Tag: freedom

The Call of the Wild Is Jack London?

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility, Literary and Musical Review

Image

Message to my American Authors Professor:

Am I What I Am or What?

Good gravy..  If you get two of these, ignore the first one. Yes, the one you already read.. unless you didn’t already read it, in which case all is well…  well.

Since time can’t exist, neither can it be frittered away.. I suppose… Still, the bus ride home seems an eternity.
Some things need to be said most when one knows not to whom to say them. I am the guy who fights cocks, hunts.. well.. everything, runs hounds, climbs impossible mountains, skis the chutes, builds and rides choppers, drinks lots of Irish whiskey and Scotch, and so on, then gets his leg tore off, his brain scrambled, and says, “fuck you!” to the rescuing EMTs. Not that much of a touchie-feelie kind of guy… and proud of it! However, I find myself sitting in a classroom full of children, thinking about Buck, and straining every fibre of my being to keep from weeping like a damn baby.
Call of the Wild is the finest work of art to ever go on paper. What London had was “soul.” There are magnificent musicians by the bundles, but when you listen to the radio, certain pieces reach out of that little electric box and grab you right by the heart horns. As a listener, and even more so, as a musician, one can literally feel the soul (when it’s there, which it usually isn’t.. even for a magnificent musician like me). It has nothing to do with talent or ability. Demons or angels perhaps, but whatever it is, it is spiritual and magic. When you read “The Call of the Wild” you do recognize artful phrases, heroic romanticism, descriptive distinction beyond compare, the talent is indeed there, but the magic of “The Call of the Wild,” is Jack London grabbing your soul. Gone neigh one-hundred years? Nope. He’s still here. There is life on that paper. “The Call of the Wild” is a book with a pulse.

The Muslim Heritage In America

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility

Image       

Quit trashing President Obama’s accomplishments. He has done more than any other President before him. He has an impressive list of accomplishments, see list below:

        First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.

        First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.

        First President to preside over a cut to the credit rating of the United States.

        First President to violate the War Powers Act.

        First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

        First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party

        First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.

        First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.

        First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.

        First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.

        First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.

        First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to resign.

        First President to terminate America ‘s ability to put a man in space.

        First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation.

        First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.

        First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

        First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.

        First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.

        First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).

        First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.

        First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).

        First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

        First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.

        First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.

        First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 102 to date.

        First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.

        First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.

        First President to go on multiple global “apology tours” and concurrent “insult our friends” tours.

        First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayer.

        First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.

        First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.

        First President to repeat the Holy Quran & tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.

        First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they “volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences.”

        Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion.

        First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs. Arizona).

        How is this hope and change working out for you?

 

~I don’t know who put this together but I felt compelled to pass it on..  Bacon

Atavism

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility, Poet, Ya, I Am

Image

Old longings nomadic leap,

Chafing at custom’s chain;

Again from its brumal sleep

Wakens the ferine strain.

Helots of houses no more,

Let us be out, be free;

Fragrance through window and door

Wafts from the woods, the sea.

After the torpor of will,

Morbid with inner strife.

Welcome the animal thrill,

Lending a rest to life

Banish the volumes revered,

Sever from centuries dead;

Ceilings the lamp flicker cheered

Barter for stars instead.

Temple thy dreams with the trees,

Nature thy god alone;

Worship the sun and the breeze,

Altars where none atone.

Voices of solitude call,

Whisper of sedge and stream;

Loosen the fetters that gall,

Back to the primal scheme.

Feel the great throbbing terrene

Pulse in they body beat.

Conscious again of the green

Verdure beneath the feet.

Callous to pain as the rose,

Breathe with instinct’s delight;

Live the existence that goes

Soulless into the night.

~John Myers O’Hara

I recently got …

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility

ImageI recently got a message on Facebook which linked to the Forbes site (yep the rich we’re supposed to be hating so much), the headline being, “Who Is the Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It’s Barack Obama?” The article was spawned (surprise surprise) by Marketwatch, a “Wall Street Journal” entity (another surprise surprise). Wall Street loves the oBuma! Who can believe that the Administration who increased the national debt by a larger amount than all the administrations from Washington through Reagan isn’t the “smallest government spender since Eisenhower”? And to whom would the comparison between the oBuma and Eisenhower not spring to mind?

