The Fascists Won’t Need to Burn Books in the Future, Because They Won’t be Reading Anyway.

Sheeeeeeeeeesh.

This article from today (LA Times, August 23, 2019) is pretty depressing. I think of myself as pretty lucky as not having to eventually see the worst of things to come, but as for my nephew, I don’t know. He’ll walk across paperless libraries with not shelves but docking stations. He wrote a couple of letters, which I still have, but now only texts or emails or nothing. Texts and emails get deleted. Cheap. Loaded with as much sentiment as a fart. Forgotten as soon as you writer it. No record of the time in your lives when made, no actual care in creation, or no emotional reaction to something as transitory and short-lived as the fore-mentioned fart or spam.

If it wasn’t for the devastation, I’m ready for the digital end.

Ok, off subject a bit. Sorry. I’m at work and staring at my screen, which makes me forget to blink and my eyes dry out which helps make any allergy I get caused by this crazy weather worse.

Books. Right. My dad, who gave me his Hermes Rocket 1956, he also buried me with his vast library. He crushed me with Franz Fanon, Nietzche, Bertrand Russell, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, Georges Simenon, Maupassant, Highsmith, LaCarre, ………….. All not simple reading for a kid under 15 or younger. Now what do they read? blogs? (Never mind that.)

Books kept their identities, their worlds. Digital texts, especially when owned by some online school textbook company, can easily be edited. If a history book in digital form has a section that does not comply with management’s world or political view, it’s edited. Look it up. School boards today are being filled by conservatives who are tweaking sylibi in schools nationwide.

Again, I lose my train of thought. My train, it’s maybe a boat, lost at sea.

Anyways, you know what I mean by now. You’re free to go now. Thank you for visiting.

What? Shoo! Go now. I’m tired. Good night, and good luck.

The Real-Life Digital Dystopia, not a Movie.

It sounds like a James Bond flic plot, but our digital lives are easy pickings, and most of us keep our heads in the silicone. Like preppers stock up on guns, I’m stocking up on typewriters and ribbons.
How many people live in small cities or towns where this could happen in? I bet, in anti-tax states, with shrinking budgets (for example police, fire, safety, etc…), this could be child’s play for a child with some computer skills.
Hold on to your seats, friends, it’s still just starting.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

  • Sinclair Lewis

This quote explains pretty much most of US political history and the lies and propaganda we swim through, if not at times, accept. What ever happened to ‘the government of the people”? Read the quote again.

Subvert the Dominant Paradigm

It’s an old 60’s saying, something that hasn’t sunk in as much as the urge to conformity in thinking. What does it mean to you?

If you have the time, think a little about it.

subvert: undermine the power and authority of (an established system or institution).

paradigm: intellectual perception or view, accepted by an individual or a society as a clear example, model, or pattern of how things work in the world

Do we have a national paradigm? Think American exceptionalism and how people accept blindly that anything we do here is better than anywhere else. That is a solid belief system despite evidence to the contrary in many aspects. Look it up. We could do better, but that attempt would just strain that particular paradigm. Maybe you see that some believe that unregulated capitalism is sacrosanct, despite also evidence to the contrary. The trickle down theory that all would benefit if we just stop taxing and regulating the rich or powerful corporations and banks, is still the present administration’s model, but has there been any trickling going on for the past decades? Well?? A definite dominant paradigm that needs much subversion.

Talking about shifting paradigms,

This is a great book of stories that deal with an urgent and needful shift when our digital dependency and assumption that we are in control is shattered into a new world, and a new sink or swim paradigm forced upon us when the digital apocalypse comes. Sounds too sci-fi for you? Think how many EMP devices are in the world, how fragile truth and all information is within the net, cloud, or whatever and how close the Doomsday Clock is heading to midnight. Far from fantastic now, isn’t it?

And that brings me to……..

The book that is bringing back so many out of their screens and into the real world, into their own minds again.

Typing club in Riverside, Sunday Night.

Nice machine, beautiful action. Can you identify it?
Beautiful Royal K-series, green, looking like my Rocket on mega steroids.

This was the first event I attended here, but felt welcome. The cafe was entirely cash-only, so water was good enough for me. That’s putting you on notice if you brave the steps down here. It was a nice night and we went over some common repair problems and tricks, but we went to the writing. I wrote a letter to my father with a paragraph each from the Smith-Corona, Royal, my Remington, and the Facit, and it turned out to be a type quilt. I forgot to take a pic or scan it before I jammed it into the typed envelope and tossed it into the blue box. Oh well, I’ll just have to do it again.

Blood in Sidewalk Cracks

This was a record of a walk from my apartment to Pink’s in the 90’s. Hollywood, where we had the Angels/people war (Guardian Angels v. the homeless), the Cherokee bar with Al’s famous hotdog cookouts i back and Hoagie, my fave bartender who knew me well. Scientologists were just moving in and you just shooed them away like flies or people handing fliers. Pink’s, you may have heard about. A true vantage point of the place, or dimension, or whatever it was. Can’t forget the Body Shop and the heartbreaker Cats or the stunning Raven. It was then so, uglybeautifulfunnysadandaaawwwwwwwwww….

Why Dr. Who?

The Doctor always respected the clever, the thoughtful, and the beauty in life. The humans were be protected, like in these times, even from themselves. In short, be good. The Doc might not be watching out for us anymore. Ok, I posted this because of too many “whatever” looks when I offer people clips or dvd’s of old Doctor episodes. They just don’t get watching something for more that 30 minutes without gunfire and exploding cars or t&a. I do like a bit of t&a, I admit, but let’s not go there. This is sci-fi with a message, a new mythology. Then again, there are those who imagine the second coming of the big J mowing down libs, nerds, “coastal intellectuals” or whatever with an AR-15 and wearing MMA gloves and shorts. That’s not an image I would use for my nephew to follow as inspiration. We probably need something in these days that inspire kids not to march with torches in Charlottesville, or dream about committing a massacre, or feel obligated or spurred to attack anyone not exactly like them. Maybe something that promotes a sense of awe at what is left in and dissapearing in our world, or to just travel and to experience something outside of their tunnel-vision belief system or self-confined xenophobic pebble in a planet of beaches. Do you get me?

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