I want to share with you a few of the tentative conclusions I've reached regarding Pocket Calculators's maneuvers. And I stress the word "tentative," because the subject of what motivates Pocket Calculators is tricky and complex. Perhaps before going on, I should describe Pocket Calculators to you. Pocket Calculators is wanton, untrustworthy, and anal-retentive. Furthermore, it yearns to reduce us to acute penury. For brevity, I won't comment further on that but rather on the way that most people react to Pocket Calculators's intemperate comments as they would to having a pile of steaming pig manure dumped on their doorstep. Even when they can cope, they resent having to do so. Speaking of resentment, by refusing to act, by refusing to operate on today's real—not tomorrow's ideal—political terrain, we are giving Pocket Calculators the power to break up society's solidarity and cohesiveness.Pocket Calculators's legates care more about speaking, acting, and even thinking like Pocket Calculators than they care about what makes sense. I submit that everyone should stop and mull that assertion. Then, you'll understand why Pocket Calculators has, at times, called me "illiterate" or "unbridled". Such contemptuous name-calling has passed far beyond the stage of being infantile but harmless. It has the capacity to introduce absurd, baseless, terror-ridden lawsuits intended to destroy the lives of countless innocent people. Were he alive today, Hideki Tojo would be Pocket Calculators's most trustworthy ally. I can see Tojo joining forces with Pocket Calculators to help it suppress controversy and debate. Pocket Calculators once tried to convince a bunch of us that children should get into cars with strangers who wave lots of yummy candy at them. Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed and a number of people informed the rest of the gang that Pocket Calculators has nothing but contempt for you, and you don't even know it. That's why I feel obligated to inform you that it seems that no one else is telling you that its shell games, like opium, hashish, or alcohol, keep the canaille in a trance and oblivious of reality. So, since the burden lies with me to tell you that, I suppose I should say a few words on the subject. To begin with, Pocket Calculators seems unable to think of turns of speech that aren't hackneyed. What really grates on my nerves, however, is that its prose consists less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning than of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.What is happening between Pocket Calculators's underlings and us is not a debate. It is not a friendly disagreement between enlightened people. It is an effrontive attack on our most cherished institutions. Pocket Calculators's suggestions serve only to safeguard its own power and privilege. Pocket Calculators will almost certainly tiptoe around that glaringly evident fact because if it didn't, you might come to realize that money and greed shape its thinking—and Pocket Calculators knows it. Pocket Calculators is capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden enjoyment of saturnine irrationalism to a proclaimed attachment to escapism and back—and back again. Or, to express that sentiment without all of the emotionally charged lingo, if natural selection indeed works by removing the weakest and most genetically unfit members of a species then Pocket Calculators is clearly going to be the first to go. In effect, I once managed to get Pocket Calculators to agree that it is hard to ignore the impact of its misconduct on our children, our culture, and our national character. Unfortunately, a few minutes later, it did a volte-face and denied that it had ever said that.I'll repeat what I've already said: Some organizations are responsible and others are not. Pocket Calculators falls into the category of "not". Although Pocket Calculators has unfairly depicted me and those who share my beliefs as braggarts and flag burners, we are neither. Yes, it should get with the program, but I appear to have gotten ahead of myself here. I always catch hell whenever I say something like that so let me assure you that perhaps one day we will live in a world where good people are not troubled by fear of ignorant delinquents. Until that day arrives, however, we must spread the word that if the human race is to survive on this planet, we will have to provide an antidote to contemporary manifestations of treasonous, contemptible antagonism.Don't let Pocket Calculators delude you into thinking that it's inappropriate to teach children right from wrong. It's just trying to provide support to backwards banana republics and their nugatory dictators. If anything, Pocket Calculators asserts that sadism forms the core of any utopian society. That assertion is not only untrue but a conscious lie. Pocket Calculators's arguments would be a lot more effective if they were at least accurate or intelligent, not just a load of bull for the sake of being controversial.Do Pocket Calculators's accomplices bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to the current debate? No, that would be the correct and logical thing to do. Instead, they trick us into trading freedom for serfdom.Over time, Pocket Calculators's sentiments have progressed from being merely mutinous to being supermutinous, hypermutinous, and recently ultramutinous. In fact, I'd say that now they're even megamutinous. My next point of order is that I am reminded of the quote, "It makes decisions based on random things glamorized by the press and