Lawrence R. Spencer's Blog, page 89
June 16, 2022
INHUMANE HUMANITY DESERVES TO DIE
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction franchise created by Glen A. Larson. The franchise began with the Battlestar Galactica TV series in 1978, and was followed by a brief sequel TV series in 1980, a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games. The reimagined miniseriesBattlestar Galactica, developed by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, was first telecast in 2003, and this concept was continued with another Battlestar Galactica TV series telecast from 2004 to 2009. A prequel TV series, Caprica, aired from 2010 to 2011.
June 15, 2022
AUTOMATED CUSTOMER SERVICE
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
This is what happens when you call “Customer Service” to complain about the bad service or product you paid for that doesn’t work:
EXPERIENCE
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Siddhartha is a novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha. The word Siddhartha is made up of two words in Sanskrit language, siddha (achieved) + artha (what was searched for), which together means “he who has found meaning (of existence)” or “he who has attained his goals”. In fact, the Buddha’s own name, before his renunciation, was Siddhartha Gautama, Prince of Kapilavastu. In this book, the Buddha is referred to as “Gotama”. — Wikipedia.org
Download the e-Book for Free: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2500
June 14, 2022
SHADOW HAIKU
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
FLYING MONKEYS
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Excerpt from the book THE OZ FACTORS by Lawrence R. Spencer
“Take special care of those Ruby Slippers. I want those most of all … now fly! fly! fly!” –The Witch beseeching her Flying Monkeys to capture Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz‘
“THE PSYCHO-BABBLE OF FLYING MONKEYS — It is said that the mythical Tower of Babble was a mechanism created by the gods as a way to create different languages among men. The variety of languages was intended to make it more difficult for men to communicate with each other. The barriers to communication, therefore, would make it more difficult for men to get together and figure out what the gods were really up to. In this way, the secret activities of the gods would be secure.
Like the ancient myth, there are modern, would-be gods and witches who have secrets and hidden agendas to hide. A common hiding technique is to “redefine” language and invent new words that are “politically correct”, yet nonsensical in reality. As with the gods of old, the intention of such redefinition of language is to disguise a hidden agenda or misdirect attention.
For example, psychiatry fabricate words to describe newly invented mental “diseases”–the so-called disease of school children called “attention deficit disorder” for instance. This nonsense language is called “psycho-babble”.
The Communist Party in Russia was notorious for their masterful redefinition of the language to re-educate the people of Russia into a new, socialized thinking about themselves and the world. For example, the Communists used the word “comrade” instead of “peasant worker” and “commissar” instead of “czar”. (The only real difference between a commissar and a capitalist and an aristocrat, who the commissar despises, is spelling! They are each supported by the work of other people, as none of them produces anything of value themselves.)
Politicians put a spin on existing words and ideas in order to covertly influence our thinking. Television, movies and news media feed us the newly defined, politically correct words and ideas as they are revised and released. For example, the federal government spends billions more than it collects in taxes every year. In the business world this is called “overspending” which results in “bankruptcy”. In the political world, the politico-babble word for it has been changed to “deficit spending” and results in a “budget deficit”.
The world of advertising is another culprit using these methods. The newest and therefore hip, cool, groovy trend or fad is usually designed to sell something–music, clothing, drugs, movie tickets, etc. For example, the marketing campaign designed to sell “oversized, overpriced, luxury, four-wheel drive, passenger trucks”, is made more acceptable with the phrase, “sports utility vehicle”.
The subject of the spirit, in the Western world, is another example of a subject which remains heavily shrouded in mystery and skepticism. There is a “politically correct” nomenclature used by the “doctors” of psychiatry to describe the spirit, which has been made intentionally obtuse and foreboding. Psychiatry uses condescending phrases like “paranormal”, to describe spiritual phenomenon, which literally means, outside of the normal. Of course, the unspoken implication is that being “normal” is supposed to be some nebulous state of perfect bliss and fulfillment that can be achieved only by a strict, life-long adherence to the rituals of the normal or chosen class. A “normal” person eats cheeseburgers, pays taxes, takes drugs, buys mass quantities of merchandise he or she doesn’t need, and believes that what he or she sees on television is “the truth”.
Another favorite phrase used to describe spiritual matters is “alternative reality”. Okay, so let’s see … there’s only ONE reality and it’s the reality you’ve been told to believe by the government and the television set and your shrink. If you don’t agree with the ONE reality they’ll lock you up in a loony-bin, drug you, electroshock you, give you a pre-frontal lobotomy. Finally, when your insurance company won’t pay them any more money to keep you locked up, they’ll let you out for the rest of your so-called “life” as a brain-dead vegetable. You have now been “cured” of your “delusions” and are “being reasonable” and “realistic”. Gee, that’s some “alternative” reality.
