Ranting about how messed up the world is, espcially Oklahoma.
Author Archives: Curtiswselby
They say not to write a blog from a tired space, but I suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, so frankly, everything I do is from a tired space. Likely I'm not doing the greatest job of search engine optimization. But I know there are others like me. Passionate about life.
The left side of my brain would like to tell you about autism, the symptoms, the treatments, the way it effects one’s life. The right side of my brain wished to weep and cry out “Absalom, my son, my son Absalom.”
I first heard about autism from a made for tv movie called Son Rise: A Miracle of Love. It aired in 1979, I would have been seven or eight, a first or second grader. I remember very little about the show, except that the boy in the movie screamed a lot, banged his head a lot, his behavior frankly made me terrified to have a child. So all my life until my son turned three or four, I believed that autism was a terrible thing where your child never spoke, never showed affection, and made your life a living hell.
Fast forward to when I was thirty two. My ex wife and I had a son in 2003. We had a lot of challenges, but raising my son at that time was easy. I’d lived with friends who had children, and my son was literally the easiest, happiest baby I’ve ever had to deal with.
This was my uneducated image of autism. I’m afraid a lot of people have the same image.
When my son was three or four, I took him to see some of my friends from college. One of them was taking courses for child therapy (they have since become a teacher. If they are reading this blog, I wish to give a resounding “Huzzah” to them for all the fun things they’ve done for their students), saw my son stacking things in the order of their size. I was told it was likely my son had Asperger’s.
That classic sinking feeling in the stomach I’d always heard about in books and tv settled in. My anxiety for my son went through the roof. Before I’d thought everything that was going on was quirky, cute, but in the normal range. The hand flapping, the struggles with toilet training, his hyper focus. But while it had been covered in Abnormal Psychology, I had forgotten all about this milder form. I was still thinking of the movie from 1979.
I didn’t know it at the time, but hand flapping, while not definitive proof of autism, is often an early sign.
My ex wife never wanted to believe he had anything wrong with him. And honestly, given the right treatment and care, I don’t think there would have been much “wrong” with him at all. But she fought me every step of the way. And at the risk of losing some folks respect for me, I failed to override her on this. Those who know me will understand why, those who do not…likely I’ll just have to accept that you are most likely thinking thoughts like “I would have gotten him treated no matter what she did.” I know that is what I would have thought twenty years ago.
Being married to my ex was not fun. We argued about so many things, but the worst thing was arguing about our son’s autism. On one hand, it was so exhausting arguing with a hateful person who would not listen no matter what you did or said. On the other hand, you felt a failure as a father every time you caved in.
I can’t stress this enough. Don’t ignore it. Get your kids tested if you suspect. It may in fact just be that they are quirky. But there is so much that can be done for these kids these days, ignoring it just because of your own ego is irresponsible and cruel. You are damning a child who otherwise might have a great life to a prison inside their own minds. If you love them, why would you do that?
I’ve been told that emotional mastery is one of the greatest keys to a happy, productive life. I work on it, but I am not there yet.
Bring me a father that so loved his child,
Whose joy of [him] is overwhelmed like mine,
10And bid him speak of patience.
Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine,
And let it answer every strain for strain,
As thus for thus and such a grief for such,
In every lineament, branch, shape, and form.
15If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,
Bid sorrow wag, cry “hem” when he should groan,
Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk
With candle-wasters, bring him yet to me
And I of him will gather patience-Much Ado About Nothing. William Shakespeare
Likely most will just focus on the romantic aspect of these lyrics, and don’t get me wrong….there is a lot to be said about a sad romance, but think about what these words might mean to an autistic…..Cause I am lost Living inside myself Living inside this shell Living outside your love I am lost Somewhere inside my own dreams Afraid of what life really means Living without your love
I’ve been writing a lot of serious posts lately, and I know that it’s likely getting heavy everywhere. Today is April Fools Day, so let’s talk about the topic of foolishness.
Society has a love hate thing with fools. Looking at the History.com website, they say that the practice of April Fools day itself goes back to 1582. When the Pope declared that the West was changing the calendar to be more accurate, the ancient practice of celebrating the New Year on April first was changed so it was forever more January First. And thus those who celebrated it on April first were….April Fools.
But the Renaissance Catholics were not the first to celebrate such things. There were court jesters centuries before, and in Rome there had been a festival called Hilaria where people were allowed to run around like fools.
One of the greatest Fools in literature, King Lear’s Fool is the only one to tell Lear the truth and not be punished for it. He is also one of the most steadfast characters in Shakespeare, staying by Lear’s side when he loses everything and is homeless in a terrible storm.
The Fool or Jester was employed by lords in medieval times to entertain them. Most traditions allowed the fool freedom of speech, something rare in those times. Lords in those times held similar duties to those of a President, and it was felt that without a good Fool to entertain them, many lords would become dour and cruel, and of course nobody wants a cruel master.
Life is hard. Trucks come in late. Your significant other has a hard day and takes it out on you. You have a flat tire when you are already late to work. Sometimes it can get to be so much that you feel you will go crazy if you don’t release some steam. In the last century or so it has become possible (though I wonder how much longer it will remain possible) for most of the middle class to take a vacation. And nearly all of us have televisions and phones. But in the ancient times, you had to be more creative to get a release. The nobles had court jesters. And in time the nobles learned the poor needed something to. The Romans had Hilaria and Lupercalia as times to relax your inhibitions and get crazy. And then they built the Colosseum and introduced gladiators to society. The original circus was just a blood sport.
