Ti-Ming - The Theory of Everything (Reprint)

Perhaps as old as the universe itself, Ti-Ming accounts for a goodly portion of everything that exists. The discipline of Ti-Ming has been preached by many and practiced by few for thousands of years, in palace gardens and village hovels. Ti-ming is so important to life as we know it, that it has been given it's own dimension, right along with height width, and depth. And that is where the pity begins.

Timing is everything. It is an axiom of all life on earth, and expressed in various forms in every language. Every battle that has ever been won, or heart lost, has been at the whim of Timing, and acknowledged as the great decider yes or no, success or failure, even here or there. To say that it is a dimensions such as the width of an object is both misleading and belittling to something as valuable as timing, without which neither space nor substance could exist at all.

I have seen personal fates mortally altered by the dropping of a coin, and studied histories that came crashing down as the result of the act of an instant. Every instance is printed on the film of time, not a moment in the past but a version of right now that has already happened. It contains the depth and length of every moment, defining it as the container in which the other perceptions are locked, not a partner in their presence.

Without the timing of the seasons, or even the spin of the planet around the sun, it couldn't have happened at all. This is not obscure philosophy, but a statement of fact so basic that most would never notice it at all. And yet our very existence depends on not just one such instant of time, but an entire sequence of them stretching back to the moment of the Big Bang itself. Each one a direct and necessary result of the ones that came before it.

Without the element of time, there is no touch, no taste, no sense of cold or sound of the wind. Sound itself is a feature of something traveling directly across the field of time. The idea that even space could share equally in something as powerful as time is a mistaken impression of the very nature of time itself.

Light itself is helpless in the absence of time. there can be no movement, leaving light as frozen in an instant as if it didn't exist at all. Time defines the movement of the smallest particles, and the largest masses, it played a apart in the very act of creation in every way we have ever imagined. Without time, there can no creation, regardless of the form that creation may take. Nothing of which we have any concept at all exists outside of the container that is time. Nothing.

Length can be zero, as well as depth and width. Dimensions can be eliminated from the equation, narrowing down each variable until you reach a point in time where nothing exists. But that was a point in time, because even time could not be removed until there was nothing else left, and only then because time would become meaningless, not because it would cease to exist.

Time controls gravity, and regulates magnetism. It causes elements to decay, and unleashes both the fury of storms and the majesty of snow capped mountains.

Never forget that. Ti-Ming is everything. In Ti-Ming, all other things exist, but none can exist without it. The smallest instant is but a representation of the much larger fabric of time, which stretches to the very ends of space itself.

US Stock Market Stumble - Reprint

ColGlobe Productions › Edit — WordPress

Didn't your MOTHER ever teach you not to be greedy? Don't you wish you had listened?

It's okay, unless you were totally absorbed in imaginary wealth, you'll make it through. The rest of you are screwed. Not my fault, you did it to yourself.

The US stock market stumble isn't the end of the world.

It's the equalizer to bring the high and mighty back into the realm of reality. As it looks at this writing, not even gold is a sacred investment, but that isn't a surprise to people who have looked with open minds rather than open wallets. THERE IS ONLY SO MUCH WEALTH IN THE WORLD. It has always has been that way, and so it will ever be.

For the other 90% of us, there's some really good news. The inflated prices we've been paying for years to boost the incomes of the greedy few at the top are going to drop. It is not inconceivable that we'll see gasoline below 2 bucks a gallon again, and while it won't show up at the grocery store for a few months yet, we'll be seeing the benefits at department stores this holiday season. Those of us who work hard for our money rather than playing with other people's futures are being put on steadier footings than we've had for many years.
Credit is not real wealth. It never was. It never will be.

Go to http://www.myspace.com/illusnist, and read the blog posted November 14, 2007, titled "notes from my debit card." There is nothing happening today that wasn't already in progress a year ago. NOTHING. It has been in progress for over 200 years, perhaps as much as 2000 years.

An excerpt:

For exhibit number two, we'll introduce the influence of government. Like any other business, government wants your money as well. In exchange for your money, government will tell you what to buy, and when to buy and how to buy and why its important to buy it now. They won't TELL YOU they are telling you this. That would collapse the markets. In capitalism, the government is responsible for maintaining the markets. It must regulate the local currency exchange, and modify something that I will call "base value" as needed to keep the economy active. This second part sounds good until some wise-ass points out that "base value" is any arbitrary value. In other words, it isn't real. It is a value that is generated by a very select group of people (in the U.S., this group is the federal reserve, or simply "The Fed"), which has little or no actual basis in reality, but relies of the whims of current events. This number, while being imaginary, is the "base value" on which everything else is priced. And there you have exhibit two, parts A (government guides consumer buying) and B (government sets arbitrary base value of currency). If desired, we could complicate things by adding part C (government prohibits monopolies under exhibit number one to prevent competition under exhibit number two, parts A and B).

