RETRATO?

Tonight I went to pick up my eldest son who just started working at a Used (gently read) Book Store.
While I was there I dropped off a huge box of musty text books to be recycled and enjoyed in someone else's basement.

As we were leaving, the owner, an indefatigable champion of outdated information, ran after me and and as a sign of his appreciation, thrust a large, blue, fancy schmancy book the size of a medicine cabinet into my hands.

Well you can imagine my utter surprise when I read the title!

















I confess that my Spanish isn't perfect but I am fairly certain that in English it translates as...

GEORGE W. BUSH
A Retard Of A Leader

BIRD DROPPINS
by Coppens

Some days BLOGGING is for the birds.
You get up before the cock crows and the cuckoo clock strikes six.
The early bird gets the worm.
No easy task for a nighthawk.

Sometimes you are cocksure that you won't post a turkey.
You have taken to BLOGGING like a duck takes to water and you are ready to soar like an eagle.
You get goose bumps just thinking about it.

You usually wing it, try not to parrot others or get pigeonholed.
You are a bit of a culture vulture and you try not to ruffle too many feathers.
Yes the eagle has landed and it is ravenous for a bird's eye view from the crow's nest.

Even though it started out as a lark, now you fancy yourself as a bit owlish.
With eyes like a hawk you swoop down on others with a swift wit and sink your talons into their funny bone.

But still...some may think that you are a quack, a bit of a loon.
Others may think that you are strutting around like a peacock.
Some find you too hawkish even though you are really a dove.
Hey what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

But what is this ..you don't hear a peep and there is a goose egg in the comments. Don't birds of a feather flock together?
....so you start squawkin.
BLOGGING is for the birds!

Did you just post your swan song? NO.
When the chickens come home to roost this albatross may have you eating crow but you are not as dead as a dodo.

Commenters are a migratory species.
Some of them may fly south for the winter and others may flock off for good.
Like water off a duck's back you have to let it go.
Keep building your nest egg and lining up your ducks in a row.
Stop brooding.
Nobody else can clip your wings!

Birds of a feather will always flock together.


Have a great weekend.

BONOBOS
one Swingin' Ape
Don't go this is about SEX!

As per my plan to be infrickinformative once and a while I will refresh and recycle past postings that are near and dear to my mandate.
This Tuesday redux investigates my fascination with Apes, not the human kind the ape kind, especially Chimpanzees, (our closest living relatives with 98% of our DNA) which will lead us to today's what if question.

But first a quick review:
there are two species of Chimps,
the familiar Pan Troglodytes and the out of this world
Bonobo, Pan Paniscus.
Both will probably be gone from the wild in our lifetime.

The Chimpanzee of Astronaut, Film and Circus fame is, unfortunately, very similar to us. They are a male dominated, warring omnivore with tool making abilities that live stressful lives avoiding violent unprovoked attacks from others.

The Bonobos on the other hand are a female oriented culture that uses sex instead of physical violence as a vehicle for conflict resolution. Although the sex is apparently more occasional than the mad free for all depicted in documentaries, it is still a wild orgy compared to the sedate bi-weekly poke in the whiskers that most of us humans enjoy. Except of course for the Satyrs and Nymphos and all the power to ya.

Bonobos, or Bonerbos as I call them, use sex as a form of greeting, for pure recreation, and for conflict management.
Sex regularly occurs on an as required basis between members of the opposite sex within the group but also includes female to female genital rubbing and males who enjoy penis fencing.

Scientists have documented that Bonobos actually experience orgasms!
Guess we humans aren't so special;

I'll have what she's ooh-ooh-ooh-aah-aah-having!
These orgasms occur at an alarmingly efficient rate since sexual encounters average 13 seconds. Thirteen seconds, as many women can testify, is unfortunately not outside the realm of many human males.


However girls rule and boys drool, because if a male Bonobo is pressuring an unwilling female to have sex
NO means NO even in Bo-No-bo!

the other females gang up on him and chase him off.
Status is achieved through maternal lines and all in all
it's basically the opposite of the society that the other apes (including us) have developed.

My question is,
what if homo escapeons had used sex as a method of conflict resolution instead of whacking the other guy over the head with a big f*cking rock?

What kind of world would we live in today?
And would we ever get anything done?

I PROMISE TO BE GOOD FROM NOW ON!