To people with the ability to think and reason these statements are worse than absurd, but to the members of the Church of the Black Jesus, the trillion dollar a year increase from Bush to the oBuma is explained by inflation. One helllll of an inflation but there ya go!

Admittedly the Bush administration was absurd in many ways, including spending, but the oBuma administration has done NOTHING to cut the Bush spending which makes that spending now theirs as well as the increase of that spending. Over 200 billion increase (annual). So according to the Wall Street boys, INCREASING the absurdly high Bush spending by 200 billion per annum ties the oBuma administration as the cheapest administration yet. Of course much of that spending has gone to Wall Street, Occupy indeed!

There is no mystery in seeing the Demonrats working their asses off to pull the rug out from under the greatest economical giant in history. The mystery for me is the media. The main-stream American media is indeed a propagandia. There is no longer even an attempt to appear honest. Why? What is the benefit in helping to flush America down the toilet?

The media is a huge comedy show! It literally brings me to fits of laughter almost every day! The only comedy more tragic is the American people.

Hillary? Gun Control? People Control? Indeed!

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility

I feel driven to restate a prediction I made over a year ago. Funny it is, how my predictions keep coming true. The birth certificate, Romney, Jim’s suicide, and so on. I’m seeing this next coming to fruition precisely as I predicted it would and I need to renew my prediction in order to increase the value of the coming “I told you so”s.

Shortly before the election Barragh Hussein Obuma will pull out. He’s in the conscious process of driving his own popularity down at this very moment. Making absurd moves which are offending even his most ardent supporters. The propagandia is even stepping in and slinging a few arrows. Hillary has made some interesting moves herself, and the Media?

Weekly World News Hillary to Challenge Obama for President

The Daily Beast  Hillary Told You So

Hillary Unleashed

Huffinton Puffington Post Nancy Pelosi: Hillary Clinton Should Run for President 2016

Petition to Congress Draft Hillary Clinton for President 2012

And there are many more! Precisely as I predicted!

She’ll not make the actual announcement right away. It’ll be closer to election time. She’ll have the entire commielib, lefist, traditional Democrat (including those pissed at Obuma beyond voting). She will be in like Flynn and Bill will be the first..  whatever he is.. You can bet yer ass he’ll be supporting Hillary. Good gravy! It’ll be historical! And there’ll not be the slightest glitch in the overall plan. The bigotry of the left against the successful will roll on ahead full steam. The excuse will be “It’s that Dang Obuma’s fault”. Look at the debt! We HAVE to do something radical! And Bacon’ll say, “see, I told you so!”

And one more..  The first attempted move will be income ceilings. Everything above the ceiling must go to the government. This one may not pass right off the bat, but it’ll be thrown in the oven right away.  Those damn eeeeeevil rich sons of bitches MUST PAY! (their fair share (thanks Alinsky.)) We’ll be feelin’ good as we watch freedom/responsibility swirling down the drain.

I’m feeling prophetic, maybe I should start a religion! The Church of Total Equality of Latter Day Retards… ‘er somethin’

~Bacon

July 4, 2012 Update

OK.. modification time. Embarrassing it is but I missed some important points. I misread Obuma for one. He will not pull out. He’s not simply a servant to his masters as I presumed. He is actually completely insane. He believes in Marxism right to his core. He believes he is doing the “right thing” as did Karl Marx who was a genius, and who’s “Manifesto” seems to be more closely followed by American leadership than is our own Constitution. Read the “Communist Manifesto,” particularly the demands in Section II which could easier be seen as the “constitution” America is currently following. In any case, Obuma must go down and I don’t think Biden is seen as a magnificent option by the Demonrat party. Hillary is the next in line. Were something to happen to Obuma and Biden (Satan forbid!) Hillary is the next in line…  My goodness, how simple.

In any case, my prediction of Hillary Clinton as next POTUS still stands, the point of interest is going to be how she gets there.  The crumbling of Obuma is happening, what I missed was the actual intentions of Obuma. Praise Allah!  Ok then…

A Raisin in the Shade of Human Nature

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Literary and Musical Review

Image

Often interpreted as a statement on racism, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun actually delivers a broad presentation of human nature, of which racism can be one possible aspect. Hansberry paints individual images of the stubborn inflexibility in the nature of her characters which is also central to the human condition in general, and is rarely overcome. Hansberry’s characters exemplify the human determination to justify and support one’s own behavior based on individual beliefs and interpretations of the world.