Hallelujah, noel, be it heaven or hell, the Christmas we get, we deserve.

Stock Market Woes

Are you having stock market woes?  For many, but only a small percentage of the population, the current stock market implosion is a terrible thing.  For the vast majority of us, it will make our lives a little better.  Let me explain it to you, slowly, and without using too many large words.

When the stock market is high, people were buying those high priced stocks instead of selling them are being set up for failure.  You see, when the price of a stock falls, the value goes down, and a stockholder takes a loss.  On the other hand, as that stock drops, so does the value of that stock as it filters down to the consumer market, and we see companies having price lowering wars to try and lure us in.  They need your money.

Okay, so now mainstreet, who expensive politicians are claiming to want to help, is finally getting a break in a continuous rise in pricing that has gone on for nearly a decade.  Fuel is costing less, food is costing less, the value of items are going down, and it is being reflected in our bank accounts in a way that bail-out billions and tax-payer rebates could never do.  The little guy is not hurt by falling stocks, but helped by them, because the value of that person's money suddenly goes up.

And if you have a few thousand dollars you'd like to do something with, ignore the Wall Street experts who are telling you to hold on to it.  Now is the time to invest, if ever there was one.  Think about it.  Are you more likely to make a profit on stock purchased at 35 a share, or stock purchased at the low of 17 a share?  Come on, folks, this is not rocket science.  The golden rule of stock trading is BUY LOW - SELL HIGH.  The people who don't want you to buy stocks now are the ones who purchased it at a higher price, and hope to drive the value up again to regain some lost revenue.  BUY LOW.  Don't even think about selling anything.  Whatever you have, keep it.  

That includes for selling a car or home.  You can't sell it for the same value it had, so don't try.  HOWEVER, if we BUY LOW, now is excellent for purchasing a home.  Builders are unloading property at record prices right now, to get out from under them.  If you purchase a home now, you are almost certainly guaranteed to make a profit on owning the home in just a few years.  BUY LOW.

Once you've bought a home, a car, and invested in AIG at bargain basement prices, sit on the investments.  The car is going to depreciate anyway, so you can cruise around town while you watch the stock market make a slow turn upward that multiplies the value of your investments.  Stock Market Woes?  Only for those who forgot to BUY LOW, and were stuck with worthless stock.

Go Green to Save Green

I've said it before, and I'll likely say it again many times. We have all got to start paying more attention to what we use and how we use it. The word is CONSERVE. The clue is to REUSE. The choice is not going to be available much longer.

But you can also save a little green by going green. As an example, let's say that you like tomatoes. Did you know that growing two tomato plants can feed the veggie-like fruit to your family for several months, and cost about the same as buying a single large tomato? Or that a fishing license and basic fishing gear have about the same pricetag as buying fresh fish at the market? Did you know that by spreading your lawn cuttings out thinly and evenly on your lawn can reduce the amount of nutrients you must supply to it, AND they'll help hold in moisture so that you can water less?

There are a number of fruits and vegetables that can be grown in pots or flower beds. Tomatoes are excellent potted plants, if carefully pruned, but can also be grown as a climbing vine. In fact, tomato, cucumber, yellow squash, and canteloupe can all be grown on a trellis. Other types of gourds, such as acorn squash, can be grown in a flower bed. A single plum tree will provide more plums than a family can eat in a blooming season. And the price for veggetable and fruit seeds is very low. You can feast for a summer for the cost of buying the ingredients of one deluxe table salad. Onions, peppers, and many types of spices can be grown in pots or planters. And your fence becomes a truly effective hedge when you plant blackberry or other thorny fruit bushes along it. The thorns dissuade trespassing through the thicket, and they'll provide an abundant source of vitamin C for about a month out of the year- longer, if you care to make jams and jellies, pickles and salsas.

