DECEMBER - EPISODE XII: WINTER 2017

WISDOM OF THE SAGES
EPISODE XII: WINTER 2017

Hello People of the World;

We are closing in on the end of another “WORST YEAR EVER!” and it is freezing outside. Yet, once again, humanity bemoans the scientifically-proven fact that as the earth rotates on its axis in its annual rotation around the sun, the northern hemisphere moves away from the warming waves of sunlight, thus it gets f*cking freezing sometimes. Worry not, the earth will rotate back again and the warmth will return in excess. Of course, we will be caught off-guard once again, as we complain that it gets hot in the summer.

Here we are on the last day of the year. You are here again, reading my sad missives of the month. Thank you Dear Reader. I just had a thought, then, I lost it. That seems par for the course. All right, let’s get going (Holy shit, I just wrote a verse to a “The National” song!):

1:[ Opening thoughts: When did we get this idea that work is NOT hard? I hear from all kinds of people. Especially, now that I am a “common” worker at a movie theater, I hear this kind of talk more frequently. Where ever did we get this idea that work, in not hard? You hear it especially when people complain about not getting their way at a business. “You work at a McDonald’s. How hard is that?” or “You work in a movie theater, that shouldn’t be hard.” Okay, then you clean up after yourself you fucking slobs.

Seriously, when did we come to this groupthink? I hear people muttering at baristas, ‘you serve coffee, how hard is that?’ Try doing that for eight hours a day for at least five days a week and you’ll be complaining about how customers are shitty too. Sorry that they couldn’t get the thing you wanted exactly right or quick enough in the three minutes you interacted with them. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to forget all your complaints once your fucking food arrives and you start shoving it into your fucking piehole, you dick….

2:[ I am shocked to see how comfortable and encouraging we are becoming toward corporate media monopolies when it comes to comic book movies. I mean, monopolies are destructive, that was why they were outlawed. It removes choice in business so the market cannot “sort itself out”, as options of where to buy from are taken away. For the most part, the average citizen has been against conglomerate monopolies, but for the Disney-Fox merger. Suddenly, because we want the X-Men to fight the Avengers we are okay with Disney being to sole company for our entertainment needs, from whom we will be able to buy the orange cube from in the future. Yet, with the massive control to power to sway public opinion and the elimination of competition this will give Disney, and the only question coming up in this massive mistake is “Will they put the fanfare music back at the start of Star Wars movies?” We are fucked if that it the attitude.

3:[ I have been catching snippets of that saccharine family dramedy hit “Wonder” about a young boy with Treacher Collins Syndrome. As it turns out, no matter what you look like, you will eventually be accepted as long as you have the right colored skin. I hate how they equate the little girl of color with his condition, which is why they become friends, and it is only by his grace that she is accepted too. This is a disgusting movie, that we are shoving down the throats of school groups that see it, showing them, not only that fighting solves everything, and you will eventually be accepted by everyone, so long as you have every advantage growing up and have the right skin color….

4:[ Star Wars The Last Jedi was the best Marvel Movie so far. I also hate how lip service paid to diversity suddenly shields it from critique. It is not a good movie….

5:[ You ever notice how stupid other people’s conversations are? I mean, how self-centered can you get that everything is happening TO YOU!? I guess it is worth it to monopolize the conversation, making all about you, just to here “Wow, that’s amazing”, because, you really, really are. Another example of being okay with monopolies….

6:[ The new U2 album “Songs of Experience” is one of their best in a while. At first I was skeptical. As is typical for me. Hearing the songs first online did not paint a god picture of the upcoming album. I guess I have become a File Listener and lost my ear for entire albums as when I was young. But hearing the songs in the context of the full album, they are great. I will write a longer review on my annual Best of Year Reviews. It is definitely an album where you have to listen to the whole thing…

7:[ Another example that “Justice League” is junk. When Wonder Woman lassos one of the bad guys at the start and after explaining what the lassos does, again, the man describes him and his group as “Reactionary Terrorists”. What a load of shit. First, it the lasso compels the lassoed to tell the “truth”, but truth is subjective. The lasso should compel you to NOT lie. People see truths differently. Who we deem as terrorists, will NEVER see themselves as terrorists. That is THEIR TRUTH. The truth should have been “We are a Revolutionist Militia seeking to enlighten.”

But we need to place the world in black and white, good and evil terms, but keep it vague enough to still be able to hang terrorism on people we don’t like. But we would never attach militias to bad things. “Justice League” is shit, is what I am trying to say…

8:[ Some time ago, I had this discussion with a friend of mine about psychics. They claimed one of their relatives was psychic and claimed to have predicted 9/11. When pressed why they did not contact the authorities, they back-stepped about the needed accuracy, going from predicting two hijacked planes being deliberately crashing into buildings to “having a feeling that people would die today.”

I mean, I can predict that too. Really, people, lots of people die every damn day. To which my friend had the temerity to ask, “Do they need to be 100% accurate?” Yes, they do have to be 100% accurate, THAT’S THE WHOLE DAMN POINT! otherwise, why call them ‘psychics’?

Look, I get the need to believe, I really do. I mean, we are all so fucking awesome, that there has to be something, SOMETHING, right? Afterlife, superpowers? Right? Sorry to say, psychics are a fraud. I stopped believing in them years ago, decades ago.

Over the years, I have learned a lot more about Cold Reading, Pattern Recognition and how our brains work, and most especially, Priming, which is used on us on the daily. Example: when someone tells you a place you never visited before is haunted, your mind shapes patterns to conform to that suggestion. There are no “haunted” hotels or houses. But when someone tells you that a place it haunted, your brains sees patterns of shadows and movements and sounds as human shapes, moving objects, and human voice. See?

I used to work as a night watchman at a bingo hall. (Clichéd, right?) I spent nearly a year sitting in a dark, empty open-spaced building before anyone told me it was haunted. When asked if I saw anything, I said no, never. They attributed it to “A strong mind” but in reality, it was because I did not know I was SUPPOSED to see ghosts in there. I was never primed. Understand? I never saw anything after either.

I know people have seen ghosts. It is because they were primed to do so, because they so want to believe in an afterlife. It is that belief that overpowers logic. Which begs the question: when you see a ghost, who has no more earthly concerns, why do they need clothes?

The most easily explainable thing for ghost is a phenomenon called Infrasound. Think infrared light, but for sound, something measurable, but our physical bodies cannot detect. Infrasound is a high-pitched frequency that affects our cognizant brain functions, creating shadows, figures, and has us thinking we hear and see things that are not there. It has been around since the earth formed. Sorry to break it to you.

Sufficed to say, I have quit believing in a lot of things. There were times I think I saw something, but now; I think it was a trick on my own mind. When no one else saw it, the more determined I became that what I saw was real. That is another aspect of how this works. I think this conversation I had with my friend was vocalizing my skepticism and affirmed my non-belief. So, thanks to my friend for solidifying my path of critical thought. I wonder if your great aunt would have seen that?

That is it for this month.

Stay warm and I do hope you all have a good New Year’s Day. Just remember, in the larger, longer picture, it’s just another Monday. You don’t have to hold yourselves to such high standards of completing huge astronomical goals in 365 days. It’s just not possible. Change comes in generations of which we are just one. Make the time you are in a good place to be, add your contribution to that change in anyway you can. In the end: Don’t be an asshole.

As always, I invite you to comment, correct, or contradict anything I write here. I am open to a critical debate. Thanks for taking the time to check out what I write here and I will see you in a month.

Until next time, remember “I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”

2017 Ernest M Whiteman III