“Parapsychology” is yet another distorted concept which literally means, “the study of things around the spirit”. The only problem is that the “study” is being conducted by psychiatrists, with government funding, who, through a meticulous process of torturing laboratory animals, have “expertly” concluded that man is a stimulus-response animal, and not a spiritual being.
As we will see, the goal of such “research” is to learn how to CONTROL the behavior of men in order to make them more obedient taxpayers.”
June 13, 2022
READ WITHOUT EYES
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
As lovers of learning and literature know all of the best fantasy, science fiction, history, romance, imagery, imagination and revelation are contained in books. The content of movies and TV shows are often spewed from minds who pander the prurient interests to the lowest common denominators of money and mayhem. The finest thoughts, the highest aspirations and the flightiest heights of imagination are dreamed and written by artists who write books.
Unfortunately, as my body grows older, I find that it is increasingly difficult to read books. Diminishing eye sight, arthritis in my neck, bad back and insufficient time makes reading books more difficult. Thank the gods, and technology for the wonderful inventions of MP 3 players and AUDIO BOOKS!
Now I can download and listen / read a vast array of literature on audio books, read to me by the some of the most talented actors: it’s better than a bed-time story! And I can listen to books while driving, waiting in the dentist office, walking around, sitting in the park and muti-tasking in general. Personally, I’ve listened to more books during the past two years than I read in the previous five years.
Thanks to audio books I’ve been able to read books that I probably wouldn’t have read previously due to the sheer size and expense of the books, some of which are several thousand pages in length! Free audio books, in the public domain, are available from www.Librivox.org. And, a vast library of books read by professional actors is available from www.Audible.com. The most important (FREE) source of audio books is your local public library. More and more books are available of CDs and cassette tapes every day. I use and recommend all of these.
As for subject matter, here are some of the books I listened to recently that are my personal favourites:
All 7 books of THE LENSMAN SERIES, written by E.E. “Doc” Smith (I consider these to be the finest science and science fiction books ever written). I listened to most of them twice!
All of the Sherlock Holmes books written by Arthur Conan Doyle (most of these I read previously, but audio books make them more fun)
American Gods and The Anansi Boys by the magical Neill Gaimon.
Enders Game by the marvellous science fiction writer, Orson Scott Card
The Autobiography of Mark Twain, a compilation of his autobiographical writings and commentary.
Any of the legion of electrifyingly frightening books by the fantastic fiction writer, Dean Koontz.
Under the Dome by Stephen King.
The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. One of the finest works of historical commentary ever produced.
The Republic by Plato is the pre-eminent discussion of the philosophy and culture of Western Civilization, written in 368 B.C.E.
Mien Kamph by Adolph Hitler. This is a ‘must’ read if you care to understand the demented ‘logic’ of a demonic Germanic mind.
The Confession by John Grisham. This is a damning diatribe, written as fiction, on the subject of capital punishment.
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. This is a marvelous perusal of the entire subject of Western philosophers.
The complete writings of the Father of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine.
The Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tze. (The new English translation)
At the moment I’m listening to Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.
___________________________
Good listening! Lawrence R. Spencer
CLEMENS VONNEGUT: THE REINCARNATED WRITER
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) died in 1910. It seems very likely and plausible (if you know about reincarnation) that he was reincarnated as Kurt Vonnegut in 1922. The resemblance between the two writers is uncanny in their events of their respective lives, there physical appearance, personal philosophies, writing and styles and by the fact that they were both prodigious, life-long smokers. The resemblance and affinity between Clemens / Vonnegut was not lost on Kurt Vonnegut as you will discover the in following lecture.
Kurt Vonnegut delivered the annual Clemens Lecture at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, An edited version of which we present here:
On Twain, Lincoln, Imperialist Wars and the Weather
by Kurt Vonnegut
“Shock and awe.
What are the Conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? They are telling us to be absolutely terrified, and to run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. But they will save us.
They are making us take off our shoes at airports. Can anybody here think of a more hilarious practical joke than that one? Smile, America. You’re on Candid Camera.
And they have turned loose a myriad of our high tech weapons, each one costing more than a hundred high schools, on a Third World country, in order to shock and awe human beings like us, like Adam and Eve, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
The other day I asked the former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq, and he said, ‘Mohammed Ali versus Mr. Rogers.’ What are Conservatives? They are people who will move Heaven and Earth, if they have to, who will ruin a company or a country or a planet, to prove to us and themselves that they are superior to everybody else, except for their pals.
