Duct Tape for the Soul for August 30 & 31, 2014

They Aren’t Helping

Nothing annoys me more that the self serving blather and propaganda of the Hollywood elite. These socially conscious fools run off at the mouth endlessly about how we should save this or that group, and they toss a couple of dollars down, and move on to the next photo-op. To have some idiot crying about the plight of the down trodden, while living in a thirty million dollar mansion, that is larger than the capital building in Bangledesh, is the height of hypocrisy and tastelessness.

People in the third world don’t need a stupid public service announcement. They need desperately to have someone come and kill the dictator or warlord that is oppressing and killing them. They need such “luxuries” as clean water, free of dirt and disease, food and a means to make a living. They need there to be no tanks driving over the garden, no foreign tribal warriors raping them and stealing their livestock, and people to teach them how to live and have sex without infecting everyone with some dreadful disease!

The celebrities are one hundred percent selfserving, since they do nothing towards any of these crucial things. If they abandoned their private jets, lived in a modest house, got rid of all ther servants, they could have enough money to spare to feed a hundred thousand people ever year. Or build wells and schools. They aren’t interested in doing any of that, because none of them care about real people. They care about dear old self interest, and where the next mega check is coming from.

Or, they’re too busy wallowing in drugs and booze, to self ansorbed with being a celebrity to do any real thing of value. Saving the world takes getting your fancy designer clothes dirty. No one wants that! If one of them actually gets up and does a real act of worth, I’ll be the first to congratulate them. But I’m not holding my breath. Not for people that think hiring an illegal alien cheap is helping the world. It’s not.

Jack

Duct Tape for the Soul for August 29, 2014

Were You Worth The Bother?

Creation was not an instantaneous event. Enormous and continual, it has no beginning and no end; it is quite beyond our puny understanding. The Divine force that drives such events has all of eternity to accomplish its goals. You were likely sketched, billions of years ago, and have existed for untold eons. Your current form is one of an endless number you will try on, as you seek to evolve that bit of Divine essence that you are.

Your destiny is to become much like God; wise and powerful, deep and enlightened. You will live possibly millions of lives in pursuit of this transcendence. I know, you’d rather not dwell on how much work you face. You find just getting through one simple, puny life to be so hard and burdensome! Your journey to true godliness is going to be a grind. It’s easy to complain, isn’t it? Easy to give up?

Go look in the mirror. Are you going to tell yourself that you’re a failure? That God wasted the effort, to create you, and give you this chance to love and grow? What are you doing to show some appreciation for such a tremendous opportunity? He expects a lot more from us than most give. Are you guilty of that too? Maybe today would be a good day to do something about that? Or do you have another excuse, another reason not to bother?

Jack

Duct Tape for the Soul for August 28, 2014

Free Will

You hopefully understand that you aren’t a robot, are not driven by some mysterious inner programing or instinct? You are utterly free to chart your own course in life, make decisions and choices. Naturally, you don’t have this just for the hell of it, or for some incomprehensiblly unfathomable reason. You have it so that you can make choices, big or small, trivial or potentialy life changing. Or ending.

You are constantly bombarded by the necessity of choosing between possibilities; good or evil, fun or dire. That bad choices may have wicked outcomes isn’t hard to grasp, yet many seem to not pick up on this, for a long time or not at all! The truth is simple; consequences of choices are supposed to teach you to make better choices! Duh! It isn’t rocket science, people.

On the contrary, life is structured to make learning simple. Not painless, just simple. Sticking your hand on a hot stove is very informative. If you need more than one such experince, you simply aren’t very bright! The sinister problem is this; sometimes consequences get to you faster than others. Grabbing a strangers butt might get your butt beat on the spot. Or maybe you’ll get the long slow ordeal of being charged with a sex crime? You’ll learn something either way, but the one gives faster feedback!

