I am going to a poetry reading tonight hosted by a long-term good friend named Rowan Chong. I owe it to him to remind me of my inner poet.

I wrote my first poem when I was in middle school to a Vietnamese girl named Ahn Nguyen. I wish I still had that poem. Funny thing about life is that many years later Ahn was the roommate to another girl named Rebecca Jehan who was the most significant other girlfriend in my life, and is the one girl who I will always love for the rest of my life -- even though I accept that I will never see her ever again.

Love has no ownership. It exists. It does not control.

Anyway, I wrote this poem yesterday. I call it "What the Fuck".

We walk the earth
master of our own personal universe
having tools at our disposal
that send us images of earthly weather patterns
instant messages from half way across the globe
26 words and 260 pages quicker than the post office and the publishing cycle.
It used to be a few months before other people had the chance to read your bullshit.
Now
not only do they get this trivia within a few seconds
but
they also respond a few seconds later
and so too all too many others whom you do not know
anonymous persons who project their monstrous id
playing ping pong on the internet table
but you don’t see these players on the other side of a 6 foot table anymore
and these others
the outside world
are completely incongruous
intangible
untouchable
you have no fucking idea who these people are on the other side of the internet.
You read their words
You see their videos
but the human is imprisoned by the orifice of plastic or metal
and the electric waves and currents are alien signals
transporting power like blood corpuscles
except
they aren’t biological
and we don’t see them at all.
They happen by some unknowable magic
even though we think we know them
because we have an ideology called math
that balances equations
and minimizes the theories we call functions
because the planet has become an input into the machine of extraction
and the human slaves are fed on the conveyor belt of civilization
while the propaganda entertains them and speaks of progress like chewing on candy.

Which is why we are in this existential human crisis
wondering what exactly is this thing called “human existence”.
What exactly is this life driving in metal boxes on concrete roads
going to and fro
from rectangular boxes where human forms hold small machines
and constantly look at them while they ignore everything else
having nothing to say to the people who are standing within 15 feet
not even realizing or caring or even curious
blank faces being fed by the ether while shackled to the artificial
thinking grandiose lies and tall tales as their minds are constantly being bombarded by kitsch
because that is the only way to survive when you are a grain of sand in the universe.

But is that all we are?
A grain of sand?
A tiny small infinitesimal cube of Silicon Dioxide floating in the wind of time?

Gun extremists love to hug that 2nd amendment like their favorite teddy bear.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

What do you think the first 4 words of that amendment means?

"A well regulated militia"

Militia that is well regulated, hmm... That means that you don't let average citizens easily buy assault weapons that can shoot 30 rounds in a few seconds. That means you don't get to own your personal anti-aircraft weapon -- because you never know, right? Those criminals and random elements might just come and land a plane on your acres of private property.

It's just a wedge issue that politicians use to lead the minions to vote against their own best interests because all they gotta do is throw up the "take your guns away" plus "Second Amendment" red herring, and presto magic you get all the bonafides of having any legitimacy.

Come on people. Read the entire amendment, not just the last 4 words.

I refuse to comment on anything about Donald Trump. Believe me I have plenty to say, but I intend to make a concerted effort to not allow political insanity to interfere with this blog, save for the historical moment and perhaps the interesting nugget of whatever.

Lindsay Lohan has always had a special place in my heart but it is a shame that she projects her own issues on the men she allows into her life.

“I realize now you can't stay in a relationship just for love,” she told the Mail on Sunday in an interview she said she did because there have been “so many lies” printed about her recently. “No woman can be hit and stay with that person if that person isn't prepared to say sorry.”

[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times | Christie D'Zurilla | 8 August 2016]

Ichiro hits a triple for his 3,000th hit. Not to mention he already passed Peter Rose when you include his 9 years in Japan. He came over to the US as a Seattle Mariner when he was 27, and got 3,000 hits in 15 seasons, from 2001 to 2016.

Peter Rose got all uppity when there was some mention of Ichiro being the Hit's leader. In truth, Peter played until he was 45 years old, and collected 3464 hits from age 27 until 45. However, if you compare them from age 27 to age 42, Peter Rose got 3091 hits. Pete Rose was still playing 151 games at age 42, but he got 121 hits with a .245 average that year. He got 107 hits in 121 games at age 43.

Ichiro had 10 years of 200 hits. Peter only had 9 years. Imagine now if Ichiro had played in the United States for those first 9 years and you get some idea of how good Ichiro really is.

Ichiro Suzuki is da man, but Pete Rose also switch hit. Who is the best? Good question.

I could have fixed this blog earlier than I did, but I sort of went through an existential catharsis over the last 14 months. My life and my profession were overwhelming me. I didn't have the wherewithal to focus on being tuned into to the zeitgeist. I needed to evolve.

But here I am yet again. Ready to tap on this keyboard and share the ruminations of my brain for anyone who wants to listen.

I finally got my blog code upto date. The main issue was that my server changed the way they use databases, but there was also legacy php code that had to be cleared up on 3 separate files.

Sorry it took so long everyone. I know it's been 14 months, but right now it appears all systems are go.

In the modern era, we have become obsessed with the achievement of the individual to the point where all appeals for community seem minuscule in comparison to the rhetoric and rationale. However, human beings are group animals. We all depend upon other persons producing and making goods and services for a large part of our daily and yearly needs. The individual is only so good as what can be offered as worthy to the individual's peers, so why is it that the modern era seems to have very few politically sponsored ideologies beyond obvious or subtle appeals to individual achievement.