I personally don't believe in a literal HELL.
That being said if I am wrong I know exactly how I will be tormented for the rest of ETERNITY.

In order to receive my just reward of torment and anguish for whatever it was that I did wrong I wouldn't have to be roasted and jabbed with a pitchfork..Oh no.

You see there exists a punishment far more sinister and diabolical. A soul shredding condemnation so evil that I can barely summon the strength to contemplate its application...
I would be forced to listen to one song forever and ever...

Neil Sedaka singing BAD BLOOD
over and over and over again ...
just like 1975.

Do you remember ..

"It coulda been me but it was you
Who went and bit off a little bit more than he could chew
You said that you had it made, but you been had
The woman no good, no how, thinkin' maybe the blood is bad

Bad (ba-a-ad)
Blood (blo-o-od)
The woman was born to lie
Makes promises she can't keep
With the wink on an eye

Bad (ba-a-ad)
Blood (blo-o-od)
Brother, you've been deceived
It's bound to change you mind
About all you believe
Is takin' you for a ride"

(*wailing and gnashing of teeth can be heard)

The cruelest and most irritating part of the song is of course Elton John echoing the chorus in the background wailing...

Bad (ba-a-ad) Blood (blo-o-od)!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

I can only hope that HELL will freeze over before I get there.




WHICH SONG WOULD THE DEVIL PLAY TO TORMENT YOU?

MARXIST LENNONIST!

I am joining the ultimate apolitical party.
An all night party that more accurately acknowledges the absudity of the human condition.
A party of fellow pie-in-the-skyers who are so sick of all the bullsh*t.
A colour blind nationless collective of free-ish spirits guided by common sense and personal accountability.
We have absofrickinlutely zero chance of ever winning..
but we will have a great time trying!


"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well, I have others!""
GROUCHO MARX

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans"
JOHN LENNON

Have a great weekend,
I leave you with our global anthem,
because nobody has ever said it better.....

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
(I have no problem with that)

Imagine all the people
Living for today...
(but don't ignore history)

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
(why not, we tried everything else)

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace..
(not really, but I'd like to)

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
(dreams are a wish that your heart makes)

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
(OK there are a few things that I would need to keep)

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
(All he was saying was give Peace a chance!)

PERSONIFIED
Do you remember waking up in the middle of the intro to Psychology class (always first period) when the Instructor was discussing something about the difference between

how you see yourself,
how others see you and
how you think that others see you..

well here goes nothing..

this is me










this is how I see myself











this is who my Mom sees







how my kids see me







how I appear to my goodladywife







old girlfriends







college classmates









high school classmates







and finally, how I appear to my best friend, within,without






How do you think other people see you?

POPE BENEDICT'S BENEDICTION..

"Sticks and Stones may break our bones,
but Words will kill us all!",
the Solipsist Soliloquist.

The Pope's recent remarks have started a fire...
his comments alluding to 14th Century writings about Islam being spread by the sword has cost a 65 year old nun in Somalia her life.
Christian Churches around the world have also been razed to the ground by mobs of angry undereducated misinformed zealots.
WHAT YEAR IS IT?

Why do homo sapiens kill others because of ideas?!
Exactly when did our ancestors start to kill others who said something that they didn't like. ..
probably about the same time that they figured out that it was better to throw a sharpened stick at another human from a safe distance...
rather than wait for the other guy to sneak up and whack him 'upside the head..old school ?

Why is it that homo escapeons continue to have the psychological crap scared out of them (such as unprovable threats of eternal damnation)
from some guy in a fancy schmancy getup?
Always with the getup??

Daily life for our ancestors was absolutely terrifying 99% of the time as they roamed the African Savannah in search of food.
Enough of them somehow evaded getting eaten or trampled or gored or poisoned or having rocks dropped on their head or whacked upside of the head or speared from a distance, to go on to create civilisation.

By trial and error, early Homo Poindexterous
(smart guys with poor throwing arms)
discovered that planting crops and locking up edible animals right at your campground was a lot easier than walking around for 16 hours a day looking for stuff to eat. Instead of being rewarded for these ideas and being appointed as the leader of the tribe, the position of Chief was somehow always filled by a large, scary guy with a good throwing arm.

The Chief would usually have a right hand man,
a psychological enforcer,
the Shaman or Sham-man.

