BOOMERS ANONYMOUS -- Care or Quit?

Start here . Some of us boomers who studied Psychology should easily recall a towering figure from this discipline, a German academic named Carl Gustav Jung. I always thought Jung's work was best understood in the context of his older contemporary, Sigmund Freud.  Where the more celebrated Freud is recognized as the foundational thinker in the area of psychoanalysis, Jung's legacy is somewhat broader, and in my opinion, more far-reaching than Freud's in that it has had substantial impact on other fields besides psychiatry, such as anthropology, archaeology, literature, and my major field of study, philosophy. This is a MANDALA. It's been six months since I've shared this internet space with -- well, nobody in particular and everybody in general -- and you -- out there in the inter-webs.  There's one question a writer should always be able to answer ... who is your audience? Be patient. I'll get to "Mandela and the Ugly American in a second."  Just ...

Start here . Hello again, Boomers, Jonesers, and Non-Boomers alike. Nothing to talk about lately? What do we Americans do when the temperature starts climbing above 80, and the lawn needs mowing?  Well, for the last couple of centuries, there was this thing called Our National Pastime. Notice the word  "pastime" suggests an activity unabashedly and unequivocally meant to be an acceptable and civil  way to pass time . I would even go so far to say, pre-Internet distraction, there was a tapestry. a weaving of the fabric of your cultural character in sport, a mythos, conjured and nurtured for the benefit of inter-generational respect and  civility. Heck, even affection. Love you, dad. Alas, locusts and honey will have to suffice anymore "Oh, there you go again Roy, being literal, and trying to find out what words mean." I suppose so. Unfortunately, in my blogging experience, if you are a fan of scholarly etymology and  reasonable contextual usage, with a dash of tr...

Start here . For you lawyers, do you recall this classic case study from Torts class?  Palsgraf vs. Long Island Railroad Co. 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (1928) is legendary because Judge Cardozo's analysis of proximate cause reinforced one of the basic elements required in order to plead a valid cause of action for liability on the grounds of negligence. But back to my point, since I refuse to walk back into those weeds planted in my brain during those hellish indoctrination rituals called "law school" and "bar exam."  Let it suffice to say that chasing Truth down rabbit holes is a journey full of surprises, and you never know where gritty, honest research will lead you. The Newtonian paradigm is gone. Quantum Mechanics and the Butterfly Effect are real things. Dark Matter and String Theory rule science.  For now. I simply wanted to discuss the problem of Factions in a large republic ( link here! ).  But, in a momentary lapse of reason, during the course of my s...

A pilot, you racist. Jokes aside, spring has sprung. Can you hear the music ? For me, there's warmth and sustenance in the manna from Bobby Jones's little toonamint which starts in less than two weeks. Golf's big boys will kiss the King's ring in Orlando, swing through Houston, and re-assemble at the Cathedral of Golf that is Augusta National . Way before I became a curmudgeonly ex-lawyer and cyber-entrepreneur, there was, and there remains, an epic quality to the Masters which I will admit holds me spellbound, if not because of the ethereal atmosphere created by their meticulous greenskeeping, then only for the theater of human folly which is golf, placed on emerald pedestals amid the looming yellow pines, bright azaleas, and wound around the depths of Rae's Creek. The Masters mythology lives in the same realms as the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, Daytona, Indy, and, okay, sometimes the Stanley Cup. In spite of the degr...

I 💓WRITING   Start here . “By a faction , I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” James Madison Break it down, nerds.  If not, we will know how it feels to be thick as a brick.  So I had a nice two-week travel break, thanks.  I got to see the kids. I got to visit one of the oldest lighthouses in United States -- Beavertail. I also got to revisit a "road not taken" by taking pictures at the gate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis.  And last but not least, I found another topic that interests me. These next few weeks, I will talk about the heavy conflicts in the political realm, circa 2022. Social life is so fractured, yet, it isn't as if great minds haven't thought of these social problems before. It may be good to review the...

Start here . Welcome to Part 3, The Series Finale.  Part 1 and Part 2 did surely go by quickly.  Time flies when sorting through the lies. Where were we?  That's right! The subject was cheat codes, and the linguistic fuckery that is more than prevalent in MSM, so much so that Hunter's Laptop was "Russian Disinformation" only until the crime boss could begin pretending to lead the United States. In less upright sectors of the legal profession, it is called "terms of art." The lies we have uncovered (together) are too numerous to review. Their deceptions create dragons, imagined and real, munching mushroom clouds on the world stage. Their stratospheric falsehoods wear legal trappings, sheepskin garbed, traps to hypnotize, pervert, and enslave our sad, opiated, and most of all, unthinking fellow human beings. I have no doubt that you folks, you, the rational, and the rest who cannot care less about political agendas, have long disspelled the notion that legac...