Wait till they getta loada me…..
I never really celebrated the day. I took things too seriously as a kid, and since I took offense so easily, I didn’t often play pranks on others. One of my best friends thought that it would be a great idea one day to arrange for the class to all just stare at the teacher for so many minutes, and then at the exact same moment everyone just let their heads drop onto their desks. We never got it done though. One time my pastor was telling me it was fun to call 800 numbers and leave crank messages. So one time I called “Base Camp at Purgatory.” I was gonna ask if they could spare a third basemen for hell. I couldn’t get through it, I hung up laughing after a bit.
It was brought to my attention that humans are the only animal that laughs. I’m not sure if that is true. I know animals sometimes seem to have a sense of humor. But then maybe we anthropomorphize them too much.
In Tarot, the Fool card symbolized new beginnings, blind faith, risk taking, and independence. Funny, we are being told any more we are fools for seeking independence……
Some of my readers are likely wondering what the point is. And often that was the charm of a fool. Sometimes it was difficult to figure out what their point is. If you have ever made an effort to be an excellent comedian, you know it can be frustrating sometimes, when something seems so funny to you, and your audience is not so entertained. Often it can mean the difference between leaving the restaurant with the love of your life, and leaving with a police escort and another restraining order.
Bwahahahahahahahhaahahhahahahahahahahahhahha!
Editor’s note: Curtis has been taken to a hospital. The psychiatrist assures us he will be better soon. In the meanwhile….why so serious!?
Let’s all be honest…..I think most of us have been tempted to slap Chris Rock…..
In these times when the pandemic gives hints of coming back, these times when we are on a knife edge looking down the cliff at a third world war between two nuclear powers, this is the meme that has flooded the internet, and taken the news by storm. Heck, even the prestigious tired midnight blogger is writing about it.
I admit, when I first saw the meme, I honestly had no idea what it was about. I could tell Chris Rock was the one being slapped, I was not sure who the slapper was. But I soon found out. Will Smith.
So while at work I didn’t get the opportunity to look at any of the videos, and honestly unfairly assumed Chris Rock had said something vulgar and likely sexual about Will Smith or his wife. I spent most of the day expecting to write a post defending Will Smith. Then I watched the video….
I don’t know how long this will stay up, but this is the unedited cut of the first act of violence during the Oscars.
I’m going to discuss four aspects of this altercation.
What caused Will Smith to slap Chris Rock?
How did this event validate Will Smith?
How did this weaken Will Smith?
Is violence ever justified?
So far, my highly scientific polling has only established two people who said they felt Will Smith was justified. Their reasoning was that he was defending his wife. Let’s analyze this.
Feminism can say what they want, but it is in our genetic code and in our cultural subconscious: men protect women. We slay the dragon and earn her love.
Both of the respondents who tole me Will Smith was in the right were women. I’m pointing that out, not to be sexist or snarky, but just as an anecdotal observation. Yes there are strong women out there (thank God). And frankly, I’ve known women who put me to shame in their ability to handle life and crises. But most women have a desire at some level to be protected, and most men (at least the one’s that aren’t out trying to use women) have a desire to protect the woman. This is why we have so many similar myths. Perseus saves Andromeda. Lancelot fights for the honor of Guinevere. Superman catches Lois Lane when she is pushed off a cliff by Lex Luthor. I guarantee that a lot of arguments in marriage would calm if women simply understood, when you complain about things that we can’t do anything about, we feel small. We feel like we failed. And I know the whole idea that sometimes we need to let you talk. But when you talk, please keep this in mind…..your intent is not to flay our egos, but often that is how it feels to us. And I’ll bet that something like that went through Will Smith’s mind when he slapped Chris Rock. “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth.” I just talked to a man that said he was on Will Smith’s side of it. He said he would have decked Chris Rock if Rock had mocked his wife when she was sick. “Make fun of me all you want, but leave my wife alone” is what the man said.
Victorian era painting, The Accolade. A fair number of men have an innate need to please a woman.
So why does it matter that this action validates Will Smith? Because if we understand what happened, we can prevent or mitigate something like this happening later. And what we are looking at when we watch Will Smith slap Chris Rock is chivalry. I’m not saying he was right to do it (nor am I saying he was wrong). What I’m saying is this behavior is deep in the core of Western culture. Yes we have evolved, yes standards have changed, but the whole idea of the knight fighting the monsters to save or please the woman is still very much in our psyche. Even in the film Casino, where we have mobsters running around doing very violent things, the two main male characters are motivated by a need to serve and protect Sharon Stone’s character. De Niro’s character struggles to protect her from herself and from her pimp, Pesci’s character is motivated by similar struggles, and has been convinced by her that she needs protection from De Niro. Of course that all crumbles down like a house of cards. Which leads into my next point.
A man can be motivated by a woman to achieve incredible things, but in some toxic relationships, the woman can undermine the man and lead to his destruction, as told in the epic story of Samson and Delilah.