The Shaman was a weird dude who wore scary makeup and dressed in a fancy get-up. He told everybody that invisible evil spirits would throw invisible sharpened sticks at them (for ever and ever and ever) if they didn't obey Him and his on-the-fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants-revelations and regulations...

Oh, and of course don't forget to obey the Chief.


The Chief usually 'went along' with the Shaman's concocted evil spirit gig and the Shaman was very aware that the Chief had a great throwing arm. From the get-go an uneasy alliance was formed.

Undeterred, Homo Poindexterous ignored this rubbish as best they could and went on to invent things. Useful items, like walls around the campground to deter 'wild' uncivilised humans from stealing and eating the stored crops and tethered animals.

They also designed and constructed affordable crappy huts for all the workers,

and huge outrageously opulent fancy schmacy palaces for the Chief and his Shaman.

Ta Da!
There you have it,
the birth of civilisation!

Oh sure all of the fancy stuff like aquaducts and the internet, what-not-shops and space shuttles would eventually complicate and clutter the urban landscape, but this is still the basic blueprint for how we, homo escapeons (modern man), live today.

I find it interesting that we didn't let the Poindexterous lead us? We chose to ignore practical solutions and free thinking and by osmosis capitulated to the fear and hysteria of the Bully and his Shaman.

What have the homo escapeons learned from all of this...sadly....
ABSOFRICKINLUTELY NOTHING!
I'm not exactly sure why, but we still seem unable to rid ourselves of the imaginary fears, and unfortunately, very real sharpened sticks, being jabbed in our faces by modern Shamans and Chiefs.

The calendar may appear to declare the year as 2006, but Chiefs and Shamans rattle sabres and scimitars alike in their efforts to maintain the status quo.

Last February many of us were taken by surprise at the near complete submission by the Western Media to the literary ransom demands of censoring political cartoons in Denmark.
Salman Who?

The complete submission of science and rational thought and freedom from religion in our world would sentence our species to replicate the horrors of past religious wars... which would translate in today's world as a complete extinction level event.

We're not even close to discussing our differences in a civilised manner, in fact, we're not even having the right discussion.

Where has all of the hardfought progress of the last 200 years gone?

PREY FOR ME

In the aftermath of the random senseless slaughter of innocent students in Montreal it seemed like a good idea to post a reassuring feelgood post about cute cuddly critters..

aaah they are soooo cute!!!!

..THE HELL WITH THAT!

As far as I am concerned the depraved homicidal/ suicidal f*cking asshole (your infamy secured I strike your name ), received a far too lenient sentence for his crimes..a self inflicted painless instant death.

His family and more importantly his Victims and their families will suffer from his actions far more than he did. It is unfair and unjust. However many Canadians are morally opposed to the Death Penalty. Some people think that it is cruel and unusual punishment to die at the hand of another human...however remarkably similar to the cruel and unusual horror that the victims experienced. So be it.

Therefore for future reference involving 'captured' homicidal maniacs I have devised a 100% Natural Recycling Program. Yes I am in favor of Recycling not Rehabilitating Psychotic Sociopaths...albeit my plan is a tad Romanesque (thumbs down) and perhaps a little melodramatic...speaking of d-r-a-m-a...

hey Death Boy Goth Fake f*cking Vampire Bullsh*t Oh The World Hates Me Boo Hoo Hoo Little F*cking Piece Of Sh*t Motherf*cker You want some DRAMA, you needed some NEGATIVE ATTENTION..

My word..sorry about that... where was I.... oh yes..

THE KARMIC CAFETERIA

Why not let Nature take it's course..with a little nudge here and there. Instead of a firing squad, lethal injection or hanging we could outsource the executioning of sadistic murderers back to the Animal Kingdom.

100% All Natural...

Food Chain Friendly...

Systematically Symbiotic...

No Animals Are Being Harmed...

Nature Taking Its Course ..

The Karmic Cafeteria.

We all recognise that when other 'Animals' kill they do not commit murder, they just hunt, ...and they have been hunting and consuming Humans since day one. So really it is a Recycling Program that solves two problems. Who wouldn't feel good about preserving an Endangered Species.

GREAT WHITE SHARK

One solution is to let the convicted 'prey item' go swimming ( water skiing would make for better reality TV, we could call it PREY FOR ME) in the in the area known as the strike zone. A strip of water that separates the Seal Colony from the open Ocean.

