breaking the silence

 I think this is the longest gap in the ten year history of The Institute.

Saddens me because I always liked The Institute, the thought of us padding around the wainscoted halls in our soft slippers and dated but dapper smoking jackets to our teakwood desks, where we would set down our brandy snifters, pull the feathered pen from the inkwell, pause to snatch a fluttering idea from thin air, and put down a a tapestry of ideas, reminisces, explanations, complaints, fables, and whatnot, hit Publish, smile a modest smile at our erudition, and walk out into the morning, early evening, or dark night, wondering what our colleagues would make of what we wrote.    

Ah those were the days my friends, I miss the steaming cup of coffee, the sun rising like thunder, and ideas flowing out like spilt ink.

So I have been away a little bit, Indianapolis and then Cincinnati, and then back.  Have never been to Cincinnati before and it is always nice to be somewhere you have never been before.  It was hilly and the broad Ohio meanders to the south.  Kind of old-fashioned, I thought, but courtly in the way of the old south.  Coming back on 229 off I-74 we passed through Oldenburg Indiana where church spires caught our eyes and there was a nunnery of the Sisters of St Francis, and a cemetery for the nuns, row after row of simple crosses like at Arlington or Flanders Field, only not so proud, more humble.  On each one the date of birth and of death and the name they were born with and the name they took up when they married Christ.  Up and down the hills they marched on and on.  Well not marched, like those soldiers at Arlington and Flanders Field, men of war, maybe trod, eyes downcast in the service of the lord.

See, I love writing that kind of stuff.  Sometimes my colleagues grumble about that, but that's ok, even grumbling is saying something.

So Trump huh?  The Great Beast taken down by Lilliputians, trapped in their puny court houses, glowering at these petty little people beneath his great blonde mane.  Yammer, yammer, yammer, pricking him with petty points of law that rightly mean nothing to this most uber of ubermensch.  And when the lion roars they fine him, and when he roars again they fine him more, piddling little fines but like the grains of rice on the chessboard they mount up approaching real money and worse beyond.  But how can the lion remain silent?

And what of his wild army of howling monkeys, loons, sleazebags, and statesmen, once of good repute, who set that aside for fortune or fame to be a part of his cause? Every last one of them hauled into court, and threatened with real time, recanting, squealing like pigs that they knew all along that the emperor was buck naked and giving up incriminating facts to spare their worthless souls a few years in the slammer.  

And yet, the shimmering polls, neck and neck with Biden, the rabid core of true believers who consider every peck at him a peck at themselves and believe he is all that stands between him and the wretched elites who call them deplorables.  And the way he so easily reached beyond the courtroom to choose the next speaker of the house.  All those chittering reps and RINOs and wrecks vexed to silence by the tiny finger bowing down to kiss the hem of his invisible robe.  What of that?

What rough beast slouches towards the White House to be reborn?

Maybe the Gypsy Davey.

 That is a new photo of the suit.  If it looks new I guess that's because I only wore it about five times.

This was after I came back from Berkeley, finished my degree, got my CO and went down to Herrin to do my time, had an idyllic ten or so years with that posh job tending bar at the House of Chin, realized I couldn't spend the rest of my life tending bar, got my data processing certificate from the local junior college (Parkland), shopped that certificate around town to now avail for a few years, and then I went to San Francisco where my sister lived and spent a week handing out my resume to receptionists.

My data processing certificate included courses in assembly language. COBOL, and BASIC.  Assembly language was one step up from machine language which was all ones and zeros.  It looked a little like English but it took like six or seven steps to add a to b and get c.  COBOL was a business language, wordy and tedious, but all the rage back in the day and is still extant.  BASIC was supposed to be a simple language to use in learning how to program.  It came with DOS and it became quite popular.  I wrote the programs for the Attorney General of Texas ordering supplies and keeping track of inventories on hand in BASIC.  It's a crying shame that it did not make the transition to Windows.  I miss it.