Dangerous ground is being tread here. I don’t in any way mean to be offensive. I can already hear droves of women who will truthfully say that a man can cause a great deal of grief. And that is true. Also true is that the Western cultures have misogynist beliefs that are often propped up by myths and fairy tales. Having said that….
It’s true. Often a woman (and yes, a man) have the choice either help their partner, or hurt them. All too often, even the best of us choose to cut our partner’s hair, and get the world’s gratification. “I wouldn’t take that from a woman.” “I’d never let a man treat me that way.” How often has that come out of your mouth?
To be fair, I don’t have the foggiest notion about the relationship between Smith and Jada. Maybe I shouldn’t pretend to know what he is thinking, but when he saw the hurt in Jada’s eyes, it was mere seconds before he got up and protected (at least in his mind) his wife. So yes, he has lost the respect of a lot of people, and yeah, that matters. In no way do I mean to poo poo the people who feel that what he did was inexcusable and wrong. But in his mind, he was gaining his wife’s respect. Who am I to say his priorities are wrong?
Idealists on both sides are painting the world the way they see it. Like Don Quixote seeing Princess Dulcinea when he sees a prostitute, one side sees Will Smith as a knight, the other sees a world without violence.
Many of us are visionaries. Maybe too many of us are. But for good or ill, Hollywood is the world of dreams. And we all dream of a better life. Sometimes we fight for those dreams. That dream may be to win an Oscar. Or it may be to have the love of a wonderful woman. Or it may be a world without war. But a lot of us have visions of a better world that likely we will never see in this life. Is violence justified? Ask the World War II vet. Ask the people of Troy. Ask yourself. A world without violence is an impossible dream. But then again….many of the achievements from the last centuries were once impossible dreams. What do you think?
Prince Charles speech to the World Economic Forum launching the Great Reset
I started watching motivational videos after I left my ex wife. I had sixteen (or twenty six depending on how you look at it) years of stagnation behind me, and I felt motivated to turn the ship around. I wanted to be whole for my son. And eventually I found love again (and lost love again….and again….) and that only increased my motivation. The motivational videos still continue, but they are largely mixed with conspiracy theory stuff. The AI that runs the programs has way too much influence on what I watch. In the last year or so I’ve been hearing a lot about something called “The Great Reset,” but I’m forced to admit that I don’t know much about it. So let’s go on this journey together and see what we can discover.
According to Wikipedia, The Great Reset is the term for the fiftieth annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, held in June 2020. Quite a few big wigs were there, a lot of the usual suspects in a conspiracy theory. It was convened by Charles, Prince of Wales, and the purpose of the meeting was rebuilding the economy and society at large following the pandemic, which at the time was in it’s virulent twenty fifth week, and the world was in full scale panic.
I tried to put an image of tissue infected with corona virus, but they took it down. So…..let’s see if Disney is more forgiving. Here’s what a lot of people fear the Great Reset will be.
As I review what I can about this meeting of great minds (I bet they didn’t have Puddles Pity Party there….or Richard Cheeze…or Weird Al) I’m going to:
Look at the positive side of the argument
Look at the negative side of the argument
Look at history to see if we can learn anything about this agenda.
I can hear some of my friends now, on both sides of the aisle. “What could possibly be good about this”? And I get it, I admit I’m approaching this subject with trepidation. I’m no fan of Trilateral Commissions, Illuminati, or Bilderberg types. But in the end, I’m right where the reader is, trying to learn.
“So Idea Man…what’s the big idea!?” “We thought we would steal a lot of money, and then, we’d never have to work again!” “You cads!”
Ok ok….we all get a trial by our peers, and we are innocent until proven guilty. So….what is good about the Great Reset. Just off the top of my head….society has taken a ginormous hit. And frankly, things done The Same Old Way have not been working. Frankly through most of my lifetime. So on the surface it does sound like a good idea. Like the Constitutional Convention in our country, the Founding Fathers of the US gathered together and cobbled together a system to enact a form of government that would be better than the old one. And I think we can admit that, at least till the seventies, the experiment was largely successful. And like the Founding Fathers, we find our world in a moment of crises. War and Plague have both hit the world, and who knows if the other two Horsemen of the Apocalypse are far behind. To quote HRH Prince Charles, “There is a golden opportunity to seize something good from this crisis…global crises know no borders, and highlight how interdependent we are as one people sharing one planet.” In the same speech he says “Unless we take the action necessary, and build in a greener and more inclusive and sustainable way, then we will have more and more pandemics.” And may I add….unless we change the small thinking that has led to the current crises, not only will we face these things again, but I suspect they shall get progressively worse. I’ll leave the link here where I got the quotes from Prince Charles’ speech:
But on the other side of the argument….is it just my imagination, or is there a Devil twisting the wishes to make a better world and make bitter the potion we would quaff.
Of coarse you can have world peace….if you are willing to pay the price…..sign on the dotted line, it will be ok……
The negatives? At first all I have to lean on is a gut feeling. Some nagging voice that says something is not right. I remember the quote all these conspiracy videos keep bringing up: “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.” What is that all about?
I look that up….and the internet basically explodes on me. Conspiracy theory, outrage, a song was made about the meme. Ok….let’s try to wade through this mess….