Patiently awaiting the Seals while patrolling the bottom and glancing above for shadows and motion is the Great White Shark. With a sudden burst of speed the Shark torpedos the prey item from below with a force great enough to carry more than one ton of the world's largest carnivorous fish into the air.

A bone crunching aortic tearing bite is delivered and the prey item is left to bleed out, go into shock and drown. This way the shark avoids being injured. Once the shark is satisfied that dinner is dead (or close enough) it casually moves in to consume it's meal in 30 pound chunks.

KOMODO DRAGONS

Next on my list is a much slower gruesome exit courtesy of the world's largest Lizard. The Komodo Dragon has a mouth oozing and constantly dripping with toxic saliva. To secure a meal it simply has to nip it's victim and wait for the bacteria to finish them off.

Survivors are you ready for todays challenge?

The painful slow septic demise of the Deer ,Wild Boar, or convicted Prey Item, is usually prematurely interrupted as a voracious pack of slobbering Komodos rush in to consume the dead (or close enough) prey item and tear it apart in huge reptilian gulps.

This process of eating rotting flesh enables the Komodo's saliva to become even more concentrated and toxic.... Nasty.

No doubt some of you may be hesitant to endorse this breathtakingly simple program so I will give you a bit of time to chew it over.

Gratitude to the Latitude DUDE!

I do not prefer being pigeonholed as a white guy.

Truth be told I am more of a neutral beige during the winter months and turn into a yummy shade of chocolaty taupe in the summer. To me the term white guy is now a perjorative term that conjures up negative images of Klansmen, Nazis, Vikings, Conquistadors, Stock Brokers and other purveyors of intolerance, mayhem and subjugation.

You see I believe that the phrase 'white guy' is racist because it has been hijacked by politically correct nutjobs. Ironic?

It is now generally accepted that throughout the last two thousand years of history all 'non-white' people around the globe were threatened, enslaved or atleast annoyed by white guys. Unfortunately that is a fairly accurate image.

The now standard White Euro Male Guilt trip was no doubt developed by bra burning Hippy Profs at Berkeley in the late 60s. It just so happens to remain as the current politically correct description of white guys which if nothing else proves that guilt is the gift that keeps on giving!

The opposite of white guys are always presented as the peaceful gentle souls who have a kinder, deeper, gentler skin tone like Ghandi, Buddha, Martin Luther King and of course Pikachu.

I always get a kick out of the British/American portraits of Jesus as a thin, frail, white guy with orange hair and beard. He looks like such a wimp that even the Olsen twins could have stolen his lunch money!

Finally some people are accepting the idea that Yeshua (Jesus) was a Middle Eastern Jew living in a semi-arrid land and he probably didn't actually look exactly like King James.



Anyway anything that labels us and divides us into separate groups doesn't make life any easier for homo escapeons. Six Million Years Ago when we separated from our closest relative, the Chimpanzee, we probably all had light coloured skin and dark hair like the Chimps.

Skin tones on humans around the world display the adaptations to the various levels of Ultra Violet wavelengths from the Sun at different latitudes.

We all started out invading the rest of the world from Africa. Mitochondrial Eve, our universal Mother to whom every human being alive today can trace their DNA, probably had a delicious dark brown coating.

As Humans scattered about the globe their skin reflectance gradually shifted to combat Melanoma from UV rays and still produce vitamin D at the varying latitudes. That's all.

Marlon Brando answered his US ARMY questionaire by writing under the question of
RACE: Human, and under
COLOUR: it varies.
Naturally he was red flagged.


I appreciate that we may look different but we, the collective we, need to be happy with our genetic makeup because Mother Nature made us that way for latitudinal reasons. So Dudes and Dudettes, we have to change some attitudes and show some gratitude to the latitude.

Unfortunately homo escapeons have used the protective camouflage of our body's largest organ (skin) as a weapon of segregation for millenia. That is insanely tedious. Like any coroner performing an autopsy we need to appreciate that we are identical on the inside. How you deal with the outside is entirely up to you.

I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?

You are a Self-Discoverer

You're not religious, but you've created your own kind of spirituality.Introspective and thoughtful, you tend to look inward for the divine.You are distrusting of all forms of organized religion.You especially dislike religious gurus and leaders, who you feel are charlatans.