Veggies are great, but you'd rather have meat in your diet? If you live within city limits, this can be a problem, but the odds are very good that you can find a private meat packing house within an hour's drive. You'll find that these places offer better deals than you can get in your local chain grocer, and it may sound strange, but the meant will TASTE better. Commercially raised livestock is treated and fed differently than the way the same animals would be treated on a farm, and the result is a leaner, more flavorful cut of meat. If you happen to live on the outskirts of town, you may be allowed by local law to grow some of your own meat, in the form of chickens, rabbits, or even a goat. A goat makes especially good sense, as it can also be used for most household vegetable waste disposal, and to cut and fertilize your lawn. Of course, if you raise any of these meat animals, you'll probably still have to find that area packing house, but you'll still find that you save hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year over conventinal grocery shopping. You'll only think you can't eat an animal you raised yourself until the first couple of bites. Humans have been raising and eating animals for thousands of years and, after all, it's the idea of NOT raising your own food that is recently developed.

Go fishing. You don't need thousands of dollars of expensive gear, either. The fish are not impressed any more by being caught on a brand new $300 rig, than with a 5 year old Zebco 33. Are you fishing to play the "look at me" game, or are you trying to save money by putting food on the table and in the freezer? If you're going to use the millenia-old bait, you can keep a worm bed at home, they're very easy to maintain, and the one-time purchase of a tub of live worms can last you for months, or years. If you really want to go the recycle route, walk along the banks of where you fish, and gather hooks and floats and sinkers for later use.

So let's look at this. We've grown the veggies, and fed the greens and leavings to our rabbits, and used the refuse from the rabbits mixed with plain black dirt to grow our fish bait, which in turn gives us excellent fertilizer for our planting beds. True, each step has an inherent cost, but the overall total is the savings of hundreds or even thousands of dollars over buying the exact same foods in the market. And now, instead of being a dead-end point at the top of a food pyramid, we've become the coordinating center of a cycle that goes around for as long as we wish to keep it going. And the food will all be more flavorful, with a better texture and density.

And what have you saved? Well, there's the cost of the foods themselves, but only by a small margin. If you have a particularly green thumb or lucky hook, you may be able to sell or trade with friends or relatives for something they have an excess of. Bartering allows the distribution of items that would otherwise literally become waste. If you have a really green thumb, you can find a farmer's market in your area to rent a stall, or sell to an existing distributor. But you've also saved fuel, electricity, water, and chemical use, multiplied over EVERY item you have produced yourself. If you are lucky enough to live in a location where a yard goat is an option, you have even provided better lawn care without adding chemicals or using any type of conventional power. And you get to eat the lawnmower!! A small goat will cost LESS than a riding mower, and where the machine continually depreciates, the value of a goat increases as it grows and fattens.

Which part of the equation are we all having a problem with? The part where we come out ahead, or the part where we do less harm to the planet?

--Illusnist
ColGlobe Productions

American Economic Crisis

You know what surprises me the most about the current U.S. economic crisis? It's not the sheer size of the bailout that is required. It's not that without the bailout, the economy can only slip lower. No, those things could be predicted, and anyone of the 3 or 4 people out there who have been reading my useless posts for the past 20 years knows that I've been expecting it. The thing that is a surprise is that no one else realized this was inevitable from the very beginning. And we haven't yet gotten to the exciting part of the ride. Wait until the whole planet finds out that there just isn't enough money to pay the debt, or enough resources to build the products, or enough fuel to power the machines. Cycles do not go forever in one direction, they go high only to fall low and roll around again and again, losing a little more momentum with ever smaller rotations. Until they reach a dead stop.

In the U.S., multi level marketing is illegal. Why is a valid and profitable marketing plan disallowed by law? It was that consideration that first drove home, in my mind, the flaw of the U.S. economic system. You see, MLM cannot be allowed to exist, because it is a model of the U.S. economy in miniature. A company produces a product, and that product is passed through the hands of the company managers to the next lower level of product distributors. The distributors in turn arrange for another level of product distribution below them, and another level below that. And another. And another. The only problem is that the only people who are actually buying the product are the ones at the very bottom of the pyramid, the ones who made the product to begin with, for the people sitting comfortably at the top. Those people live to make a product to earn the money that buys the product that they created. Is there logic in doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting the result to be any different?

Why has no one ever realized the that capitalism never had a hope of working smoothly forever? It cannot be sustained indefinitely by pouring more and more resources into the top tiers of the system. In the end, the people at the bottom simply can't continue to feed the top, produce the product, AND buy the product. This is not a difficult train of logic to follow. It's taught in middle school in the U.S. And yet I have never heard anyone point out the futility that is inherent in the system. Ever.