They take good care of their pals, keep them out of jail – and so on. Conservatives are crazy as bedbugs. They are bullies.
Shock and awe.
Class war? You bet.
They have proved their superiority to admirers of Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain and Jesus of Nazareth by, with an able assist from television, making inconsequential our protests against their war.
What has happened to us? We have suffered a technological calamity.
Television is now our form of government.
On what grounds did we protest their war? I could name many, but I need name only one, which is common sense.
Be that as it may, construction of the Mark Twain Museum will sooner or later be resumed. And I, the son and grandson of Indiana architects, seize this opportunity to suggest a feature which I hope will be included in the completed structure, words to be chiseled into the capstone over the main entrance.
Here is what I think would be fun to put up there, and Mark Twain loved fun more than anything. I have tinkered with something famous he said, which is:
‘Be good and you will be lonesome.’ That is from ‘Following the Equator.’OK? So envision what a majestic front entrance the Mark Twain Museum will have someday. And imagine that these words have been chiseled into the noble capstone and painted gold:
BE GOOD AND YOU WILL BE LONESOME MOST PLACES,
BUT NOT HERE, NOT HERE.
One of the most humiliated and heartbroken pieces Twain ever wrote was about the slaughter of one hundred Moro men, women and children by our soldiers during our liberation of the people of the Philippines after the Spanish American War. Our brave commander was Leonard Wood, who now has a fort named after him. Fort Leonard Wood.
What did Abraham Lincoln have to say about such American Imperialist wars? Those are wars which, on one noble pretext or another, actually aim to increase the natural resources and pools of tame labor available to the richest Americans who have the best political connections.
And it is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln in a speech about something or somebody else. He always steals the show. I am about to quote him.
Lincoln was only a Congressman when he said in 1848 what I am about to echo. He was heartbroken and humiliated by our war on Mexico, which had never attacked us.
We were making California our own, and a lot of other people and properties, and doing it as though butchering Mexican soldiers who were only defending their homeland against invaders weren’t murder.
What other stuff besides California? Well, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.
The person Congressman Lincoln had in mind when he said what he said was James Polk, our President at the time. Abraham Lincoln said of Polk, his President, our armed forces’ Commander and Chief:
Trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory, that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood – that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy, he plunged into war.’
Holy smokes! I almost said, ‘Holy shit!’ And I thought I was a writer!
Do you know we actually captured Mexico City during the Mexican War?
Why isn’t that a national holiday? And why isn’t the face of James Polk up on Mount Rushmore, along with Ronald Reagan’s?
What made Mexico so evil back in the 1840’s, well before our Civil War, is that slavery was illegal there. Remember the Alamo?
My great grandfather’s name was Clemens Vonnegut. Small world, small world.
This piquant coincidence is not a fabrication.
Clemens Vonnegut called himself a ‘Freethinker,’ an antique word for Humanist. He was a hardware merchant in Indianapolis.
So, 120 years ago, say, there was one man who was both Clemens and Vonnegut. I would have liked being such a person a lot. I only wish I could have been such a person tonight.
I claim no blood relationship with Samuel Clemens of Hannibal, Missouri. ‘Clemens,’ as a first name, is, I believe, like the name ‘Clementine,’ derived from the adjective ‘clement.’ To be clement is to be lenient and compassionate, or, in the case of weather, perfectly heavenly.”
June 12, 2022
THE ULTIMATE TERRORISM: WILLING SERVITUDE
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Aldous Huxley – Speech at UC Berkeley, The Ultimate Revolution — 1962.
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963)
His brother, Jullian Huxley, was the head of the Rockefeller Eugenics Program, the founder of UNESCO, that later became Agenda 21.
Aldous Huxley author of Brave New World speaking at U.C. Berkeley in 1962. Aldous Huxley uses this speaking opportunity to outline his vision for the ‘ultimate revolution’, a scientific dictatorship where people will be conditioned to enjoy their servitude, and will pose little opposition to the ‘ruling oligarchy’, as he puts it. He also takes a moment to compare his book, “Brave New World,” to George Orwell’s “1984” and considers the technique in the latter too outdated for actual implementation.
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” — Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961
Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. – “After Ford” – in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and operant conditioning that combine to profoundly change society. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958) and with his final work, a novel titled Island (1962).