A worse problem is this: often the consequences of your crappy choices don’t come to haunt you until your next life. Karma is ongoing and utterly relentless. Some of your current misery now may be due to your wickedness a life or two ago! How do you get over that? By working your butt off here and now, to do more than the bare minimum. Try loving people. Nothing is a better use of freewill than that, and nothing helps offset past evil better. Are you doing that, or did you make the lousy choice to shun such a thing? Better re-evaluate that while you can!

Jack

Bessie-isms and Quotable for August 27, 2014

Bessie-isms:

*A hearty drink with friends is fine in moderation. Just be as moderate in choosing your friends as in choosing your drink, if you want nothing bad to come of either.

*If you dine out, you’ll see some amazingly oversized people chowing down. Many declare themselves afflicted with an eating disorder. This is not true. They have a can’t stop eating disorder.

Quotable:

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight!

Phyllis Diller

Duct Tape for the Soul for August 27, 2014

Marriages Die From A Thousand Small Cuts

Ever wonder how two people go from the heights of matrimonial bliss to the equivilent of being snarling junk yard dogs? You see the wedding and honeymoon pictures, and there they are, two perfect love birds, gushing all over each other. Sometimes in mere months, they’re peeing on each other, and searching for a divorce lawyer. How can this be?

Oh, sure, you’d imagine it’s due to one of them cheating, or some other monumental faux pas of uber insensitivity, right? You’d be likely wrong! Probably a good ninety percent of disharmony is caused by the most insignificant things; unbalanced check books, slovenly habits regarding house keeping and the fart.

Why blame gas? Well, because. Women hate that men fart, and not just that they do so, but that they work hard to make such an effort unavoidable. At least women think men do so. I never met a woman yet who didn’t think that men save up such emmissions, just so they can emmit it at a poignant moment. Women do the same thing, but they make an effort to be discrete, (what men consider being sneaky).  Women hate that men work hard to maximize their gas clouds and eruptions, and eventually, they consider this a wicked, personal plot to annoy them. That means war!

All sorts of other petty things get magnified into being considered an act of war. The toilet seat has been a bone of contention since it was invented! Ditto dirty clothes tossed randomly around. Most men like seeing a woman’s cute lingerie tossed all over, but the opposite isn’t true. Ditto unwashed dishes, tools on the kitchen counter and a million other things. Each time one person gets annoyed by a repeat of an annoyance, the hate gets fed a bit more.

Eventually, the come to loath each other’s habits utterly! By now, each act that is despised becomes a new salvo in the ongoing war. Appologies don’t help, even breaking the offending habit may not save them by this time. Are most of these petty things? Of course they are, but try to convince someone of that! Especially a man who thinks a loud , wicked fart is a badge of manhood!

Jack

Duct Tape for the Soul for August 26, 2014

The Unsocial Media

Lots of people use Facebook and other “social” media it seems. Unless the companies are lying to us, a pretty big swath of humanity is connected. Still, I’m constantly hearing people complain about these services. “False, dishonest, shallow, useless” you can easily hear people complaining. I’m not sure which segment is more pathetic though, the people who refuse to use them, and critize them, or the people who criticise them while using away!

It’s not hard to understand that words on a screen aren’t the same as sitting close to someone, and being able to chat. Unless you’re both using a camera, with live video and voice, you’re missing 90% of the good stuff. It’s easy to lie and gossip when you’re hidden, and the other parties can’t hear your voice, or see your shifty eyes. It’s pretty much a given that a big hunk of what’s on social media is nothing more than horse pucky!

Honestly, you’d be crazy to meet people this way, and think you knew anything about them, but what about existing friends? It certainly can show you what sort of stupid things they’re up to, and if you’re jealous about something, seeing them post a plea for help with bail is pretty nice! We like seeing people be stupid, which explains U Tube completely!

Look, it is what it is. You can use it wisely, to stay in touch with those you already know. It’s always fun to see less close friends trash themselves, and you can laugh your butt off in private, without looking like a turd. Just remember that anything you put out there will still be coming back around a hundred years from now. Naked shots of yourself drunk may be fun to post, but trust me, you’ll wish you hadn’t when a boss or grandchild finds them!

Jack