What's" Your Religious Philosophy?

You are Agnostic

You're not sure if God exists, and you don't care.For you, there's no true way to figure out the divine.You rather focus on what you can control - your own life.And you tend to resent when others "sell" religion to you.

What's" Your Religious Philosophy?

obviously confounded is more like it......anyway

MITIGATE THIS!

Lazy Ass Wednesday...

since my You Are A Snarky Blogger link doesn't work I will say a few words..I was fully intending on writing about a monster who killed a beautiful young girl in Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA. GF is a place where people from Whateverpeg visit all of the time to shop American and getaway for a weekend.

The trial report (with appropriate good vs. evil photographs displayed daily) is being followed very closely up here because we are neighbours, and the story is about a beautiful young white blonde VICTIM and a swarthy sinister migrant worker career sex-offender jailbird OFFENDER.

Now his head on the chopping block.

A life full of promise versus a life wasted.

But it wasn't about racism until the defense team started going on and on about how toxic farm chemicals absorbed by the psychotic man while performing migrant farming jobs in the 50s and 60s plus a miserable unhappy childhood that drove him to a life of drugs , alchohol, sex crimes and murder. Like Johnny Cochrane said, when you've got nothin',play the race card.The defense team is desperately trying to humanize 'tito' in hopes of evading the DEATH PENALTY and securing LIFE IN PRISON.

This guy had just served a 23 year sentence for three prior sex-related convictions before he snatched his victim from a shopping mall parking lot and then strangled, stabbed and raped his victim.

Now the murderer's mother is telling the court that he is a kind, loving man struggling through life.

It should and ultimately will be, decided based on the fact that a monster killed a girl who could have easily been YOUR or MY daughter and nobody cares if he was purple or green or from outer space. Mitigate that.

If they need volunteers for a firing squad....OK five minutes later after cooling down I could just as easily throw away the key.....except that they ALWAYS let some of them out...and guess what happens every f*%@ing time.

9 1 1 = nine eleven

Five years later and things are not getting any better...
no, they are much worse!













I am off to read other Blogs and comment for a while....
why not go and visit FIVE NEW blogs!

iPOD LAWSUIT iDIOCY!

This will be brief.

Mr. Patterson, since you have NOT actually experienced any hearing loss but decided to launch your lawsuit against Apple anyway just in case you do

....I was thinking thank goodness you can still listen to music on your iPOD so while you are waiting for your hearing you can download a song.

Search under TV Themes and click on Dragnet. Remember that one...

DUM-DE-DUM-DUM!

P.S. Hopefully the trial will not interfere with any of your ongoing MENSA activities.

Due to the underwhelming response to yesterday's post I offer the following...

People don't care how much you know.

People want to know how much you care.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ

I got memed by SH at My Free Thoughts
http://www.myfreethoughts.com/blog.aspx
and I am willing to be her Huckleberry but I also enjoy killing memes and it ends here...
unless you want to list some of your favorites in the comments.

#1 The Book that changed your life

THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM
by Christopher Lasch

Subtitled
American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations
this 70s phenom forced me to look at WHY people are so cynical and filled with self doubt.
Lasch explains the Culture of Consumption and why we passively rely on so-called experts (consultants) and question our own skills.
As a Historian and a social critic, Lasch exposes the roots of our Meritocracy and why 'selective elevation into the elite' replaced competence and respect.
This book is my rosetta stone and my inspiration for reclassifying modern man as HOMO ESCAPEONS.


#2 The Book(s) that you have read more than once

LIFE ON EARTH
by David Attenborough
THE NAKED APE
by Desmond Morris
BEGINNINGS;
The Story of Origins of Mankind, Life, the Earth, the Universe
by Isaac Asimov
This triumverate forms the core of my intellectual existence. My entire cosmological persona was reformed on the information gleaned from these marvelous books. It is why I am completely satisfied that we humans know

WHAT we are
WHO we are,
HOW we got here,
WHERE we came from,
WHEN we started and
WHY we act the way we do.

I am (finally) content with the realisation that we may never know anything past the BIG BANG and my personal conclusion is that perpetuating religious inventions, instead of exploring with science, will be a death sentence for our species.
My resolute determination to expose, extinguish and jettison the false hope and promise of Religion in my personal life was formed within these pages and I have never felt more comfortable in my own skin. Who knew?

