Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Friday, July 20, 2007
Bruce Lee died 34 years ago today
Many times while young, I would have liked to have been able to defend myself. There were bullies on my block and these same bullies seem to show up everywhere. I lived with my father who also was a bully. I don’t mind saying so...bullies are a pain in my ass. I never liked fighting...I didn’t want to get hurt and I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Many people I hung out with wanted to fight all the time...the dichotomy of being peaceful, yet hanging with violent people...half is okay, half isn’t, I didn’t reject as quickly as I should have, no companions, no gurus to go to for help to transcend loneliness. I wonder if Bruce Lee ever felt frightening alone? Solitude, alone, loneliness. I truly miss relatedness.
Posted by joe of maine on from 07/20 at 10:23 AMWow! Bruce Lee and the request for a “little idea” sure captures my imagination Mickey.
If only I had a laid-back afternoon to pursue this thread and go into lots of ideas-- deeper more philosophical ones to be sure-- but since I have just a few minutes-- here’s this: an idea that can be summed up in one word:
“Squeak.”
I’m no computer geek by a long-shot-- but I just want to pass on a recommendation that some other wired but expendable iconoclasts reading here try it out. I think they will have a lot of fun and discover an iteration of Squeak that may suit them.
Squeak is the modern incarnation of an elegant but sophisticated older computer language called Smalltalk 80. It is an object-oriented language that is highly intuitive and helps one conceptualize complex actions fast and very simply. It is also good-looking and imagination-prodding in practice. Like playing a guitar-- you can have great fun twanging it on one string-- or you can create complex and subtle worlds like an Andres Segovia. It is suitable for children and adults.
Squeak is a wholly free, open-source virtual machine that works and communicates on all operating system platforms. It has some very exciting evolutions Alice, Croquet, and Sophie (very cool for you wordsmiths and multimedia creators).
My advice: download what captures your imagination and play around with it and see how it may suit you.
The main website for Squeak is at: http://www.squeak.org/
The Weekly Squeak blog: http://news.squeak.org/
Alan Kay (one of Squeak’s creators) expounding:
On Education: “We see things not as they are, but as we are.”
http://tinyurl.com/2gmytkWhat is Squeak?
http://tinyurl.com/yr9gx5Posted by Robert B. Livingston on from San Francisco, California 07/20 at 01:03 PMHi Mickey - Robert, I will have to check out the Squeak.
joe #1...I think everyone who thinks has felt “aloneness"- Especially anyone who thinks out of the main culture. Aloneness is the price paid for having a mind that is capable of challenging the norm. I feel the most “aloneness” when I am with normal people. I love misfits and underdogs.Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/20 at 01:29 PMWow.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73302
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/20 at 02:05 PMJOS...thanks for that link. They will hate us for many generations to come. It really explains what life is like under a usa occupation. Every time that I hear a politician say that the Iraqi people have to “step up and start defending themselves”, I get very angry. When you were a kid in grade school, standing up and saying the Pledge to the Flag, did you ever imagine that this country would descend into this hell.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/20 at 03:01 PMRMJ, at PS 84 in NYC we didn’t have to say the pledge or sing the anthem...must have saved me from extra decades of brainwashed existence.
Nothing angers me more that the “step up and start defending themselves” bullshit...why don;t you write an article about how idiotic that is?
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/20 at 03:17 PMThanks for the suggestion, JOS. I should do that. After I posted my comment, I realized that many here did not have to say the Pledge. When I was in high school, we not only had to say the Pledge, but also had a reading from the bible, and that was a public school. Just shows you how old I am. Reading the bible was a requirement even when I was teaching in a New Jersey public school. Sometimes I feel older than chalk.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/20 at 03:38 PMThe question of the day is, “Is war EVER moral?” If you would like to drop off a comment, here’s the link.
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/15521/26/
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/20 at 03:43 PMWell...what can be said about...allegiance? To what? Why? No one provided me with answers to those questions. School Policy...so what! School is irrelevant also...only taught us what is needed to be stupid and obedient...standardized education, thought and behavior also created much confusion. Seems like bedwetting should continue until late 50’s. Spending time with special studies to undue what ‘education’ has done. Spending too much time thinking about and being enmeshed with dysfunction instead of transformation. The upside of growing up in a crazy family is it sets the conditions to revolt against damn near everything...thanks mom and dad.
Thank you also for not forcing me to go to...hell, that is called church, that refers to enforcing the state and the military...let god’s children destroy the planet...confess if your for life...first drop an envelope in the basket, the priest needs a new car for cruising, looking for dates. Thank you for not teaching anything fore I sought real information. Thank you for lying fore I learned to appreciate truths at many levels. This society didn’t go to hell...hell is where it has always been! Translate...the truth in the false and the false that is stated as truth…
Posted by joe of maine on from 07/20 at 03:50 PMjoe #9...I share your sentiments about the educational system but I think that you are sometimes too hard on yourself. You ARE enlightened. How did that happen? Think about all of the people, the vast majority in the usa, who go to their graves and never had an inkling of the truth. You understand how things work. That is why you are so frustrated - just like most of us here at Mickey’s.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/20 at 04:02 PMRMJ 10...Do you mean I can continue bedwetting? It saves getting up in the middle of the night. I’m not enlightened...I only know a very few things that are not taught at our detention camps. I don’t know how to play a harp or a viola..inexcusable...(<:..Recommend Harold Budd’s poem...By the Dawn’s Early Light...great Viola by Mary Wong...her playing would stop a war! We should arm soldiers with Violas instead of armored vests. Who would shoot at someone playing a Viola...well..yes...DICK cheyney would probably shoot at someone playing Viola...shoot first, think, look later....Poem has nothing to do with star spangled insanity and rape.