Do you hear Sopranos? Start here . Do you see part of the image above circled in red?  What the heck are those? Why are they hovering above the chamber of the House?  Apparently, they live . As you and I keep calm and cope with corporate media dialectics, staying the Babylonian money magic stream of lies pitting: left against right, conservatives versus liberals  male versus female black versus white  and of course, the currently popular diametric Russia versus Ukraine, that old imperial strategy seems destined for failure. It is time for the causes of our national malaise to fail, and to fail in catastrophic ways.  "Choose a side," they implored us. "Don't worry," they assured us. "We can fix this.  Yes, we can ."  Well, sorry, Your Highnesses, but that divide and conquer strategy is old and worn. It is dead. It started to die at Runnymeade. It got worse for you in Trenton. Your destiny was sealed in the fields of Normandy and the streets of Mosc...

Start here .  Part One of this series adds context to my deep concern about what I call "linguistic cheat codes."  Picking up where we left off, I present to you my Top 5 language cheats as part of a new drinking game. How many cheats can you catch while listening and watching the globalist spin doctors and sociopathic corporate lawyers battle for control over our hearts and minds?  Listen for these: 1. "Honestly," --- [ translation : " I'm lying. "] This cheat word slips by listeners so often, and so subliminally that, honestly, speakers will drop it when they are making an especially weak and invalid point. Honestly, if you hear it, just know the speaker is scraping for words to convince you of something, but unfortunately, the absence of merit in their argument and speaker's lack of veracity suggests they are not being forthright. They know you are not buying what they are selling, and (honestly) you shouldn't buy it. 2. "The American ...

Start here .   How many of us dozed off in the middle of high school English class whenever we had to read Shakespeare, or Milton, or especially, Dante?   Not me.   I knew that the Adam West Batman accessed the Batcave through Shakespeare. This week I'm focused on a particular line from the play Hamlet , where the protagonist Prince plots to avenge his Father's death at the hands of  Claudius, the terrible uncle who then married Hamlet's mother -- after killing Hamlet's dad!    Jerry Springer must have studied classical literature, ha ha. Interestingly, Hamlet's father's name is also Hamlet, but in the play, whenever he speaks he is called "Ghost."   Here's the full quote in context:  "Out of my weakness and melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds more relative than this. The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King [referring to Claudius]." What the he...

Start here .  I'm not lazy, dammit.  I'm efficient, and to some that looks lazy. Of course it doesn't help to be middle-aged and (slightly) overweight. Some stereotypes are justified. But even if 60 is the new 40, that doesn't affect my work.  I happen to think that stereotypes serve a comedic impulse. Unfortunately, when misused, they exacerbate improper discrimination. Clearly, a person's immutable physical attributes are an awfully unreliable predictor of their attitude. Fellow Boomers, my prevailing attitudes about life were shaped in a crucible of American military tradition.  Have you identified  your crucible? This week's comment (BTW, yours are welcome, too) deals with codes. No, not the millions of lines of mathematical computer codes that people smarter than me write in exotic languages like Python, Perl, Pascal, Forth, Frink, Erlang, Haskell, C, C+, C++ (D), Eiffel, Oberon, Occam, ChucK , or one of many scripting codes such as Beanshell or Mondrian ...

さとり the sea is parting. was Pandemic a real thing? payback coming soon *** ever write a poem? haiku can get you started neat quick and easy *** this Japanese style can sometimes get annoying but writing is fun *** this is what I do Nice Work If You Can Get It time to hit the course *** one more for the road words are cages for your thots I dislike spell check *** subscribe to my blog humor will lighten the load--- dad jokes for the win ***  seventh stanza here don't want to use too much Time another post Done *** fingers help me count the syllables i needed two finish this Peace *** /end fugue state  © 2022 Roy B. Santonil

Start here .  What a difference a dot makes. OK, Boomer, do you remember this MTV hit by the band Crowded House?  That song, "Don't Dream It's Over," used the same words as those in the title of this post. Because we are speaking and writing in English, spacing and punctuation rules are less strict than many other languages. Unless we practice writing in Far Eastern or Cyrillic characters, we don't have to bother much with diacritical marks, where, for example, the French circonflexe  (the little hat) means the difference between jeune (young) and jeûne (fast). More on foreign tongues later. For now, let's just agree there's a place in the world for old and slow . One dot, one period, one space bar, one programmer's keystroke, and POOF!, meaning changes. A glitch occurs in the matrix, and hordes of weasels begin to libel and slander your character. What's worse is they openly criticize your hair color and tan lines. Meaning is interpreted throu...