First I go to Reuters, and they say they have debunked this, that there is no record of this ever being said by the WEF. So…where did it come from? And how did it get applied to the Great Reset. ‘Cause I’m here to tell you…..if I can’t at least own books, this tired blogger ain’t gonna be happy, no matter what world order you set up. And coffee. And a computer.
Finally I find the source…..”You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy (originally You’ll Own Nothing and You’ll Be Happy) is a catchphrase originating from a 2016 essay by Danish MP Ida Auken which was included in the video “8 Predictions for the World in 2030” by the World Economic Forum. While the prediction was originally explained as “all products will become services,” in has since been increasingly regarded as a harbinger of dystopian times when the human right to property would be abolished for the benefit of the few. Online, the catchphrase and image macros based on it have been used to comment on sociopolitical and economic issues and developments.” Here is the link where I found this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/youll-own-nothing-and-be-happy
Ok….so maybe that was a slip of the tongue. And it does seem a bit unfair to hold everyone in the WEF responsible for one person’s ill chosen words. Still….I have to admit…my spidey sense is still tingling. I’ll have to do more thinking and researching to make up my mind on this one.
Me wanting to rule the world? You’ve got this all wrong! My Father is the one who has to rule everything….tell me, what do you truly desire…..?
Last of all….how did the world react to former pandemics? Is there anything we can learn from the past? Let’s take a look at the grandaddy of all plagues….the Black Death.
By some estimates it reduced the population of Europe by one third. Percentagewise, Covid is not even in the same category (sorry folks, I know it’s been rough…and maybe I speak prematurely….but it took England literally a century to get their populations back…..). So many people died the Lords could no longer keep up the old framework of lord and serf. Simple economics, when there is a smaller supply of people, the value of those people increases. The Renaissance could be thought of as a Great Reset.
L0004057 The plague of Florence in 1348, as described in Boccaccio’s
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.ukhttp://wellcomeimages.org
The plague of Florence in 1348, as described in Boccaccio’s Decameron. Etching by L. Sabatelli after himself.
Engraving
By: Giovanni Boccaccioafter: Luigi Sabatelli and Pier Roberto CapponiPublished: –
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Tell me what you think? Is this a Star Trek moment where we are going to come together in peace and wisdom and build a better world for our children? A dystopia of horror that will make our children curse us? Or do we even know yet how our world is going to change because of Plague, the Horseman of the Apocalypse? Please leave your comments below.
Tom Cruize asking the TSA agent if they know who he is….wait…what? Darn it….did I get anything right?
Ted Cruz was late to the checkout of his flight, desperately hoping to get to D.C. in time to massacre the new Supreme Court nominee. (Not meaning to be political….but let’s call a spade a spade….Republicans try to massacre Democrats, Democrats try to destroy Republicans. Anyone trying to tell you otherwise is trying to sell you something). His efforts to get the airline to make an exception for him fell on deaf ears, and eventually a “policeman,” a Public Safety Officer, was sent by management to deal with another difficult customer.
Don’t worry folks. He made it to Washington D.C. in time to save the Republic.
I haven’t watched it, but I’ll bet I can already predict….one side says his questioning was brilliant, the other side likely says his questions were asinine and racist…standard politics….
Here is the original source for the breaking story:
Again….I’m not trying to say Tom Cruz is good or bad. I’m not here to tell you what to think, if you love him, if you hate him…here are the points I want to make.
1. I have been the guy telling a politician I could not help him. It sucks.
2. The elites have felt more like rulers than servants for my entire lifetime. Maybe it is time that stopped.
3. Don’t think it is only Republicans that expect special treatment…this is totally a two way lane leading nowhere.
Once upon a time, I worked for a company as a call center representative. It was a glorious time filled with candy, ribbons, rainbows, sugar and spice and everything nice. The only thing that made it remotely better than retail was the fact that you were usually on the phone with just a few people, and there wasn’t someone who could physically knock the excrement out of you. In order to stay out of trouble we’ll call the company….Villemorte…..anyhow, I was answering caller’s questions about a high end life insurance that Villemorte sold, and it wasn’t a bad gig (as long as you hated yourself and all life on the planet). One day, I got a phone call….(again, names will be changed to protect the innocent). “Hello, this is Vicky Vale, administrative assistant to Jorge Paternoster, ex governor of New York.” “Dahhhh….OK George! Which way did he go!” “Yes I have some questions about his life insurance.” I go to look it up and…..the information for that particular kind of insurance was taken care of by a third party vendor. I could literally do nothing about it. And that likely doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for me it was stressful as heck. “Sorry governor person….I am utterly useless to you. Don’t forget to hire me on your staff for your next campaign!”
Sarah Palin criticized New York lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being a “fake feminist.” AOC responded by telling Mrs. Palin on twitter to call 1-800-CRY-NOW.” Ironically that phone number was almost as useful for the New York governor as the number he reached me at.
On to my second point. The Founding Fathers envisioned public servants, not rulers. Otherwise we would have had kings. George Washington was offered the crown, but turned it down with such dignity and grace that the men who were rebuffed left in tears, loving him even more than they had before. Thomas Jefferson as president used to meet visitors personally at the door in his “old homespun clothes and a pair of worn bedroom slippers.” https://millercenter.org/president/jefferson/family-life
U. S. Grant received a twenty dollar speeding ticket when he was president. Back then, being president did not put you above the law.