... that you would want on a desert Island;
NERD ALERT! The Penquin ATLAS OF WORLD HISTORY
Bite size snippets of history with colourful maps and graphs...perfect!
or
ON THE HUMAN BODY AND THE HUMAN BRAIN
by Isaac Asimov
Comprehensive explanation of our miraculous physical structure!
or
THE STORY OF ENGLISH
by Robert MCrum, William Cran & Rober MacNeil
Fascinating account of why and how English became the dominant language!

....made you excited;
THE DAY THE UNIVERSE CHANGED
by James Burke
Wonderful examination of historical incidents and inventions that elevated our species from the chains of unquestioned submission to authority. Brilliant.

THE BOOMER BIBLE
by R.F.Laird
80s Punk writing!? You have to read it to believe it..Wikipedia has a blurb..more fun for believers, non-believers & ex-believers than a barrel full of evolutionary monkeys!

..made you sob;
THE DAVINCI CODE
by Dan Brown
Why, because I had not read a novel since Jaws or Cain and Abel and I was so happy that I could read something just for fun. It was filled with enough half baked historical notions to make it interesting and such bite sized chapters that I could whip through it.

...that you wish had never been written;
Hmmm..I do not adhere to censorship because that slippery slope turns into an avalanche..

..currently reading;
THE SELFISH GENE
by Richard Dawkins
Long overdue.

..meaning to read..
A HISTORY OF GOD
by Karen Armstrong
WHY DARWIN MATTERS
by Michael Shermer
and about 100 others.....but who has time to read when you BLOG?

OXYF*CKINMORONS!

The worst oxymoron in our lexicon has to be Friendly Fire.

It happened again. For f*ck sake will somebody please go to Arfghanistan and paint huge maple leafs on the helmet of every single Canadian Soldier.
Since 2002, Canada has lost 32 Sons and Daughters.
Of those brave young men and women
5 have been killed and
38 others wounded from attacks by
US Warplanes!

It is bad enough that we are over there in the first place but to lose soldiers to Friendly Fire again. If these politicians really believe that they are saving the Afghan people from the Taliban then for f*ck sake do it some other way, do it right or bring them home. Surely the Armed Forces have the technology to avoid harming their own soldiers.

How can this keep happening and whatever happened to Canada being a Peacekeeping force anyway?
We are not a militaristic nation and we shouldn't be
pissing in the tall grass with the Big Dogs!

The entire battle plan seems destined for failure since the Taliban can move freely throughout the forbidding mountains that border Pakistan and Afghanistan..
how do we really know what is going on anyway?.















Somebody sent me this photo a few months ago.
Despite the obvious political incorrectness I thought that perhaps it should be posted as a reminder to everyone about the who and the why THIS SH*T IS HAPPENING...
atleast according to the gospels of Dubya, Rove, Rummy and Cheney.

Hopefully somebody in the Pentagon or State Department will change the term Friendly Fire to something with more resonance...and while they are at it, might as well desanitize Collateral Damage (Civilian Casualties)

WE ARE ALL STARS

Ever since I started Blogging I have noticed that there is a plethora of so-called 'ordinary' people (bloggers) with fantastic abilities.
Perhaps this is the medium that finally extinguishes the notion that there is only a small pocket of magnificant humans on the planet at any given time.

History books have a way of perpetuating this idea. Only a few individuals are mentioned who supposedly personify an era...DaVinci, Gutenberg, Lincoln, Nero, Elizabeth 1 etc.

Remember the golden era of hollywood when there was a set stable of actors..the star system. These 'thesbians' were treated as wonders of the world. Little did we know that almost anyone can pull off the role of a lifetime with the right lighting, makeup, costume, set, and direction. Smoke and mirrors! Now with the benefit of hindsight, we realise that there are literally thousands of actors who can suspend our disbelief for two hours. We do prefer them to have the accidental benefit of genetic engineering..although modern surgical developments can now alter appearances to eliminate the Luck of the Draw!

The recent firing of Tom Cruise from Paramount is being discussed as the end of the Star system. It may be true that his public stock has plummeted because we are just tired of him, dislike his religion, and that in the end his bizarre behavior on Oprah was the final straw. Whatever,Toodaloo, Next!