So here we are, and the people at the top, who own the mortgages on our nation's homes and collect on the balances on our people's credit cards, they are standing in front of us in their $1000 suits and telling us that as American citizens it is our duty to give them enough money to sustain themselves. Giving them the money will not eliminate our mortgages, or ameliorate our debts. We still have to pay the monthly bills, or they'll take everything we have, but we must give them an amount of money that exceeds that very debt as well. Excuse me? Those men in their fancy suits make more money in a single day than I earn in most of a year, and yet it is MY responsibility to bail them out? I think they are going to have to draw me a picture, because I surely don't understand the logic.

Right on, and pigs will fly.

I am a poor person. I rent a room. I pay for my rent, my food, and everything else I must buy with cash. I've always done so. I have done so with a dogged deliberateness that flew in the face of insurance companies who wouldn't insure me because I had no credit. I did it despite automobile dealerships who refused to sell me a car for CASH because I had no established credit. I did it because when the collapse comes, as I've always known it must, I will not be as badly affected by the calamity. I'll still be poor, but guess what? Having lived my life that way, I'll be better able to survive the crash than those whose lives have been dedicated to mounting sums of nonexistent money. I am poor by choice, not by force.

I resent that someone who makes more in a year than I will earn my lifetime needs me to bail them out. I find it laughable and ludicrous that the financial moguls are scrambling for some safe haven in which to continue their inflated egos. I say let them fall. Let them learn to wonder how to pay for next week's groceries, or have to repair a rip in last year's fashions. Let them sell their luxury cars which guzzle the last dregs of fossil fuels and walk to their jobs, or ride the public transportation they've always told me was good enough for such as myself. Let them discover that equality isn't just for the lower class, but it means we are all in the same boat, and that boat has a leak and must be constantly tended to avoid being left adrift without a life raft. Let them wash their dinner dishes with their own hands, and hang their laundry on lines to dry in the sun. After all, it's good enough for me, and they've told me so all my life.

Let the auto insurance companies go, they who have charged me more than the value of all the vehicles I have ever owned regardless that I have rarely sped and never caused an accident; let them fold up and fade away. I've supported them long enough, only to find out that even with the legally required support of an entire population they they have managed to put themselves into a stranglehold of debt. I've paid my share. I've missed my meals so that they could wear their suits, and worked straight through the day and night to give them money I have never seen a return on. I've lived on dried beans and dry rice, stale bread and tap water. Let them find out what it is like to do without, to wear a sweater indoors in the dead of winter, and to rummage through the sofa cushions for a lousy handful of pennies and nickels. Why should I care that they become just like me and my neighbors and their relatives and their friends and a majority of the people that make up and have made this brave nation? What have they ever, even once, done for me in exchange for all they've taken from me?

I haven't eaten at a restaurant in months, not even from the McDonald's dollar menu; I live on simple foods bought at bargain grocers. But I am far from starving, and I am not naked, and I do not get wet when it rains in the night. I do not ask for a hand out on street corners, nor blame my contemporaries for my failures or fallacies. And I am not alone. I am one of hundreds of millions of people scattered all around the globe. In fact, I am in better financial shape than a majority of the world. I am of sound mind and body, and I laugh at jokes and cry out in pain. I do not fear muggers coming out of the fog, because they can see that I've nothing to give them. I do not fear creditors taking my old computer, because it is mine, bought with money earned through hard work and hot sweat. For all the bits of nothing much that I have, my investment is paid and the deal is done. And it has been a fair and honest deal, which allows me peaceful sleep.

I don't envy those businessmen in fancy suits the fall that they must face. It will be hard for them to adjust, and the harsh reality is that many won't adapt at all. But life has always been hard and the idea that it wasn't difficult is not something that the poor people of this country or any other have ever had. They and I cannot afford such convenient lies filled with glitzsy gloss and glamour. For that reason, I cannot summon a false sympathy, or offer any compelling compassion. Let them reap the fruit of what they have sown, and deal with the harvest which they have for so long nurtured, feeding it on the refuse of so many other broken dreams. It isn't my problem, and will have little effect on my way of life. I learned in middle school that capitalism depends on taking from the poor, and lived my life to avoid a collapse that has been building since this country was founded, knowing all the while that it may never come in my lifetime, but prepared for the possibility that it could happen at any time.