In the meanwhile, every president since Nixon has leaned on “executive privilege” at some point. Nixon felt he owed nobody an explanation about the Watergate tapes. Clinton asserted executive privilege fourteen times, and was the first president since Nixon to have a court deny his motion to evoke executive privilege. Among other things, he wanted to bar Kenneth Starr from questioning staffers in the forgettable Monica Lewinsky case. Barrack Obama invoked executive privilege in relation to Operation Fast and Furious. Basically every President since Jimmy Carter has invoked it.
Both parties are chock full of “Karens.” (With apologies to the Karen who works with me). The example of Ted Crumb is one example (though I’m sure there are Republicans who will take his side…and that’s fine). Let’s look at what I hope are balanced examples.
Nancy Pelosi, during the height of the pandemic, went to a hair salon in San Francisco without her mask on. When the salon blew the whistle on her and exposed Madam Speaker for hypocrite she was metaphorically ran out of town on a rail. Trump for good or ill tried to benefit from the scandal, but in typical Trump fashion all this did was to make the Democrats look like helpless victims before the big bad Trumpmiester. And don’t get me wrong….maybe Pelosi was set up as she claimed….but number one, when I failed to wear my mask my superiors called me out for it, whereas with Pelosi…no biggy. And I was pretty much helpless, I had to take my criticism (justified or not) and go on. Pelosi in the meanwhile gets a social media war going and the whistle blower loses her small business. Last of all….you may wonder why the most powerful woman in Washington D.C. gets her hair done in San Francisco? She takes a jet plane every week from D.C. to San Francisco. Since 9/11 that has been the prerogative of the Speaker of the House. I’m not saying she shouldn’t have perks (and to be fair, the Republican Speaker also avails themselves of the same privilege), but surely this is more the mark of a monarch than of a public servant. Of coarse she isn’t getting speeding tickets like U.S. Grant. She gets a Jet plane to fly her….Below I list some sites where you can read more, I begin with the one I feel is most biased (but still makes some good points), the last one I feel is the least biased.
She rules with a big gavel. Women can say what they like, but size brings a smile to their faces…..
The Republicans, as I’ve mentioned, are frankly no better than the democrats. Shall we focus our sites on Mitch McConnel? The current minority leader (if ya’ll wanna keep the majority, maybe you should….oh never mind…..) recently ranted about how big corporations should not be telling the American people how to vote. Honestly, I agree, but this is coming from the mouth of someone who’s campaigns take hundreds of millions of dollars from big corporations. His SuperPAC (lovely Orwellian term) took in 475 million dollars from major corporations in the year 2020. While you and me were quarantined and living hand to mouth his campaign was humming to the tune of almost a half billion dollars from Big Macs, colored sugar water with bubbles, tech giants that make mega billions from our data, and uberbanks that decide whether we can live in the suburbs or have to live in the streets. This might not bother me quite so much….but this is the man who personally led the crusade, and won the crusade, to remove spending limits on corporations for political bribes….I mean contributions. According to The New Yorker:
Armed with funding from such billionaire conservatives as the DeVos family, McConnell helped take the quest to kill restraints on spending all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2010, his side won: The Citizens United decision opened the way for corporations, big donors, and secretive nonprofits to pour unlimited and often untraceable cash into elections.
We’re in the money…..come on my honey….let’s spend it send lend it roll it along…..
In summary, I feel the Republic is frankly falling down into an abyss, and the days when we were free are done. Barring a miracle, I don’t know that we will even have a semblance of freedom by….never mind….too late…..
But what do you think? Please leave comments! And my apologies for only writing one post this week….my personal life has been crazy….
He warned us….we should have seen all this coming…..
When I was a teenager, our history teacher played this series for us. I’d never before been interested in World War II. It gives a pretty basic history of the war up to 1942
But no….I’m not going to say much about World War II. Maybe. I’m going to try to explain myself. Why I think blogging is a better way to spend my time than say….watching situation comedies on tv…why I’m working harder on this blog than on the novels I “should” be working on. Why it is such good therapy for a tortured soul.
I’ve been a wannabe writer since I was about eight years old. I’m not sure where that started. I seem to remember when I read Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, around the same time I was watching an episode of Buck Rogers. And somehow some girls in my class decided I was destined to be a writer and asked for copies of my first work. So I started on this lame comic book. Drew all the stick figures and ill drawn space ships. And the plot was basically me and my two best friends fighting a space war against some big bad space dude.
Yeah…my villain when I was eight was named…..wait for it….Zacallo! I think this villain is likely more effective….
The story grew and expanded in my mind. By the time I ran away from home it was an eight part series of books about several hero’s, one roughly based off myself if I were a weird Gandalf like space techno mage, three others roughly based off of high school friends who had somehow become space fantasy hero’s in my warped mind, and a couple of other characters that were pure made up fiction. I even started developing my own alien species, started inventing a language for one of the races of aliens (I still remember a few words and symbols), I put a fair amount of effort into those books for a messed up kid.
So you are asking yourself, “Why did Curtis Selby not become a household name in science fiction, and end up making at least a mediocre living as an author in the vein of Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, or maybe even Stephen King”?
Who knows….had life gone differently…maybe I would have an android named after me…..personally, I welcome the days when the robot overlords put me in a people zoo…..