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
THE RIGHT TO KILL YOUR OWN BODY
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Any person or nation who denies the right of any individual to commit suicide is fundamentally psychotic. What right does ANYONE have to tell you than you can or cannot kill your own body if and when you choose to die? Whose body is it? Is your body the property of the State? Or, is your body your personal, inviolate possession?
Sharlotte Hydorn, 91, says she’s ‘just interested in helping people’ who might otherwise suffer painful deaths. FBI agents raided her home last week in an investigation of possible mail fraud or other violations. Sharlotte Hydorn peddles a product touted for its deadly simplicity. Inside her butterfly-decorated boxes are clear plastic bags and medical-grade tubing. A customer places the bag over his head, connects the tubing from the bag to a helium tank, turns the valve and breathes. The so-called suicide kit asphyxiates a customer within minutes.
Orders come from all over the world, from people young and old, depressed and terminally ill. “People commit suicide by jumping out of windows and buildings, and hanging themselves,” said the 91-year-old former elementary school science teacher. Her product, she says, ends lives peacefully, leaving people “eternally sleepy.”
In December, one of Hydorn’s $60 devices was found over the head of a dead 29-year-old man from Eugene, Ore. His death triggered a wave of media attention that doubled her orders to 100 per month, but placed Hydorn under scrutiny from politicians and law enforcement agencies that culminated last week with a raid of her ranch-style home outside San Diego.
FBI agents seized dozens of boxes ready for shipment as part of an investigation into possible mail or wire fraud violations and whether Hydorn has violated a law prohibiting the sale of adulterated and mishandled medical devices. In Oregon, where assisted-suicide is legal under certain conditions, lawmakers have introduced a bill that would outlaw any device sold with the intent that another person use it to commit suicide.
Hydorn has been compared to Jack Kevorkian, the physician who went to prison in 1999 for assisting suicides. But the Dr. Death image doesn’t fit this gregarious woman who dispenses advice on dying with a neighborly demeanor that is disarming.
Wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, the tall and slender woman told reporters last week that hers is a mission of compassion. The “exit bags” end lives of suffering through humane means, she said. The federal investigation leaves her more bewildered than concerned, and she almost laughs at the prospect of going to prison.
“Do I look like a criminal?” Hydorn said, standing on her manicured front lawn.
Her critics would say yes. Even people who believe in assisted-suicide said she peddles the product without knowing the circumstances or identities of the buyers. While some suicidal people are rational, others are not, said Alan Berman, executive director of the American Assn. for Suicidology, a suicide-prevention organization.
“What if this was a young person masquerading as an adult? What if this was a person with a totally treatable psychological condition who was not otherwise given the opportunity to get treatment?” he said. “She’s not evaluating who she is providing the product. Clearly, she’s doing no due diligence to defend her behavior as compassionate.”
Hydorn became interested in assisted-suicide after watching her once-healthy husband die from a long battle with colon cancer 30 years ago. He passed away in a hospital bed and she regrets not being able to respect his wishes to die in the comfort of home.
Over the years, Hydorn said, she has witnessed the deaths of about 50 people using the helium-hood method. Like other assisted-suicide advocates, she has role-played with people first, showing how the bag works. It’s not necessarily a grim exercise, she said. One woman who saw the bag inflate joked: “I always wanted to be the Cat in the Hat,” Hydorn recalled.
In a workshop at her home in an unincorporated area of El Cajon, east of San Diego, Hydorn assembles the packages with her adopted son and ships them to customers from Singapore to Cyprus. Many orders come from Florida and other areas with large populations of senior citizens. She doesn’t know how many people have died using her product, but she regularly receives letters of gratitude from loved ones, she said.
Some aren’t so appreciative. After Nick Klonoski died last December in Eugene, Ore., his brother Zach blamed Hydorn at a hearing in front of Oregon state lawmakers. The packaging, he said, disguises the device’s lethalness and comes with instructions that tell users, when buying helium, to avoid suspicion by asking for party balloon tanks rather than helium tanks.
“In a society where so many people suffer from depression and other mental-health disorders, this company has found their niche in the market by peddling death,” he said at the hearing this month. “This is analogous to putting a gun-vending machine next to a depression clinic.”
Hydorn makes no apologies for Klonoski’s death, saying that he pondered his suicide for months and had not acted impulsively. She concedes that in the future she may require people to send copies of their drivers’ licenses to prove their age, however.
Her immediate concern is getting the kits, or refunds, to people whose orders were confiscated by FBI agents. It’s not about the money, she said. “It was never my intention of getting into the business of killing people. I was just interested in helping people,” she said.
