DREAMS

I don’t dream much.

Dreams are not some magical occurrence with mystical implications.   Dreams definitely do not portend the future.   There are thousands of synapses in the brain – electrical impulse centers that can fire in combinations (like binary counters in the early computers) to record memories, regulate body functions or produce a reaction to experienced stimuli. 

These synapses are still firing even when the body is at rest and consciousness is turned off. 

In ZEN meditation they call the inability to stay focused ‘your monkey mind.’   It takes a concerted effort to banish this monkey mind and stay focused on a task or on meditation.   Random thoughts pop into our consciousness at all moments during your waking day.   This is the results of random synapses firing and creating momentary combinations that become momentary distractions.

When we are asleep we loose control of the monkey; and when certain combinations occur that resonate with memories or emotions they move into our semiconscious in the form of dreams.   

Most of our dreams we never remember: like most TV advertisements, they flash and don’t resonate, so they vanish as soon as we are conscious of our new day’s distractions. 

However, most of us have recurring dreams.   These are likely parodies of some emotional experience that was traumatic in our past.   

I basically have four recurring dreams at distant intervals – these usually surface when I am overly tired and overly stressed.   The first is a military situation that is all fucked up with incompetents in charge.   The second is usually something to do with complications involving a school in a Native village.  In the third I am trying to get to my wife who needs me and there are people and situations impeding me. 

The fourth dream is strange: There is a massive three story elegant house – I don’t know what it looks like on the outside but the inside is furnished opulently. All the rooms seem to be decorated in a 1920’s era décor.     The house is empty except for me.   As I move upstairs I know that on the third floor there is something evil – abnormal and possibly dangerous.   I must go up on the third floor and the only access is a small trap door in the ceiling of one of the second story rooms.  I shimmy through the access and all the rooms on this third floor are grey tone and empty of furnishings.  There is this feeling that some place on this floor there is impending danger and I must confront it.   That’s it – it never goes any farther.

Is it possible that we could dream for some brief time after we die?   Could some synapses continue to randomly fire as the battery charges in our brain deplete?  Or as Shakespeare wrote: …ay, there’s the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil…

Have a good night

the Ol’Buzzard      

  

IS GOOGLE CHROME BIG BROTHER?

HAS THIS HAPPENED TO ANYONE ELSE?

I will be typing in my Microsoft Word with no internet connection on line when suddenly my internal disk drive will start to whurrr and a message will pop up saying that there is high CPU usage by Google Chrome.  The only way I have been able to stop this intrusion in to do an emergency shut down.   What the hell is Google Chrome downloading on my computer without my knowledge or consent while I am working off line?   

I know that when we downloaded Google Chrome to our computer we have to accept their 'agreement' and that probably contains all sort of caveats allowing them freedoms with our personal information.  I have found pictures that I downloaded on my blog appearing in picture searches on Google.   

OK, I know that anything I put on the web is fair game, but what is Google doing in my computer when I am operating off line?

This is pissing me off
the Ol'Buzzard

THE OL’BUZZARD’S ANSWER TO WAR

THEY NEED A DOG IN THE FIGHT.

When two country leaders feel there is no alternative but to wage war there should be a new procedure required and overseen by the United Nations.

1.  The top three ranking public officials of each country (President, Leader of the House and Leader of the Senate or their equivalent) should be brought to a United Nations facility in a neutral country.

2.  The six leaders should be stripped naked, each given two single edge razor blades, and placed inside a secure room with no windows.

3.  At a prescribed announcement the lights should be turned off and the leaders should be told to WAR.

4.  No one should be released from the room until either an agreement is reached or there is only one side victorious.

5.  All nations should agree to the outcome.

Think of all the lives of young men and women that would not be wasted; and think of the money that could be saved and better spent.   

the Ol’Buzzard

AUGUST 11, 1945

AMERICA, AMERICA GOD SHED HIS GRACE ON THEE

What does it say about a nation that cold bloodedly murders 140,000 men women and children in one day and then five days later slaughters 70,000 more?  Is this a necessity of war, or genocide?  Was this collateral damage or an act of state sponsored terrorism?   Does it depend on who is doing the slaughter and who is slaughtered?   