Well, I can throw out all kinds of excuses, and maybe they are valid, and maybe they are not. I know I slowed way down on writing when my sister said the books were a “waste of paper.” One of the few times she ever said anything like that to me, and don’t even go there, she supported me through some of the worst times of my youth. But everyone slips sometimes. Some slips just happen to be worse than others.
The longest, most devastating impact on both my writing and my mental health was my marriage. If I sat to write, invariably the woman that would ignore me for hours on end staring at the tv would suddenly need attention. She would read my stuff, “editing” it to her own ideas, throw it away, tell me my stuff was wicked, tell me I was writing love letters to other women. Likely this sounds pathetic. I can hear everyone…”I’d never put up with that. I’d just put her in her place. I’d just leave her.” Well, you are likely stronger and better than me. I’m glad the struggles of my life are so simple and easily dealt with.
I am the eye in the sky looking at you I can read your mind. I am the maker of rules dealing with fools I can cheat you blind.
So back to the question at hand. “Why write?” I’m fifty. Life is, best case scenario, about half over. And the remaining half is not with youthful vigor, but with the weariness of ever increasing old age. I remember when I was taking literature courses in my hair brained collage days, and the authors would compare their writing to children born to them. When I am gone, there will be two things. Hopefully. My son, and my writings.
Those who know me…..I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but I have done my best to steel myself to the possibility I may never see my son again. So….in this world, my immortality rests largely in the words I write. Possibly some of my friends are right, I should not worry so much about this blog, and get the book projects done. My only answer to that is….healing is slow sometimes. And some wounds never really ever heal. The scars in the hands of Jesus, they say, were still there after He resurrected. I don’t know, my theology is not the best, but I often feel Christians should quit expecting people to be more perfect than the Master.
Does this answer the question? Does this help, or is this just my angry rant against the world? Please feel free to leave comments. In the meanwhile, the video at the end….
My song to the world in general….yes, the light nearly went out, and eventually will…till it does….I write on…..
A mysterious crash in 1947 near Roswell New Mexico made aliens a household word.
Sunday is Earth Day. For those who wish to celebrate that, I will leave a link:
Yeah….please read my blog first…but if you have the time after reading it, give this a watch, whatever your politics it is worth the watch.
But Sunday is also the auspicious Alien Abduction Day! And since I won’t have time to watch all nine seasons of X Files I will instead write a post.
Since I love to ramble, I’m actually going to go back in time. Stories about other worldly beings abducting people go back many thousands of years. In the Bible, we have the story of Enoch: The text reads that Enoch “walked with God: and he was no more; for God took him” (Gen 5:21–24). There have been a lot of controversial ideas about this, and some may not even believe Enoch existed, but there is the story. The book of Genesis was written between 1450 BC and 1400 BC, though there is no way to know how old the oral tradition it was based on is.
In The Iliad we have the story of Europa, who was abducted and then impregnated by Zeus. The Iliad was written about the eighth century BC, though, again, we have little way to know how long ago the oral tradition runs. And yeah, this was Zeus in the story. But who knows what “really” happened. Maybe Europa was abducted by aliens who left a little eugenics gift in her belly.
Enoch walked with God, and then was gone. What happened? Get CSI on the case!
Other examples, including Ezekial’s wheel come to mind. And the stories from Celtic mythology and medieval folk tales about fairy rings and people getting entranced for years, losing time, being carried away by small bipedal beings with magical abilities in some ways resembles the modern UFO abduction phenomenon.
The first quasi modern account I can find for an attempted abduction is in 1896. Two years before H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds, we have a Colonel Shaw who was traveling with a friend, and they were “harassed by three tall, slender humanoids whose bodies were covered with a fine, downy hair who tried to kidnap the pair”.
The infamous “Battle of Los Angeles”. To this day, nobody knows if these were aliens or Japanese.
The next event I can find is the “Battle of Los Angeles”. A mere three months after Pearl Harbor, on the night of February 24 1941, objects were reported in the sky over LA, and everyone was terrified the Japanese were attacking the city, and shelling began to shoot the objects out of the sky. Evidently the shelling had no effect. The government (which as we know is always trustworthy) stated that the objects were weather balloons. That does not look like weather balloons to me, but then, what do I know.
The next incident is the most infamous of all time. The one that got Fox Mulder all hot and bothered on The X Files (why….oh why don’t I have hair like that?).
Marjor Jesse A. Marcell investigates the crash.
Something crashed onto a Roswell ranch in the summer of forty seven, and the conspiracy world has never been the same. The government at first released a statement saying that they had recovered a “flying disc” from the crash site. That statement was later rescinded and the government claimed (again) that all that was involved was a weather balloon. Rumors of alien bodies, and even live aliens having been recovered from the site persist to this day.
While Roswell is the Holy Grail of UFO sightings, the mass of true abductions begins with the Brazilian case of Antônio Villas Boas, and the 1961 case of Betty and Barney Hill. Antônio Villas Boas says he was subdued by three aliens five foot tall, stripped of his clothes, blood samples were taken, a gas made him sick, and then he had sex with a female alien. If it isn’t true….I may try to smoke what he had….