When I was in Texas I quit my job to study C, which was the rage among nerdy programmers at the Austin City College. It was written by programmers so there wasn't a lot of typing involved.  For example instead of writing a=a+1 to increase the value of a, you just wrote a++.  As long as I was at the college I took Assembly again because it was kind of nerdy fun.  I also took Pascal which was also meant to be a learning language, but you could also fool with it on your home computer if you bought Turbo Pascal.  It was a structured language which meant you had to define everything and only certain instructions were allowed.  

I think almost all programming is structured these days because they are easier to understand when you want to alter them, which I guess makes sense for big companies, but it takes the fun out of it for programmers.

Oh and way back in the day I studied FORTRAN at the U of I with the decks of cards and the long streams of green striped computer paper.

So glad you asked Old Dog, because I find the subject of computer languages fascinating, but it does not help me pick up chicks at a fancy cocktail party.  Pity.

The pilot's shoes are not scuffed because he deliberately did it, they are because he never shines his shoes.

 

I had a friend who was a librarian and when I wanted to commiserate with her about our lousy jobs she shut me right up by correcting me sternly:  I do not have a job.  I have a career.

Well excuuuse me.  I see her point though.  Study something you love and your job will be a joy.  Yeah, until your good boss leaves and is replaced by a fucking asshole.

In my senior yearbook the little blurb in italics under my name reads biochemist, you know because I wanted to be like my hero Isaac Asimov.  When I was making those killer rum drinks I was certainly altering the brain chemistry of my customers. When I worked for the state, like I said we were handing out large sums of money for arcane reasons and this being Illinois I long suspected it was some kind of cover for handing out bribes.  I don't know if I was doing any good for the world, but I never went to jail.  The only job I had where I thought I did any good in the world was when I was substitute teaching because I held true to my motto: nobody gets hurt.

Okay there was this time when I had about 30 pre K's running around and hollering like, well like pre K's.  All of a sudden this other teacher came up to me with a pre K crying his little head, which had a new bump, off  "What," she asked me, "Happened here?"  I had to tell her the truth.  "I have no idea."

But just that one time.

Bob Dylan sometimes seemed a little irritated at Donovan's slipstreaming his career and mentions him in Tombstone Blues:

Gypsy Davey with a blowtorch he burns out their camps
With his faithful slave Pedro behind him he tramps
With a fantastic collection of stamps
To win friends and influence his uncle

See his uncle is Uncle Sam of course, and his stamps are his song and his faithful slave Pedro is um, um.  Well you know Bob.

But googling around for Gypsy Davy I did come across this Arlo Guthrie song.

Kind of says the same thing as that Gold Watch Blues, and maybe Old Dog's perambulations in the seventies, maybe your mad dash to Alaska, maybe my wayward days behind the bar.

 It was late last night when the boss come home

He's askin' about his lady
The only answer he received, "She's gone with the
Gypsy Davy, gone with the gypsy Davy"

"Go saddle for me my buskin' horse
And a hundred dollars saddle
Point out to me their wagon tracks
And after them I'll travel, after them I'll ride"

Well, I had not rode 'til the midnight moon
When I saw the campfire gleaming
I heard the notes of the big guitar
And the voice of the gypsy singin'

That song of the gypsy Dave
There in the light of the camping fire
I saw her fair face beaming
Her heart in tune with the big guitar

And the voice of the gypsy singing
That song of the gypsy Dave
Have you forsaken your house and home
Have you forsaken your baby

Have you forsaken your husband dear
To go to the gypsy Davy
And sing with the gypsy Dave
That song of the gypsy Dave

Yes, I've forsaken my husband dear
To go with the gypsy Davy
And I've forsaken my mansion high
But not my blue-eyed baby
Not my blue-eyed babe

She smiled to leave her husband dear
And go with the Gypsy Davy
But the tears come a-trickling down her cheeks
To think of the blue-eyed baby
Pretty little blue-eyed babe

Take off, take off your buckskin gloves
Made of Spanish leather
Give to me your lily-white hair
And we'll ride home together
We'll ride home again

No, I won't take off my buckskin gloves
They're made of Spanish leather
I'll go my way from day to day
And sing with the Gypsy Davy
That song of the Gypsy Davy
That song of the Gypsy Davy
That song of the Gypsy Dave

Ancient History

All this talk about looking for a job takes me back to those thrilling days of yesteryear.  I was reminded of an old Donovan song about the subject.  I had trouble finding it because I couldn't remember the title, although I seemed to remember it had something to do with a gold watch.  I finally located the lyrics by searching for the entire first line, which got me to the title, "Gold Watch Blues", then I found a recording on You Tube under that title.   How did we ever learn or remember anything before the internet was invented? 