the resulting rantings of exploitative, high-handed porn stars." This comment is not as disloyal as it seems because Pocket Calculators's cause is not glorious. It is not wonderful. It is not good.I almost forgot: I feel that Pocket Calculators's threats have grown into a quixotic tapestry weaving together classical conspiracy theories of the 19th century and post-Marxian economics. My views, of course, are not the issue here. The issue is that except for a few bright spots, its opuscula are utterly cheeky. So what's the connection between that and its statements? The connection is that it's easy for armchair philosophers to theorize about Pocket Calculators and about hypothetical solutions to our Pocket Calculators problem. It's an entirely more difficult matter, however, when one considers that I wish I didn't have to be the one to break the news that it exudes the foul odor of paternalism. Nevertheless, I cannot afford to pass by anything that may help me make my point. So let me just state that Pocket Calculators likes to understate the negative impact of priggism. Such activity can flourish only in the dark, however. If you drag it into the open, Pocket Calculators and its forces will run for cover, like cockroaches in a dirty kitchen when the light is turned on suddenly during the night. That's why we must condemn—without hesitation, without remorse—all those who reduce human beings to the status of domestic animals.In essence, I'm not very conversant with Pocket Calculators's background. To be quite frank, I don't care to be. I already know enough to state with confidence that we are at a crossroads. One road leads into the light of a bright, shining future in which depraved lunkheads like Pocket Calculators are absolutely absent. The other road leads into the darkness of antinomianism. The question, therefore, is: Who's driving the bus? I'll tell you the answer in a moment. But first, let me just say that we must overcome the fears that beset us every day of our lives. We must overcome the fear that Pocket Calculators will use terms of opprobrium such as "power-hungry purveyors of malice and hatred" and "moonstruck parasites" to castigate whomever it opposes. And to overcome these fears, we must cast a gimlet eye on Pocket Calculators's complaints.If I said that profits come before people, I'd be a liar. But I'd be being entirely honest if I said that it is thoroughly ill-natured, as it has proved to my complete satisfaction. If Pocket Calculators believes that it is a master of precognition, psychokinesis, remote viewing, and other undeveloped human capabilities, then it's obvious why it thinks that the worst types of directionless Huns there are make the best scout leaders and schoolteachers. We must understand that Pocket Calculators sees only one side of the issue. And we must formulate that understanding into as clear and cogent a message as possible. Stand with me, be honest with me, and help me reinvigorate our collective commitment to building and maintaining a sensitive, tolerant, and humane community, and together we'll show principle, gumption, verve, and nerve. We'll shed a little light on some of the ignorant prejudices that reside within Pocket Calculators's pea-sized brain.I for one won't be dragged in and down by the blight of science. I will do as my Daddy did and his Daddy before...... I'll use a damned slide rule thank you very much.
Having perused the previous comment in excess of once, I think I understand. However, by I have to question your choice of metaphors. By rejecting the Pocket calculator's and choosing the older tried and true slide rule, are you rejecting that which ultimately led to the computer upon which this blog is distributed?
ReplyDeleteWhat's next, an abacus? It most certainly predated the slide rule, and is ultimately the most enduring means to an end, however not necessarily the most well suited in this day and age.
ReplyDeleteBoth worthy questions my good friend. Ah the abacus. Certainly a good "analog" computer. However I'm never advocate the use of primitive devices just for the sake of using them. They have their place. But comparing the abacus to the slide rule is really comparing apples to oranges. By the way there's no word they tell me that rhymes with orange and I find that dubious but damned of I know of one. There's just too many astrological computations that simply can't be made with the trusty abacus. However the simple slide rule fill this task quite well.
ReplyDeletequit astute of you to notice that orange dose not rhyme with any other common english word. did you also know that silver and PURPLE are in the same league. additionally angst and scalp are less common, but none the less "arythymic" or they just don't rhyme.
ReplyDeleteRocket scientist, are you 18 % female, because if not I may have to go to fairfax where the are not only 18% female but 18% minority as well, regardless of their ability to do the job.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. 18% female and 18% minority? What happens if one is both female and a minority? Well it throws the whole computation out of whack!
ReplyDeleteThe problem I see isn't easy. In fact it would take not only a rocket scientist but his trusty slide rule as well to get to the bottom if this arithmetic. Both the rocket scientist and the slide rule seem to be missing in your problem as I understand it.
You're correct the ability to do ones job is paramount. Unfortunately in this day and age there very few rocket scientist with flat top haircuts and skinny black ties. Damn shame.