Subjective reality

Another fine train of thought, courtesy of Uncle Ken: Objective reality.  Okay, makes sense to me.  But objective reality can only take us so far; most of what I read about current events is from sources that I cannot directly verify and I have to make a judgement call depending on the reliability and reputation of those sources.

That's a big problem with the Internet Swamp (TM).  Who do you trust?  There are more than a billion web sites and regardless of how loopy your ideas are there will be sites to support them, I'm sure.

So just for a laugh, I did a search (Google) for "three legged purple frogs" and there were 157,000 results.  A search for "2016 election conspiracy" yields more than 31 million results.

Uncle Ken is correct in his assessment of the Cheeto fueled echo chamber, but that doesn't mean they are always wrong.  I suspect that many people search for sites that agree with them, and fail to investigate further for any contrary views.  If I really want to learn something I'll use different search engines and, in some cases, different browsers, never trusting any one single source.  Or I will discuss it with someone whose judgement I can trust, always considering the source.

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Although PumpkinHead makes many false statements, I don't think he's actually lying.  He believes, in my opinion, that whatever he says is the truth.  He may contradict himself fifteen minutes later but, in his mind, that is also the truth.  He is not know for knowledge of the facts, or any level of introspection; he listens to his gut and his sense of reality is very fluid.  You could call it lying but I would call it outspoken delusional nonsense.

The Big Girl's habit of misdirection and deception come closer to the spirit of lying, as she knows exactly what she is saying.  She is not misinformed or ignorant of the facts.  Her use of smoke and mirrors is brilliant, something she may have picked up from her hubby, who did not have sexual relations with "that woman."  By his definition, he didn't.

In any case, I don't think that either of these two candidates are worthy of the office of president.  The best case scenario for me is that they are both indicted and taken off the ballots, but that is wishful thinking.  It's surprising that with all this negativity on both sides that Ben & Jerry aren't getting more traction, and may not be in any debates.  But time will tell.

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I'll stick my neck out and state that the Institute is Pro-Tree.  Agreed?  I didn't know that the Indian cigar trees were catalpas.  There was another tree that had long, dark seedpods; don't know the name...something-Locust, maybe?  We had a mulberry tree in the backyard at one time, but it was very messy when the ripe berries dropped to the ground and you stepped on them and happened to track them into the house.  Mom put her foot down, and that tree was history.  You can still see purple stains on the sidewalks of that neighborhood when the mulberries are in season.

A couple of families on the block had grape arbors and made their own wine, and another family had a pear tree (but no partridges).  They were always giving away pears; amazing how much a single tree yields.  But they never ripened properly and were hard as a rock and tasted terrible.  Even the squirrels didn't like them.

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Isn't grab ass a variant of horseplay?  That's my recollection of barracks behavior; folks were always screwing around and pranks abounded.  But it was usually between a group of friends who were always giving each other a hard time.  Good-natured fun, in their eyes, and most of the time nobody got hurt.

I recall talking shit "for entertainment value" very well, as it was a common pastime.  Everybody loved a good story, and the facts didn't matter that much as long as the storyteller spun a good yarn.  Some folks were very good, and I imagine they became salesmen when they got out of the army.  Or lawyers.