After burning 140,000 people in the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 the United States dropped another nuclear bomb on the city of Nagasaki five days later, killing 70,000 of that cities 270,000 population. 

At that moment the United States became the most feared nation in the world.  Not only did it have the technology to slaughter hundreds of thousands of human beings in an instant but it also had the will to do it.

Back in the States the war was over.

  

People celebrated; but no one asked 'what have we done?' 

This does not stand as a condemnation of our nation state, but a condemnation of the human race in general.   The slaughter of civilian populations is not new to our race; it has gone on since the beginning of time.   Our closest kin in the animal kingdom, the chimpanzee, has been known to kill and eat its own kind, to attack other chimpanzee bands and to kill for pleasure or without purpose.   We have these same traits, and this is born out by our history.

I find it hard to believe that after the killing and maiming of hundreds of thousands of civilians in one bomb blast, that this country would be so callus as to repeat the carnage five days later.   

I do not excuse the United States for the attack on the Japanese cities; I do, however, feel that any other nation with the capacity and the same war mentality would have committed a similar atrocity on its ‘enemy.’  

I do condemn this country for not including this most heinous act in our history, along with condemnation and an apology, in the school books of our children.

We are who we are: not Americans, not Germans, not Japanese, not Russians… – but human beings.  We see what we are capable of - with no regret, so be afraid.  Be very afraid. 

the Ol’Buzzard

A DAY OF INFAMY

JUNE 6,1945

The definition of terrorist is: someone who uses violence, especially bombing, kidnapping and assassination to intimidate others often for political purposes.

I can remember in Vietnam the war cry of ‘Kill-um all and let God sort it out’.    I was outraged when the civilians cried for justice and the government prosecuted the soldiers at My Lai.   To a military man in a war zone the most important thing in the world is your band of brothers – fuck everyone else.  You take fire from a village you ‘kill-um all and let God sort it out’.

An attack on a civilian population is an atrocity.   The military can get bound up in war mania and try to justify the killing of women, children and old people as collateral damage that is the unavoidable result of waging war.   But the intentional targeting of a civilian population for annihilation is, and should be, looked on as a war crime – a crime against humanity.  

We celebrate, in our macabre way, the attack on the World Trade Center on 9-11; and, as a results, we readily condemn an entire race for the killing of three thousand civilians on our hallowed soil.  This will go down in our children’s history books as a shockingly cruel act of wanton violence.   

However, in our children’s history books you will never find the account of the most blatant, heinous assaults ever executed by a nation with the intention of annihilating   a specific civilian population.    The reason for this omission is that the United States of America conducted this assault.

It was eight-o-clock in the morning on August 6, 1945.   Mothers were feeding there children in preparation for school, old people were having their morning tea,  men were leaving for work - while somewhere off the coast a B-29 bomber called The Enola Gay was headed for its target.  

Fifteen minutes later the American Air Crew released the first nuclear bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, which detonated 1900 feet above the city of Hiroshima, Japan.  The blast instantly killed one hundred and forty thousand of the three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, turning two thirds of the city to rubble. 

This act of war against a civilian population - this crime against humanity - was celebrated at the time, but later became a footnote to be omitted from our history. 

    

WOMEN 2012

THE REPUBLICANS ARE WAGING A WAR ON WOMEN


Ladies you've got the power - use it.  

the Ol'Buzzard

A BUZZARD EGG OMELET #18

THE WORLD FROM THE LEFT PERSPECTIVE


When you turn into the news do you ever feel you are in a time warp?   That you had entered into some strange parallel universe.   You could only hope.

If you think it is strange now, wait until President Obama is reelected.   All the stops will be pulled out.   We will have tax cuts for the middle class, tax increased for the wealthy, universal  health care, help for the poor, support for children, women's empowerment and GAY LESBIAN AND TRANSSEXUAL RIGHTS.


Just think how strange a Republican will feel in the new society.

Our time is coming
the Ol'Buzzard