The Betty and Barney Hill story was one of the most creditable of the time. They were some of the earliest members of the NAACP, Betty being a white woman, and Barney a black man, which was at the time all but taboo. They saw an object, reported it, but the object followed them. They ended up with missing time, somehow winding up 35 miles away but not nearer their destination, with strange scuffs on their shoes and a pink powder on their clothes. Their reports were still challenged, and who knows what really happened, but something strange went down.
What do you think? Are there aliens out there? Are they abducting people and conducting experiments on us? Or are all these people cooks and zanies? Please feel free to comment. Meanwhile, here are links to other sites for more information. Have a happy Alien Abduction Day!
We asked this Irishman why we should celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. He responded by calmly telling us that he had a particular set of skills….then he broke a bottle and attacked us, yelling about how he could play Wolverine….
So many in my industry celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, but how many actually have any idea of who he was, or why he is celebrated? The average person on the street will say “Oh, we wear green and celebrate Irish stuff, and drink beer and decorate with leprechauns and shamrocks.” But if you ask them who Saint Patrick was, you are lucky if you even get the response “He is the patron saint of Ireland.” Maybe something about the snakes.
While I am part Irish, and did always love the island and want to visit (especially since I watched my favorite John Wayne movie, The Quiet Man), I really didn’t develop an appreciation for Ireland and Saint Patrick before I read the book (Curtis influenced by a book? Imagine that!) How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill. Yeah, you noticed that too? An Irish name.
This book both introduced me to the reasons why Saint Patrick is great, and the reasons why Ireland is such a wonderful island.
Earliest know picture of Saint Patrick, this was painted in the thirteenth century, whereas Saint Patrick died on March 17, 461 AD. So…..only seven or eight hundred years later.
Much of what we know about Saint Patrick comes from his own autobiographical work, The Confessio, attributed to him as his writing in his last years. He was not born Saint Patrick, he was born to a wealthy Christian family in Roman England, possibly in Scotland. He was given a Briton name, however, of Maewyn Succat. The Irish were already up in arms about the Briton’s, and likely when Maewyn was captured by Irish pirates at the age of sixteen he had ample opportunity to demonstrate what his last name meant. (In welsh Maewyn means “devoted friend.”)
He spent six years as a slave, so he knew what it was to be property. To be considered less than human. He was forced to herd pigs and sheep. I’ve done a tiny bit of this work, and I can tell you….you get plenty of time alone with your thoughts. Maewyn took to prayer. One day he saw a vision (I never saw any visions…though I have seen more than my share of dead pigs and sheep). He saw himself on a boat back to England.
The Irish may have been pirates in the 400s, but since then they have become as acquainted with grief as young Maewyn was. Here we see iconic statues dedicated to the Potato Famine of the mid 1800s.
Maewyn escaped slavery, returned to England, and studied to become a priest. He saw another vision, this time of Irish people begging him for the Gospel of Christ. He received the Pope’s blessing, and was appointed a Bishop and renamed Patricius, a Latin term meaning “noble father.” And the Irish indeed have taken to thinking of him as their father. He is to the Irish what George Washington is to America.
Patrick returned to the island that enslaved him. I could not do it. Well….actually I could. With some grenade launchers and automatic weapons. Those who enslaved me would feel the wrath of vengeance. Instead he returned to share the love of God. He visited King Lóegaire, the High King of Ireland, and asked his permission to preach. When he asked, he accidently pierced the king’s feet with his staff (you can see that in the picture above). The king uttered no word or sound in pain or protest, and when Patrick saw in dismay what he had done and asked Lóegaire why he had not protested, the king replied, “I thought silent suffering was a Christian precept.”
For good or ill, that is no longer true today.
One of my favorite prayers, immortalized (to me at least) by Madeleine L’Engle. When my son was suffering heart failure in the hospital, I read this to him
He spent twenty years in Ireland, preaching the Gospel to a people who he had every reason to hate. And by the time of his death on March 17 in the faraway fifth century, Ireland was no longer a Pagan bastion of piracy. He had established churches that would later mesh with Scotland and be called Columban, after the Saint Columba who did for Scotland what Patrick did for Ireland. These churches were not quite either Catholic or Orthodox, though they celebrated Easter and Christmas based off the Orthodox calculation, and were thus mildly criticized by Bede, the English historian of the 8th century. There were organized churches and monasteries, where the Bible was being copied literally religiously, while in the rest of Europe, the Huns, the Goths, the Germans were sweeping through Rome and burning all the books they could find. In the meanwhile, the Irish were making copies of all the books they could find, and recording all the stories they could. Much of what we know about Celtic mythology, fifth century Roman history, and yes, even some of the earliest complete texts of the Bible, are to be found in Ireland.
The Book of Kells is one of the earliest complete copies of the Gospels extent. It was copied by an unknown priest in the 8th century.
Cahill has been criticized by some that say he oversimplifies and doesn’t adequately document his sources. Even my nephew with the Masters in history turned up his nose at him, decrying the man was “not a real historian.” But it is a fact, that many of the Latin works from the first five centuries would have been lost if not for these priests. Much of the New Testament would not have come down to us without these priests.
So next time you drink a toast to Saint Patrick, no matter what faith you have, say a little prayer of thanks to the All Mighty that someone was around to inspire the Irish to save the words of the Latin classics for us today.