Posted by joe of maine on from 07/20 at 04:14 PMjoe...I bet that you know how to ride a bike. That puts you one up on me. The only “sport” I can do is swim. I taught myself. The only thing I ever learned in school that I am not trying to eliminate from my brain is how to diagram sentences.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/20 at 04:40 PMRMJ 12...well...I didn’t learn the art of graffitti until my early 30’s...blown away by what I missed out on. I swim like a brick. Bicycles to me are Art forms...then I ride them, however, recently, riding bicycles are making my cervical vertebrae bounce up and down, creating great pain.
What is sentence Diagraming? I’m really not beating myself up...I’m simply being...silly…
Posted by joe of maine on from 07/20 at 04:45 PMa little idea that came to me during morphine dreaming last night while wandering the halls of the hospital post surgery is how I have always tended to see myself as being limited by circumstances outside myself...when mostly its my inner limitations that have been hanging me up.
I really wanted to ask my doctor why canadian cancer doctors are not talking/educating us about depleted uranium and lobbying the government for an end to the use of DU in wweapons. ITs beyond criminal. Its a tragedy beyond my ability to put into words. I keep thinking about the parallels between the plastic in the oceans and how it travels around...to DU in 50 years of just being spread around.
the surgery went really well. I have never felt so well cared for and lovingly supported in a hospital before. It blew my mind actually.
another direction that came out of these last couple of days is how expectations and assumptions can make something simple seem so much more difficult. How I can turn a few minutes of discomfort into hours of agonizing anticipation.
peacefull thoughts for everyone here. frances
Posted by frances on from bc 07/20 at 06:17 PMHello Frances...it’s good to hear from you and I hope you continue to feel very well...I relate to the inner limitations...some times I lose track of them...become unconscious, unaware of my own existence. You are strong and wise.
I have prematurely become worried about possible surgery...and I always felt invulnerable to injury and I would never allow surgery...even structural repairs…
Posted by joe of maine on from 07/20 at 06:31 PMfrances...hugs and love are going your way, along with a lot of admiration for your indomitable spirit. I am glad that you did not have your surgery in the usa. Here, it is rumored, that it is done as drive-by-surgery.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/20 at 06:37 PMYou have to read this one.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/20 at 07:00 PMHello everyone, guys and girls. Hi to you too Alison. I can’t make a post everyday as I work most days and all. Talking of self defense it’d be good to see those Counterpunch guys answer Mickey and Alison’s thoughts. They don’t seem short of arguing techniques on most occasions. Or don’t they read Mickey’s website? I talked to my friend about my post and she said she’d never approach them about the pay issue. Looks like people drop away as you are doing Mickey. I write short stories, some with a political edge. From what I am hearing about publishing, it doesn’t look like a smart idea to try and build up a career. Stay safe, Bob.
Posted by Bob on from New York 07/20 at 07:44 PMRMJ #17 Somewhere I read that war crimes tribunals were for the losers of the war… Maybe this explains all the shenanigans with defining terms such as ‘victory’ and ‘loss’ in Iraq. If there is no clear victory nor a clear loss of the war there will be no accountability for the crimes being committed.
I have not been reading or watching the news very closely for the last few months, but when I do dip into it, especially the news coming out of the whitehouse, it all seems very surreal. And I dont know whats happening to bush...but he seems to be morphing into a caricature of himself. He doesnt even care if what he says makes sense…thank you for the kind words RMJ and Joe.
Posted by frances on from bc 07/20 at 08:56 PMa Bush quote to make yur toes curl or head explode:
The enemy, by the way, defines success as, can they pull off a car bombing. If we ever allow ourselves to get in a position where it’s “no car bombings, therefore we’re successful,” we’ve just handed these killers a great victory.
by way of youwillanyway.blogspot.com
Posted by frances on from bc 07/20 at 09:33 PMHello Expendables. I was out all day so I’m just now catching up. Thanks for all the great comments.
Frances: I was just thinking of you and was planning to check in. It’s so good to “hear” your voice.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/20 at 09:42 PMNo idea(s) from me, but only a brief ‘hello’ from a very cold but dry Daylesford. I have been offline for the last 12 days, since our computer gave up its ghost on 9 July and only yesterday did we get a new computer and could connect to the Internet again. Now it’s a matter of playing catch-up.
Here come wishes for a good weekend for you, Joe of Maine, Robert B. Livingston, Rosemarie, JOS, frances, Bob from NY and, last but not least, Mickey. Take care, all of you!
Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 07/21 at 12:56 AM“a little idea that came to me during morphine dreaming last night...”
all my dreams seemed filled with morphine inspired lunacy. but that’s just me...not sure what to add to today’s important comments...other than I spent the night at Blue Chicago (a blues bar downtown) with Charlie Love and Patricia Scott and I learned a thing or two about living and a lot about groovin. These are the things I find that make life worth living...and they are hard to find.
Posted by JOS on from Oak Park 07/21 at 01:25 AMYou may have read this before, but just in case...http://tinyurl.com/5azn5d
--
Great thoughts and writing, as usual.
Posted by ultrafknbd on from the 'Cho, Cali 07/21 at 07:28 PM
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