Like blogging, film-making may be morphing into the next phase of infotainment.
I recently discussed how singer-songwriters have to be actors to make it now..gotta have a video (mini movie) or forget it. So we are witnessing the demystification of the Celebrity/Entertainer/Icon by overindulging in it. You can't shine bright lights in dark corners and not expect to find something creepy.

Surely we are at the zenith of celebrity mania..(celebrity mags are blowing away newspapers)there was once a few gods and goddesses but now anyone without merit can enjoy the spotlight. Now you can be famous for being famous, like celebutante Paris. Can you tell the difference between news and entertainment?The rise of the American Idol programs proves that there are tons of people who can sing much better than existing artists...they just need to be packaged properly and get a makeover..and/or cosmetic surgery.

Andy Warhol's remark that everyone in the future will have 15 minutes of fame could go down to a mere 15 seconds. Our attention span is nearly non-existent and the appetite for fresh blood is out of control. Oh sure we still love to knock our old favorites..(poor Britney, stick a fork in her, she is DONE) but now the overexposure of celeBRITNEY and others is forcing us to accept that our gods may not be so special afterall. DOH!

There are millions of talented people in the blogosphere. It has become apparent that while we are all 'stars' on our blogs, afterall it is like having your own magazine/TV station/ media empire ooh aah, we soon realise how many other incredibly smart, funny and insightful others are out there. I love that! What a world it would be if everyone treated everyone else like a Star, or that it is ordinary event to find another person to be amazing ...or at the very least realised that the celebrity crap is just HYPE...ordinary people (albeit good looking ones)being packaged with self perpetuating mythology..

We are all ascended from real Stars and maybe the blogosphere will make us look around and notice that there are millions of Stars down here too. We are all unique but maybe that isn't that extraordinary.

I (sort of) MISS NATURAL SELECTION

Now that everybody has me pegged as a vigilante nutjob I need to clarify where my frail mind was wandering. I was expressing my view that the law preserves a lot of people who are little more than a waste of amino acids. I mean would you rather have an Adolf Hitler or a couple of Cocker Spaniels? Mother Earth somehow forgot to weed out psychotic bullys through Natural Selection!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection


NS developed over 3.5 Billion years for a reason. We humans seem to have usurped it's authority in the last 200 years mainly through advances in medicine. Which is good.... but are we inadvertently crowding the shallow end of the gene pool.

Before you get your shorts in a knot thinking that if I ran the world that I would institute some sort of Neo-Nazi like Eugenics program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
hear me out. We already have volunteers winning Darwin Awards and excusing themselves from the reproductive process. So relax.

I certainly have benefitted from this exemption. If I had lived in the 'Caveman era' I would have had to rely on my youthful speed (yes I was a sprinter) and sense of humor (How you doin?) to have stayed in the game and passed on my genes. I could have outrun most of the other huge dumb lugs trying to club me and maybe spread a few seeds around by gettin' the gals to giggle around the stream while they were washing deerskins. That scene was beautifully recreated in the movie Quest For Fire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_fire


Anyway once my wheels were worn out I would have been easy pickins for all of those bullys (angry harem owners). Then again if you lived to be 40 you were ancient. Life was brutal and short and yet somehow the population of homo sapiens crawled along at a steady rate. We humans hit the 1 Billion mark around 1800 and now we are riding a population avalanche that will probably kill most of us off. Think of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; War, Famine, Pestilence and Death, basically all of the worst parts of the Bible, riding in to finish us off.

Like our soon departing Chimpanzee (Bushmeat) cousins (apparently you could fit all living wild apes inside of a football stadium) we are territorial little rascals who routinely start wars with neighbouring tribes. Jane Goodall discovered that male Chimps get together every once in a while to go looking for outsider Chimps to kill . Crude but effective population management.

I always imagined that by the 21st Century that we would have been a little more cerebral and that wars would be far and few between. Obviously that is not going to happen...

So maybe natural selection is actually still operating. Instead of the brightest ascending to the leadership roles of our species the most aggressive (genes) are still winning out. So maybe one day some of us can sneak off to a new Atlantis type scenario and just hang out until all of the other guys kill each other off.

Where should we go? Somewhere not too hot and not too cold...don't forget that global warming will raise sea levels above most of the best vacation spots.