The beliefs and dreams seen here vary from that of Lena Younger’s (“Mama”), maternal, spiritual, house with a yard, and the anchor of family. Her daughter, Beneatha Younger, dreams of independence and rebels against her mother’s traditions, favoring a much more progressive, atheistic philosophy. Beneatha dreams of herself as a youthful adventurer who’ll one day be off to Africa, the land of her roots. In her brother Walter Younger, lies the very typical view of the masculine mastery of ones own destiny, a dream for which he is willing to risk everything. One of the play’s main antagonists, Karl Lindner, feels a loyalty to his neighbors, who happen to be, as is he, not black, like the Youngers, but white. The dreams and beliefs are as desperate and true to those who hold them as are the witchdoctor’s beads to the Bechuana. While the reader is not brought to an actual resolution, Hansberry delivers a series of very telling lessons on the individuality which burns within them all. The core differences and the challenge of overcoming them shines brightly from her stage.

Mama is driven by traditional beliefs, the strength and love of family and spirituality. At the core of Mama’s dream resides her God. Yet from her daughter Beneatha we hear, “It’s all a matter of ideas, and God is just one idea I don’t accept… I don’t believe in God… I get so tired of him getting all the credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simply is not God! There is only Man, and it’s he who makes miracles!” (51)

This statement earns Beneatha an enthusiastic slap in the face from Mama. A slap which invokes from Beneatha not a change, rather a softly spoken, “…everybody thinks it’s alright for Mama to be a tyrant. But all the tyranny in the world will never put a God in the heavens” (52). Two closely linked people who absolutely love one another yet hold diametrically opposed beliefs as to the ultimate source of truth: for Mama it’s God, for Beneatha it’s man, for each it is equally the truth.

Racism, as obnoxious yet powerful a persuasion as has ever been devised, is demonstrated by one of the victims of that very conviction, Walter Younger, who utters to his wife, Ruth, as a result of his disappointment in seeing his own immediate dream of liquor store ownership slipping away, “Cause we all tied up in a race of people that don’t know how to do nothing but moan, pray and have babies” (87). Walter has obviously heard the white supremacist doctrine and here regurgitates it at his own black and pregnant wife. He sounds like a Kleagle for the Klan. But he’s really lashing out at his newly obvious lack of the mastery of his own family.

Karl Lindner is also sets up a justification of his own behavior when tells the Youngers, “…most of the trouble exist because people just don’t sit down and talk to each other. That we don’t try hard enough in this world to understand the other fellow’s problem. The other guy’s point of view” (116). He then makes this justification by pointing out that he’s actually looking for the younger’s best interest in suggesting a segregational alternative for them moving into a white neighborhood: “Negro families are happier when they live in their own communities” (118). Obviously Lindner is a racist, but does he know that? Does Lindner believe he can fool the Youngers? No, he is really fooling himself, “I sure hope you people know what you’re getting into” (149). Racism? Egocentrism? Benevolence? Has Lindner a dream? Certainly, yet his belief conceals the very lack of reason upon which it is grounded, and conceals it from himself.

Hansberry also shows the reader the possibility of conversion after the exchange during which Walter, as his son, Travis watches his father turn down Lindner’s offer. Mama, referring to Walter’s radical change of attitude says, “He finally come into his manhood today, didn’t he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain…” (151). Mama believes that Walter has finally seen the light that she’s been aware of all along. The reader is not told whether it will last, but the possibility is certainly evident.

A Raisin in the Sun is the perfect example of a section of Hansberry’s work referred to by Olga Barrios in The intellectual Spear where she says Hansberry’s “concern with the human being went far beyond any barriers of color, race or culture” (Barrios 28). Hansberry has given us a portrayal of significantly varied beliefs, dreams, and behaviors and the logic used to justify them, to themselves and one another. Ultimately the tale ends up with no winners, no losers, no resolution, nor clear cut image of what the future holds. Yet Hansberry shows very clearly, human nature with its often irrational magnificence, portrayed in a light the typical audience might not have imagined, but Lorraine Hansberry did, and portrays it vividly.

Works cited

Barrios, Olga. The Intellectual Spear: Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs. Salamanca: Atlantis, 1996. Web. 24 Apr. 2112

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Vintage Books. 1994. Print.

Rock ‘n Bluegrass at Sofa’s Corner

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility, Journified

Alrighty then, from the left, Jed, Homer, Bacon, Bart and unknown woman of mystery.