When all the money has been channeled to the top of the pyramid, it collapses. MLM plans are illegal for that reason, and to prevent the blatant truth of capitalism from being recognized by the sheeplike masses. I have no sympathy for those who lose the money they've taken in bad deals and fruitless plans. Nor should you. To bail them out will not solve the problem, only postpone it. The only solution is to let the collapse happen, and step aside when the dust billows up from the wreckage of their wasteful expenditures. Whether it happens this year, or next, or twenty years from now, there is no other possible outcome, and we can only begin to rebuild when the rubble lies in a heap that we can pull apart and start with once again.

Illusnist

WTF is a Genius, Anyway?

I have been accused of being a genius.  In my mind, such a word is relatively meaningless, since we all have pretty much the same equipment to work with, and it is only in our application that we excel in this way or that. Some of the people who are true genius types are also completely incapable of communication, while some people who are regarded as fools really couldn't give a rat's arse what the world thinks anyway. And vice versa.

AM I a genius? Beats the heck out of me. If you put a multiple choice test in front of me, I will do well on it, whether I have studied the information before or not. But that isn't genius, that is simply the ability to read through a list of possibilities and deduce, reduce, or induce which of the answers is more likely to be correct. IQ tests invariably say that I have an IQ somewhere between 130 and 150. But I will be the first to say that such tests are meaningless, as I have just explained.

Some of the same people who will applaud my intellect will also say that a person who drops out of high school is a complete fool.  I am effectively a high school drop out. In my Junior year, which would have been my senior year if I had stayed out of trouble, I took the GED, got a diploma, and then signed myself out of school. Did I quit? Technically, once I had a diploma, I had no choice except to withdraw from classes, which means I didn't quit, even though I left school before graduation. So, does that mean I am a fool? Perhaps. It is a fine line line between insanity and genius, and we all walk the line our whole lives, occasionally stepping off that line onto one extreme or the other.

All I know for certain is that I have an excellent use of the English language. I am, for lack of a better description, a weaver of words; a person who takes abstract concepts and turns them into something that other people can understand. To me, it is nothing more than a form of art, similar to what a sculptor or painter is able to do. My palette is composed of the letters of the alphabet, and my easel is a blank page, or an equally empty screen. 

I don't expect to solve the world's problems, even though many of them are simple exercises in logic and could be easily reduced to simple answers. The problem is, the world doesn't really want its problems solved, and I don't care enough for humanity to put much effort into trying. I will post a message now and then, warnings to all who would listen, and have this far never been surprised that very few are willing to listen at all. Makes no difference, to me.  We are born and live and grow and die, and that is just the way it all works. I can't stop that process, nor do I have any desire to slow it down. I've already lived 9 years longer than I ever wanted to, and this body becomes harder to maintain as time goes on. Ashes to ashes is not a biblical prophecy, it is a simple statement of fact. That somebody chose to attach God's name to it weas most likely a mere attempt to claim for spirituality what was beyond the grasp of people.

God doesn't impress me. I can't imagine worshipping any being, no matter how omnipotent it may be, that would have so little regard for its own offspring as to allow it to die without lifting a finger. Any God that could be so callous is not a creature you really want to be in the company of for an eternity, folks. It is worse than evil.

Likewise, I have very little patience for science. Science is incomplete, and will always be so, for as long as people insist on treating the different sciences as separate forms. Biology and ecology are the same thing. Algebra and and art are sisters in the act of expression. You will never understand the secrets of the universe as long as you strive to put things into pockets of definition. The universe is a single thing, not a myriad myriads of different ones.  All I know for certain is that there are no singularities. Everything that exists does so in complete tandem with every other thing in all of creation. The breath I draw now has been aimed at my lungs since before my family tree was a bud on the tree of life. The women I have lain with have been only another part of me, and I a part of them. we are not solitary creatures, we are creatures who have not learned to exist as a single entity. People I have never met, and to whom I will never speak, have shaped my life with no realization of doing so, and I have likewise shaped the lives of people who have no idea that I have even existed. 

To some, this may seem a pointless rambling, and to those I can only say that I rest my case. Others will feel a tingling echo in their minds, and will sense that there is meaning hidden somewhere here. Both cases are extremes of delusion. There is nothing hidden here at all, and no unconnected patterns. I have stated in this message everything mankind needs to know to form a better future, including stating the fact that no one will pay attention. After all, one person can't do it. We are an entity, not individuals, and as long as we insist on behaving alone, we will prevent ourselves from achieving the greater truth.

Think about it. In large groups.