 Donovan - Gold Watch Blues Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

Donovan - Goldwatch Blues (Official Audio) - YouTube

Autumn leaves

I don' know what it's like near the shore of Lake Huron but the trees around here have suddenly started to turn, their green crowns rapidly turning to orange and yellow.  Took me by surprise, especially since I spend a lot of quality coffee time gazing out the window, watching the birds strafing the trees in their small groups.  Too small for a flock; is flockette a word?

 

----- 

 

I'll tell you what guys I am getting tired of looking at that damn suit.

 

Dandy looking set of threads, Uncle Ken.  What's the beef?  Is that an old picture when the suit was new?  I'm trying to visualize how this fits into Uncle Ken's Komplicated Kronology; you're back in San Francisco but this is before you returned to U of I for your degree?  And then there's this:

I went to the local junior college and got a junior degree in data processing because everybody was hiring computer programmers.

Forgive my ignorance but I thought that data processing and computer programming are two completely different animals.  If you were more than a half-assed programmer you would have been a millionaire long ago, I think.  None of my business but I'm curious which programming languages you have fluency in.  I tried copying some simple graphics programs from a book I had and it drove me nuts; not the path I would choose to follow.

-----

But a better idea is to appear to be doing a good job.

Hmmm...not a very flattering description of your work ethic, Uncle Ken, but it explains a lot and no need to delve further.  But how would a pilot scuff up his shoes preparing for a flight?

-----

Now that I am out of the job market, probably for good, I can reflect on the nuances of gainful employment.  Gotta eat, right?  But do you just want a job or is there a career path you'd like to follow?  Maybe even a profession; plenty of options out there, always have been.  Back in the 70s jobs were plentiful and I would work for six months or so, save a little dough living simply, and then goof off and enjoy life before I had to go looking for some interesting kind of employment.  No real plan but if I could learn something new or have access to tools I wanted to play with it was all good.  Some jobs I found in the newspaper, some I found in the Yellow Pages, one job was the result of a lot of cold calling to sign shops, but the best was my first job out of college when I was walking around the neighborhood and saw a sign on a door that said "Not Hiring."  Walked in and got a job, two blocks from home.

Shining the apple.

 Just a tad miffed about that prophet thing (I was talking about people who make prophecies, not official titles in the Mormon church), I did a google on his Thoreau quote.

He is correct, that is something that Thoreau said, but it is just half of the quote:

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Google added:

So even though our outer garments are somewhat transient and don't reflect our core values, Thoreau warns against investing so much in perceptual appeal or adherence to norms. If a job requires you to wear nicer clothes, it's fundamentally asking you to alter the ways that you present yourself to the world.

Here is something that I have thought about on that matter.  You are sitting in the airport awaiting your plane and two pilots walk by.  One of the pilots has just-polished shiny shoes and the shoes of the other pilot are downright scruffy.  Which pilot are you hoping is driving your plane?

The first thought is the guy with the shiny shoes certainly.  He looks like he pays attention to all details, even superficial ones, and is that not the sort of person that you wish to have driving your plane?  Seems so, but maybe the shoes of the other pilot are scruffy because he did not have time this morning to shine them because he was poring over the latest findings on the safest way to drive a plane.  Perhaps a pilot who does not waste his time on superficial crap would be the best person to drive your plane.