Caught performing at Sofa’s Corner in Garland Utah at a Benefit show for Dallas Nutt, who survived two tours in Iraq as a Marine, is an honor student at USU and works in the VA at USU. Dallas experienced two ruptured brain aneurisms. He came close to leaving this world but is doing much better now although still not out of the woods entirely. Homer arranged this magnificent event at which several bands performed and a marvelous amount of money was raised for a gentleman who deserved it!

Bom Jesus da Mata My Ass

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility

Written in reaction and as commentary towards “Death Without Weeping / Has poverty ravaged mother love in the shantytowns of Brazil?” by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, for a cultural anthropology class I’m taking…

I have a difficult time with this.  We live in a world where this type of thing need not be.  The wealth of the world is astounding and people still suffer indescribably from what we call poverty.  Coming, as I do, from a background of Christian “virtue”, it’s been stunning to realize that so much horror occurs in the name of “Jesus”. In this situation we hear of a midwife speaking, “just to dust the infant with baby powder and wait for it to die”, this sort of thinking justified as “cooperating with God’s plan.” It’s certainly hard to comprehend how anyone could see such a thing as being part of the “plan” of an all powerful deity. My own ethnocentrism temps me to explain it as the ignorance of a substandard civilization, but I see the same logic used right here in our own glorious, civilized, academic territory of wisdom where many see everything as directed by some unseen, inexplicable deity and all the misfortunes as being part of “his will” and the fault of our “unworthiness” of some sort. We see beliefs and behavior in another culture which are very similar to our own, and see it as horror, which many of us also see as “his will”.  The solution to such problems as this is indescribably simple, unfortunately the first requirement is logical concern against which, Gods, politics, power and money are vigilantly on guard. Bom Jesus de mata doesn’t mean “beneath the quiet” in my book..  But then, I’m just cooperating with God’s plan… ‘er somethin’.

Atheismus?

Posted on by Dr. Bacon, PhD in Freedom & Responsibility

Christmas is once again upon us replete with added modern splendors. For generations the celebration of the birth of Christ has been accepted by even the non-believers as a valid celebration, if not of an actual deity, or the flesh and blood representation of a deity, at least of the legend of good and kindness the name Jesus represents. Reasoned people celebrating of the birth of a figure who represents this ideology, be it real or symbolic, can be nothing but valid.

Right?

…Apparently not. The attacks are on, with antiChristians leading the assault AND accusing Christians of being the ones leading the assault. “Christians have been pursuing their so-called Christmas Wars with great vigor” ~About.com. Interesting statement considering that a war first requires opposition, thus it might seem reasonable that it is a war of self defense.

I’ve never heard so much from the Anti-Christmas crowd as I have this year. Pointing out the Pagan aspects of the Christmas celebration has become de rigueur. However there are valid reasons for this which have nothing to do with the validity of the celebration. The nature and history of humanity remove this argument from valid consideration since everything we do includes borrowing and taking advantage of present opportunities. Here’s a big Pagan celebration, lets take it over! The root of the copyright problem sits in the same soil.

Interestingly, one of the principal oppositional points refers to the secular commercialism of the celebration, as if this is somehow the responsibility of Christ/Christians/Pagans, or what have you. It is actually the fault of human nature and points towards the validity of celebrating the ideological aspects of the day rather than the commercial. Would this be religious rather than secular? I don’t know, and I don’t care.

As far as I’m concerned when it comes to Christ, I’m with Benjamin Franklin, “I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see…”  Franklin followed this by expressing doubts about the actual divinity of Jesus. Whatever Jesus actually was, divinity or not, he was and still is the the most significant historical figurehead of the concepts of morality, honesty, consideration and kindness. The story of “The Passion” is one of the most moving tales of willing self sacrifice in the name of goodness that can be imagined. Even if it truly was imagined its effect is potent and meaningful.

I am relatively certain that the nativity story we celebrate is a fiction. Certainly Christ was born, but the events are almost certainly described in a celebratory fashion designed to emphasize the importance of the event, and the descriptions vary significantly in the different tellings. Nevertheless, the first person in my liquor store, who scoffs about the nativity scene, shall be enthusiastically frowned upon by the Bacon.

Christmas represents peace and happiness, the celebration of it represents freedom/responsibility. Rejoice! Even idiots!