not simply curious about a plant and he wrongly identified the berries as poisonous when they are clearly edible. Karens swoop into business that is not their own, bring erroneous judgement to inapplicable situations and concatenate their opinions into your life without stopping to see if they are right or waiting to hear explanations. They move on like that biker Karen who didn't care if I was poisoning myself, he merely wanted to hear his own virtuous voice through his mask. If I want to eat bad berries, shouldn't that be my prerogative, Karen? Since when did we need society to help us along in life? Since when did our technology need to tell us how much screen-time we use, or what percentage it went up since last week? When did businesses need to put public safety announcements in their windows and when did our neighbors start noticing whether we had germy rags over our faces when we left our house or gain the authority to judge us on that? When did my life become surrounded by stupid people who believe they should have a say, then flabbergastingly, without qualifications or invitations, when did their opinions become valid? Do they really believe it "takes a village?" If the village is made up of these idiots, get me out of it. SUMMER can't wait to be over
She flees like a slighted lover We follow her for as long as we can She runs too fast We can't keep up But we will see her again. The water had an almost milky quality to it, like the pina colada SOBE drink that my coworker likes. It did not prevent the rocks at the bottom from gleaming gold through the quick, shallow water, but it lent an icy aesthetic to the deeper hollows in the bends of the creek. The mountain showed immediately through the trees on one side, and the hills of the butte across the dirt road created a soundboard that bounced echoes back into the dense foliage on either side. Thick, lush evergreens and bright springy shrubs enjoyed the wet environment almost as much as the flies did. I had gone just past the main hub of tourists where only hikers and bikers who knew where they wanted to go rode deeper toward Cache Peak; the supposed origin of Cache Creek. They didn't see me as they passed by the glens where I locked up mom's bike. I found a mossy rock in the middle of a shallow spot of the creek to stand on because the water was colder than I expected. It must warm up as it passes through town, but this was fresh from someplace close. It was so cold, in fact, that I appreciated the mid-July heat on my toes as it peeked through the canopy of green above me. There must have been some snow melt still cooling the stream. I was glad I wore wading clothes to work that day. That's the allure of Jackson; your lunch break can be spent in the semi-wilderness a mere 15 minute bike ride away. That's also the problem with Jackson: people know about it. Even though most of the town has transformed into an utterly unrecognizable visage of "New California" with modernistic socialist-soviet grey cube-type homes and electric vehicles and HOAs, the road to Cache Creek Trailhead passes through East Jackson, which appears to contain the last traces of OLD Jackson - - that place my parents moved to in the 1980s. It's the last place where people still live in homes built in the 1920s and you see gauche yard decorations, metal Coleman coolers stacked up in wooden garages, hand-made canoes, and horses in back yards. I also passed a herd of plastic flamingoes beneath a cottonwood on East Hansen. Maybe the owner of that lot hoped the kitschyness would deter new "locals" who have been here for two seasons from finding the little lunch-break paradise that I, who grew up here, finally enjoyed. It's no wonder people are wearing diapers on their faces now. For a long time, there has been a growing confusion about the purpose of one's head vs one's butt area. Maybe it began when people started wearing leggings in lieu of pants, or maybe it started when people transferred their intelligence into their phones (which incidentally, are typically stored near the butt). Either way, the fashionable new use for one's mouth is something akin to the outmoded purpose of the anus. There is a push in society to use disposable ear-loop or fabric masks to collect mouth-excrement rather than letting it fly loose, or let it leave the body through the traditional anal opening. In fact, the fad has gone so far that people who are using their mouths for that outdated function of breathing, eating, and speaking, i.e. life, are shunned, called cult members, and asked to leave establishments where such savagery is not acceptable. In my county, those who don't recognize the face diaper and wear it as an icon of virtue may be fined $750 and/or arrested. If I am not mistaken, the face now functions as a butt, so the butt must function as a face. I have seen this grow in popularity to such an extent in the past few months that traditional "mouth-breathers" like myself who prefer to crap out of my butt in private have been banned from buying food unless I wear a face diaper. Meanwhile, I'm forced to look at people crapping out of their faces and I have to listen to their butts speak and smell the farts of their new language whenever I go out in public. This trend is not a pleasant one, let the reader beware. Very grey skies were almost sickly flat in every direction. It must have been one huge cloud blocking out the sky. There was a light haze of humidity helping the 6:30 a.m. light to be even darker. I had gotten used to the loudness of the wind. Now it was like a calm, but disturbing hum of a machine except for the whistling noises that it made in my ears and the strength of it served as a reminder to hurry along the ridge before it turned the damp cotton shirt to ice. It seemed to be sweeping the whole hill upwards as grass and trees below all bent in my direction. I looked up again to the rocks on the left that I'd been watching for signs of mountain lions. Interestingly, the oddly shaped boulder on the top of the ridge that I had been watching was gone. I noticed it because it looked like a large man sitting with hunched shoulders, and now I wondered if it actually was a man because it is not typical for rocks to disappear like that. If it had been a man, he was surely a giant and probably would not be able to move that quickly. I swirled to look at the ravine on the right just in time to see a heavy log-type object hurling uphill toward me. It was a massive winged creature, like an eagle but larger than any eagle I had seen. The wingspan looked like that of a large hawk, but where a typical hawk's wing ends there was a joint and an entire second half making wings double the size that I have grown to expect from eagles and hawks.
I clutched my can of pepper spray that I take when I'm out that early, but I knew it would be a sad defense if this raptor decided to claw at my head. It hovered slightly ahead and about 25 feet above me as the wind grew stronger and louder, and the sky darkened. It seems silly now to be afraid of a large bird while hiking alone in a wind storm, but it was a very intimidating creature. It wasn't just the largeness that was scary; I'm not afraid of airplanes when they fly low and they are much bigger than a bird of prey. It was exactly the perfect size to seem massive and yet not so massive that it was unbelievable. This was on the edge of unbelievable, so in a way, seeing a dragon may have been less startling because that would be surreal. This bird was very real, and it was taking an obvious interest in hikers that day. The freedom to get in a vehicle and drive it yourself...I will miss that. The open road is a perfect illustration of the responsibility that we are expected to assume as free people whenever we hit the highway. We are expected to stay in our lanes, and for the most part, we do. We have a great responsibility to obey the traffic conventions, maintain specific speeds, and pay attention to our fellow drivers. Other than that, the road is your own. Anyone with working limbs has the ability to get in a car and drive it anywhere. You can drive out of town, into town, to work, to a store, you can even drive it into another vehicle if you so choose. This is freedom.
A time is coming when our vehicles will all be tracked so that the brakes are applied automatically whenever another vehicle comes into range. Traffic will be perfectly predicted, grids displaying exactly what vehicles are where will be available by app, and we ourselves may even be monitored. Who is where will become public knowledge. The public will see numbers, the private will see personal details, like when cops need to find a perp, or when the state health director decides to track down a quarantine violation. Whether it is by phone or chip, or some invention not yet produced whereby all objects will broadcast their location at all times, the end of the sackless wanderer is near. We will lose the freedom to go out of bounds, to drive on closed roads, or even to commit suicide in peace. Those who don't comply with object location tech will be forced to give up communication and commutation. We will have no cars, no phones, maybe even no access to grocery stores. The need for metrics is taking over. The word got out; people trust metrics, so that is how we will be manipulated |