The Prairie State 2000 Authority (We dropped the 2000 in the year 2000, so as not to appear out of date) where I worked was a tiny agency who, well the state gave us several million bucks at the beginning of the year and we gave it away to companies and individuals so that they could be trained to make the company more money and get the individual a job.  Did we give out this money in the best way to promote our aim?  Who knows?

But one thing I noticed right away with the bosses was they were not nearly as concerned with spending that money wisely as they were in appearing to spend the money wisely.

You know if you want to get ahead a good idea is to do a good job.  But a better idea is to appear to be doing a good job. You will probably have to sacrifice some of the principles of doing a good job and put that time into appearing to do a good job.  but you want to get ahead don't you? 

One Error

Not bad for a heathen Democrat.  I only found one error in Uncles Ken's last post.  I can't find anything else in the post to argue about.

"This was tough for a church that based its own existence on revelation, so they made a ruling that Joseph Smith had the last valid revelation and henceforth any new revelations would be false."     

The Mormons still have prophets, but only one at a time.  The current President of the Church is known as "The Prophet", among other things.

In the Latter Day Saint movement, the President of the Church is generally considered to be the highest office of the church. It was the office held by Joseph Smith, founder of the movement, and the office assumed by many of Smith's claimed successors, such as Brigham Young, Joseph Smith III, Sidney Rigdon, and James Strang. Several other titles have been associated with this office, including First Elder of the church,^[1] Presiding High Priest,^[2] President of the High Priesthood,^[2] Trustee-in-Trust for the church,^[3] Prophet,^[4] Seer,^[4] Revelator,^[4] and Translator.^[4] Joseph Smith was known by all of these titles in his lifetime (although not necessarily with consistency).

President of the Church - Wikipedia

About that suit, I think it was Thoreau who said:  "Beware of any enterprise that requires buying new clothes."

Revelation

 I'll tell you what guys I am getting tired of looking at that damn suit.  When I told the story I thought well surely my fellows at The Institute have had some experiences with this devilish instrument and would want to tell their own stories about it but apparently not, so I will have to change the subject myself.

So how do we know that the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods  with warm breast and bright wings?  In the day of Adam and Eve He likely dropped by for fireside chats, but after that He became somewhat scarce.  He would drop in on somebody from time to time and tell them what's up, and they would in turn inform the rest of us, and they were the prophets, and that's how we knew what was up with the Holy Ghost.  

Back in the day when the church was very fluid prophets popped up from time to time, but once man nailed it down at Nicea, that was it, no more prophets or else every jackanape in the land would be popping up with a new word of God.  

And then along came the Mormons with their new revelation and verily they were much reviled by the rest of Christendom, and were driven to the great salt lake where they began to have some problems of their own in the fact that every jackanape among them was having a new revelation.  This was tough for a church that based its own existence on revelation, so they made a ruling that Joseph Smith had the last valid revelation and henceforth any new revelations would be false.  Oh wait, they did have one more revelation, only one wife, which smoothed things over with the feds.  But not everybody went along with that one and that's where you get those lurid cheap tv stories with the women in long dresses all having sex with the same eighty year old guy.

See that's what is up with Republican party these days.  Formerly a staid, somewhat stuffy organization, that now is led by the jackanapeist jackanapes in the fold.

I think the forerunners were the tea party who proclaimed that only they were the pure voice of Republicanism, and all those other guys, who were comparatively normal, were RINOS!!!

They were mostly all gas and funny hats, but the spirit was moving across the Grand Old Party, and new prophets kept popping up, turning on those who had come before them, and then, of course, the antiChrist Hisself.  And now look at the House, all of them rabid Trumpers and yet all of them against each other, and happily sabotaging the house in the name of, you name it, but let's go with the budget deficit, which shutting down the gummit only makes worse.  But of course that doesn't matter, they are not about actually dealing with the deficit.  They are about yelling about the deficit while standing on the broken bodies of their enemies.

Oh and another thing they are for is a bigger and bigger allotment for defense, BUT they don't want to spend any of that on Ukraine.  Why do we even have a defense budget except to keep us safe, and what better way to keep us safe then to keep the Russkies at bay.

Buncha fuckin jagoffs.