While the Irish have maintained their love of nature, and their passionate nature, the love of learning that once was a hallmark of Ireland was pretty much destroyed by the potato famine and English oppression in the late eighteenth and early twentieth century. Thomas Cahill recalls a haunting story about an Irish farmer teaching his boy to read Latin from a copy of Aristotle that had been in the family for hundreds of years. That spirit of learning was crushed by a world determined to conquer at any costs. So much lost just to make sure my glory is greater. Gartha to Saint Patrick, and to the spirit of learning that once ruled the Emerald Isle. Please God let it come back. From one of the exiles from the Promised Land of Ireland, Slainte Saint Patrick!
Classic song about the Irish Civil War that stared in 1916, and cost so many lives on both sides. I don’t mean to take a side, though likely my post makes it look like I solely side with the Irish. But it does break my heart that the Emerald Isle that was such a light of learning over a millennium ago should become a bloodbath.
I’ve been told I haven’t the intelligence to pour water from a boot with instructions on the heal….
My fiftieth post is here, and I wanted to do something special. Instead of drudging the news or seeking a topic from a friend, I’m just gonna go whole hog. Since the best way to describe my niche thus far is “biting off more than I can chew” the topic today is “What is the nature of reality?”
It has become fashionable in some corners of the internet (and yeah, I mean the sites I lurk in) to talk about how we are all “in the Matrix.”
For those who have either not seen the movie, or forgotten it, Keanu Reaves plays a computer hacker who has a boring, grinding nine to five job during the day, but spends his nights seeking thrills and hacking the internet for fun, profit, and frankly, to try to learn the truth. There is something about reality that just doesn’t jive with him. For one thing, he does not seem to fit in. For another, there are things that make no logical sense. He seeks the truth and comes across a legendary hacker named Morpheus, played by Wace M….I mean Lawrence Fishburne.
My current job is awesome. But in the past I’ve had jobs where every job evaluation, most every interaction with management was like Mr. Anderson being told that “One of these lives has a future and one of them does not.”
Cliff’s Notes version, the reality we perceive is nothing like the reality. There are dark forces controlling us, using us for their own malevolent purposes. And if we want the truth, we have to face the fact that The Powers That Be are not protecting us. We are sheep for the slaughter to them.
But I’m not here to rant about the government, or big corporations, or big tech. I’m talking the nature of reality. I’ll discuss three quick theories, and then end with a video that hopefully drives the point home.
Three interesting theories that reality is not as we perceive:
We are in fact in a Matrix designed by superhigh level tech.
We are actually dreaming this reality, and it is designed by collective unconscious.
There are alternate realities, and some people are able to see into other universes.
Salvador Dali painting “Swans Reflecting Elephants.” Well hello Dali!
One of the big conspiracy theories current is that we actually are in the Matrix. How would we possibly know? Like Neo in the movie, those of us who feel like we don’t fit, or who see things that don’t make sense, can just be passed off as crazy, or malcontents. The so-called “simulation theory” was first proposed in 2003 by philosopher Nick Bostrom, who proposes a trilemma he dubbed the “simulation argument.” I can concur with one thing….the Wikipedia article trying to explain this argument is giving me a headache. And my only comment is…if this is a simulation, the programmer better never let me get my hands on their throat…..Right now I lean toward Nobel Prize winning physicist’s Frank Wilczek’s argument that this all begs the question, even if we are in a simulation, there is a Reality beyond it, from which the rules must derive. Oversimplifying his argument: Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation that explains the universe we see is the one without the extra layer of simulation. But then again, what do I know?
Frank Wilczek, Nobel Prize winner. He’s gotta be right, he is a Nobel Prize winner.
The second theory is that this is a simulation, but not in a computer. Instead reality is being dreamed, either in a Megamind, or in the Collective Mind of all of us.
Some Hindu texts have made this claim for centuries. The Mundaka Upanishad teaches that the nature of reality is only a dream, and this premise has come to influence the West. While I’ve heard some very intelligent people espouse this, I don’t find much in the way of scientific basis for this idea.
Some of my favorite authors, among them Edgar Allen Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft, wrote about the possibility that the world was merely a dream.
According to Scientific American quantum physics is the most empirically verified theory in history, but physicists frankly have no idea of why it works. The theory of QBism dispels the confusion, but only by accepting the assumption that “all knowledge begins with ‘individual personal experience.'” Likely I’m totally misinterpreting the idea, and absolutely oversimplifying, but it makes a laymen wonder if it is possible that the world is just a dream.
Last of all there is the belief that there are alternate universes, and it might be possible to perceive them or interact with them. This one is my personal favorite, as it has so many fantasy and science fiction stories about it that you have to turn in your nerd card if you don’t like them (especially Mirror Mirror).
Hey folks! I found the door to Narnia! While the White Witch did restore my youth and hair, she said “No Turkish Delight for you!” And zapped me back home as an ugly bald man again.
In this theory, whether we dream this reality or it is a simulation, there are multiple universes, possibly infinite universes. So if that is true….somewhere out there is a universe where Tiberius reigns with an iron fist over an interstellar empire, and there is another one where I am successful. Millions of versions of people could be reading similar blog posts across thousands of realities.
Tired Midnight Blogger (What Blogs at Midnight) 