LOVE THOSE KIDS
One of my favorite shows on TV is "So you think you are smarter than a fifth grader". It warms my heart to see these youngsters not showing off their intelligence, but obviously excited and enthralled in their command of knowledge and accuracy in things they have learned. Like a new sponge in the kitchen, clean and in perfect shape, versus the older sponge after a month, moldy and falling apart.
Unfortunately many kids today are partnered with those who are past the learning stage, set in their ways, their brains too often are in slag status follow-me mode and accept what they think is their position and it won't change. I cringe when I see a kid in camouflage with a toy M-16 and an Obama sign. Dad, because you are a nut, don't let your kid grow up that way.
YOUR PATH MAY BE WRITTEN
SOCIAL ORDER
I am an avid movie freak for good movies, and the Last Samurai with Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe brought something to bear. There are tremendous story lines in most Samurai movies. The first Samurai movies date back to the fifties in black and white and these movies do have a following.
In the 14th -17th century, Samurai or bushi were the members of the elite military class and trained to serve the landowners and Lords in feudal Japan. Their fate was sealed unless they liked being farmers.
Samurai were supposed to lead their lives according to the ethic code of bushido ("the way of the warrior"). Strongly Confucian in nature, bushido stressed concepts such as loyalty to one's master, self discipline and respectful, ethical behavior.
In the movie the Samurai leader Katsumoto thanks Tom Cruise his captive after a long winter, for his "interesting conversations". The two mortal enemies after leaving the field of combat talk to each other and find they seek the same things in life even after after a years captivity, and they become friends and eventually allies. What has happened to our "interesting conversations"?
We don't talk anymore. We are impersonal, we text, we twit, we communicate in savage tongues and burped words. We have aliases and fake mail accounts to hide our faces. Most of which we do is useless or worthless conversation. It reflects in our society, our children's education, and creates false empires.
SOCIAL BRANDING
Today you can be all you want to be if you have the desire and the resources. Your career, paths in religion, goals and achievements are yours if you wish. And sometimes made easier by joining the right club or party or organization.
You make your own decisions based on information provided by others. Was the information and your decision based on truth. Not always can the media be trusted. 60 % of the Republican voters surveyed because of one media station constant banter thought President Obama was not born in the USA. Even though the truth was a clear as daylight, it was a biased, non-factual, prejudiced, bold-faced, LIE and promoted by the likes of FOX news, celebrity politicians like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman. Short on brains, long on rhetoric.
It proved Dr. Goebbels was right, tell a lie, a big one, often and loud and the masses will believe it. Our two party system has become the Dumbos and Jackasses filled with lies and deceit. They are warriors without "interesting conversations".
Everything you see or hear today comes from snips, spins, and loud entertaining show hosts with minimal education and creativeness, but an ability to stir the masses through their rhetoric. Truth? Doesn't matter. You are part of the team and the party, right or wrong you are part of it. It is safe to say belonging sometimes is more important than being.
Ratings matter. Ratings mean money and power. It's because we all want to belong, to be part of. Too many of us are pre-programmed by belongsmanship and don't care to learn about who or what are we really endorsing. It's easier to respond, prejudge rather than investigate, and question, rather than define, and plan a course of action. That course might be your future. Cue the patriotic music! Be a part of the party!
SOCIAL NUTWORKING
Being part of is something is important. Like many of your acquaintances on Facebook, affiliations are of convenience and for status and usually to serve someone else. I love when "Silvia Glitch" lets us know she has 12 thousand friends. Ask them for money and watch the count go down, fast.
In case the cave you live in doesn't have an outlet, and your laptop is as dead as your brain, the folks who gain from Farce-book are The Facebook People who sell your info. How can you not charge for something and yet the corporation for Facebook made a BILLION plus dollars last year. Think on that one.
But all these names and acquaintances mean little. They link because people think numbers mean power and leverage and popularity. Or do they really. False Gods… fake belonging...
Like reality TV, there is an absence of civility, shouting matches and the result of all this media gain, the branding of ones beliefs, the art of belonging to the right things, the party and its partisanship leads to a society of blamesmanship. We spend more time looking to blame than to fix. It is the most crucial change in our society.
Big business valued the customer till they got so big, they valued the shareholders more. Everything they do is for the market and shareholders. The middle class consumer became literally a second class citizen in this play. Jobs were lost, sent overseas and the shareholders made more money. Congress is like big business, they got so big, they value their shareholders, the lobbyists and corporations more so than the consumers which we are. We have ceased to enjoy "interesting conversations".
WHO ME?… NO BETTER THAN THEM
With only an average education, (the main subject I got "A"s in was Truancy and Home room), but I was the Captain of the Bad Spelling and Run-on sentence team. As mentioned I suffer from a speech defect called "brought up in Brooklyn". To overcome this, I have been blessed with a good two-fingered Apple keyboard, a super loaded new Mac Pro computer, a darn good spell checker and a sense of humor.
I speak fluent Brooklyn and they tell me thats how I write... Of the almost 6000 languages and dialects on the earth, "Brooklyn" is doing well. Expressions like "Doz Bums" and " Arrgh Jeeze" all owe their heritage to Crown Heights. Home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Carl Furillo, Duke Snider, PeeWee Reese and Ebbet's field.
My "ALMAH MARTYR" G. W. Wingate High School, is responsible for the skills I have today which I learned from my English teacher. Her favorite paraphrase was "Jacobs to detention". I amplified my reading skills. I always carried a good book in my schoolbag, I received more education reading in detention.
I hated English, looking back, it was a mistake. It is the carrier deck of communication and if my writing skills were equal to my thinking skills I would be flying F-18 Hornets. And had I paid attention in typing class, my two index fingers would not be a full half inch shorter than the others. Nevertheless, I made a few points in life, I got a lot of dates from the typing class.
I have learned to write in html and I can photograph in .jpg and RAW. I managed to fly as a PIC for 27 years, and saved two planes, the passengers and my buttocks on numerous mechanical failures, fires and bouts with mother nature . And after 29 years I successfully "mastered the TV remote" though I can't remember how I did that. I write five assorted blogs and created numerous websites and new words, so I wrote my own dictionary for my new words. You will see it here.
MASTER MACHINIST
I remember the first tools I made at Wingate in the metal shop (totally unauthorized program) and even today they still talk of the Jacobs Hubcap Remover, not sold in stores, available in Midnight Black Only. You too can have a career in hubcap "restoration" for only $39.95. Make it back on your first job even if you only got the front ones! Comes complete with instructions for both domestic and foreign jobs.
BUT WAIT! Order now and we'll double the offer and send you my new book " Guide to the Great Bail Bondsmen of America".
I managed to build and own a one man manufacturing and consulting company in the photo industry located at www.aljacobs.com. I needed the freedom of being self employed so I understand the little guy and business, all phases. At times it left me humble realizing the battle my wife fought with Cancer was the reason I left a corporate job to help her.
She was my strength, her courage unflinching. I'm human, middle class, not wealthy, I suffer from the agony and frustration of a broken corrupt healthcare system, meeting bills, praying for a simplified and fair tax code, one that a mere mortal can understand and on one page. It is why I attack corruptness, bigotry and thievery, by researching, chasing, and tracking down information, and I never stopped learning. I am inquisitive about anything. Even at sixty eight. My body is like the old sponge, but the brain is still going strong. I still work and I'm not leaking water yet.