A pitcher alone cannot win baseball games. He needs good defensive, a good catcher, some good hitters, a bullpen that doesn't give up runs, and sometimes a little luck -- over and above whatever talent and exploited weaknesses that might exist. Regardless of whatever players are on the same team, a pitcher will always get the gloss of the surrounding environment.

The same can be said of a football quarterback. Or any team coordinated effort. In the modern era the obsession with the entrepreneur making their individual mark conveniently forgets about the other individuals or the context of the situation that enabled motivated persons to be in the right situation at the right time. The luck arrived, and they were ready.

Entrepreneurialism is the nice word here. People walking around collecting cans or selling food outside downtown businesses at lunchtime, or female streetwalkers, are doing what they need to do make money -- regardless of whatever choices or life paths are involved. Disguising what the current top-down destruction of a functional balanced economic order with an entrepreneurial myopia forgets that people doing what they do to make money are not entrepreneurs. They are desperate. They are dealing with the loss of jobs and income that were exterminated by upper-level management to squeeze a few extra bucks from the revenue so that investors and themselves can have more profit. Blind and oblivious they are to the upheaval they have made to the social system, they cannot understand the chaos except in the terms of their own lexical paradigm they use to justify their communal selfish destruction.

Hence, the people who no longer have the good middle class job opportunities of the past that form their own small businesses are seen as "entrepreneurs". Which is great for the few who ever actually succeed at this endeavor. Most people will be employed to a boss their entire life, and most of them are not due to the weakness of the individuals themselves. Most of the time the long-term security and reliable salary are critical factors, because in reality, employees have to exist for an economy to function. There can never be an economy or social order in the modern world with no employees, in which everyone is an entrepreneur. With primitive tribal groups of 1,000 members this ideal might be achievable, but it is never true in a nation of 400 million, and 200 cities with at least 100,000.

The person's who push this nonsense are using it as mace. They want to spray it into everyone's eyes so they can be blinded by reality and not realize that the community is what actually creates the worth of any individual. That's why the elite form their own communities. In a sense, they have removed themselves from real communities and create their own office board room / country club / exclusive resort communities. But for non-elite persons, the community is the neighborhood, the people who go to the same church or coffee shop, or the township in which they live. The elite have lost their own attachment to any real community, and this is why they often do not perceive their own situation as something other than individual achievement. The reality that luck or happenstance events have anything at all to do with success is not part of their paradigm.

In reality, for most people, either the luck arrives and, for whatever reason (sometimes sad irony) they are not ready -- or the luck never comes. The path an individual takes in life is a function of the environment more than it is an actual choice that any individual gets to make or take. For all people, their next step was not by design, but because that was what was available or realizable at the time. Despite the hagiography of the self-made individual, people do not create their own destiny. Destiny falls upon humans in a whimsical manner -- that's why we get incompetents in high places, and stupid kings. The true test is what an individual does with the chances life gives. If you get the royal flush on the first poker deal, what do you do with the money you made?

The lingo the corporatists use for the top-down scripted standardized curriculum is "Career and College ready." But when you carve away everything in high school but specific skill set development in only English, Science, and Math -- no computer language, no drafting, no carpentry, no auto-shop, no art, no ceramics, no journalism, only 2 foreign languages --- what the hell is left that will actually create students who are "Career and College ready."

Common Core is just training our children to be "test takers" giving them "formative assessments" every single god damn day, and calling other assessments on what are called "Problems of the Month" -- tests tests tests every day of the week -- but oh don't worry, the students can retake them until they get it right. Think about that for a second. Is this guiding kids to think, or to regurgitate a process that they get repeatedly tested on the same way every year?

Oh but the next year the tests are a little more advanced. The "reformers" actually call this "spiraling" too -- WHEN IT IS NOT SPIRALING AT ALL. Spiraling occurs when you come back to previous concepts and add on another connected layer. These "reformers" actually think using the same test as last year but tacking on another advanced question is the same thing. And when the kids do the tests correctly (after how many tries?) it's called a "success" and the "teacher" is seen as doing their job. This is why they call teachers "facilitators" of the curriculum -- instead of "educators" -- giving the kids scripted standardized "assessments" and grading them every single day.

OMFG.

People tell me stories without saying one word, so I listen.

If you open your soul to the reception of the cosmos, you will understand the above quote.

If however, you

1. surround your soul with watch dogs that bark at whatever reminds you of a painful experience
2. wrap your soul around a dream that you have scripted from beginning to end, AND insist upon enacting with everyone you meet
3. bury your soul in a process or an endeavor that is supposed to achieve grandiosity or elevation of the self above everyone and everything else
4. distract the soul with constant repetitions of whatever the mind tosses out in order to orchestrate the need for self worth, over and over again, on an ongoing never ending basis
5. extirpate (good word, look it up) your soul by focusing upon everything external that is easy to access, or in other words, becoming brainwashed mindless slaves to the orchestrated world

These are the reasons why humans "lose" their soul. This is the "devil" at work, or more simply put, this is the result of the ego gone berserk and unmitigated. The ego is something of which we must be constantly mindful, because it is the source of so much delusion and is the reason why the soul becomess vanquished, whatever the excuse. It is the ego that drags you into the pits of hell.