Ringing endorsement

This is the first time the qubikuity blog has endorsed a presidential candidate. One reason is that qubikuity has only been in existence since May of 2004. Another, however, is that recently the realm of politics has imposed itself upon the mind of this writer for the first time in appreciable degree since the 1960s. That was a long time ago, and yet somehow the nation still seems to be fighting the Vietnam War. We thought it ended; but no! It's still going on in the minds of many people in this country. We are still debating whether it was right or not that a candidate opposed the war forty years ago, as if to do so were traitorous and disloyal. Vietnam is truly the Energizer Bunny war. Somehow it was forgotten along the way that it was a really stupid war, and an immoral one to boot. Now, at a safe remove from its horrors, we can reclaim it and add it to the honor roll of Great American Wars. I have a problem with that. My ringing endorsement is for the candidate who wants to get us out of Vietnam. I think you know who I'm talking about, okay? Enough said. Now let's roll. And will somebody please toss that chimp in the pilot's seat out of the plane? "This is the Voice of Reason and I approve this message."

That which is not

That which is, is. It's pretty hard to argue with that. Does that mean conversely, that that which is not, is not? Actually, not. My contention is that that which is not, is. In order not to exist, something must have existence. Otherwise you could not even make the statement that it is not; note that you have to use that two-letter word in order to do so. Once something is, it can blink out into a state of non-existence, but then its non-existent status is maintained in Being. Its isness, in other words, has no time property. That which was, is, and that which will be, is. As well as that which is, of course. By the way, the word maya means "that which is not." And there's plenty of that around, as we know.

The most important holiday

When the end of October rolls around, those witches and monsters within all of us are really ready to rock. And no wonder; they have been held in check the rest of the year by our overly vigilant sense of propriety. And what they require of us at this time is participation in their mystique, through which we will explore in the dark corners of our imagination that we normally shun, and feel the exhiliaration of freeing ourselves to run amuck in the libidinous, anarchic release that comes with wearing those masks. Halloween is the most important holiday, more so than even Christmas. Or at least the rebirth of Christmastide would be unthinkable without the journey into the underworld that we take at Halloween. It is more ancient, more primal, more real. So celebrate it: let it work its spell on you. Find out what it wants from you and give it up. Get down with your bad self. It's good for you.

Letter from God #5

Dear Friends: This will be my last letter to you. As you will have noted, I have for some time been something of a reluctant deity. However, despite the rather excessively diagnostic interpretations of my behavior by my psychiatrist, I think I have rational reasons for choosing to step down from my lofty perch as Ruler of the Universe so that I may journey alone to regions unknown, come what may. In my stead, I have appointed someone you all know and whom some of you love. It may come as no surprise that my successor will be Mick Jagger. Believe me, this isn't going to be much of a step up for him, more of a lateral move, from being one kind of god to another. And he'll probably get less action, sad to say, because he'll be busier than ever. But I really couldn't think of anyone more experienced and well-qualified. He's used to being worshipped, and that's a big part of the job. So I will bid you adieu—it's been great, it really has, and I entrust you to the competent administration of Sir Mick, or as he will soon be known, the Almighty Lips. A good chap, he is. Good-bye then. I shall always remember you fondly, all of you.

Absolve our problems

If the world is as we are, we are a real mess. We all need extreme psychotherapy and some kind of radical reconditioning. How did things reach this pass? Were our families of origin really that bad? Did we undergo a plethora of numbing traumas throughout our childhood that caused such major psychosis? How do they even let us walk around freely? We are all mad, you know: irretrievably insane. There's no other explanation. We can see the reflection of our inner split when we look out at this broken mirror of a world, and as the ignorant armies clash by night, we have no island to retreat to, for we are part and parcel of, and indeed the cause of that conflict. That is, if the world is the externalization of ourselves, because the world is as we are. What's the alternative? That objective reality has no connection to us? There's no object without a subject, so that won't fly. There are no two ways about it: the world is coming apart at the seams, and so are we. Look out, shrinks! Get your couches ready. Here we come, billions strong, to make our confessions. Please absolve our problems because we sure can't solve them.

You've got some explaining to do

"Who's there?—Nay answer me: Stand & vnfold your selfe." (Hamlet)

Yes, the time has come to explain yourself. Why are you here? Specifically, why are you here in my universe? By the act of reading this, you have incursed yourself into that quantum of the cosmos under my purview. Therefore, like some medieval gatekeeper before a bridge, I ask you, who goes there? You may be surprised that I challenge you so. You may see no need of it, as you have been innocently wandering through the Web and happened upon my page. Who am I to address you so? Well, if you want to cross into my world, you have to answer. That is the price of admission. Don't blunder into these parts without knowing what you are about. Stand and deliver!

The hidden secret of pronouns

In this discussion I am not going to break down the pronouns into their common categories such as first person plural, second person singular, and so on; that is merely their outward form. Underlying this display of external difference and the multiplicity of sounds which speakers of pronouns may utter, the fact is that all pronouns refer to just a single entity. That being is what is known as the Gathnoq. Instead of standing for different people or things of different genders or non-genders, as is the common misconception, all pronouns in reality stand for the same person or thing. That's right: whenever you use a pronoun, instead of standing for that which you think it stands, it really stands for the Gathnoq. Nobody knows or cares what the Gathnoq is, and that is why we always refer to it through pronouns. But what a mutable entity it is, being able to morph into a human of either sex, or a crowd of people, or a bunch of cars or trees, and when capitalized, even God. You see, if we care enough to actually name something, we use nouns. But that takes energy. Nouns often have more than one syllable. Pronouns have only one syllable and it saves an enormous amount of money each day in conserved energy to allow the Gathnoq to bear the brunt of our nominative references. Without the Gathnoq, our economy would be in dire straits. You could say that the Gathnoq is the secret engine of this great nation of ours. In its silent labors, it substitutes for each and every one of us countless times a day and lifts the onerous burden from our shoulders of continually being named. What is the Gathnoq? The Great Answer That Has NO Question!

Future food

Tomorrow never comes. It forever lies tantalizingly out of reach. Our presence in the time field seems to convert everything into today. That is the quantum effect of the observer. When the time is quantized, its wave function "collapses" and the infinite range of possibilities conveyed in the word "tomorrow" is reduced to whatever can fit into our at times miniscule module of perception at the moment. But insofar as we can speak of discrete units like days, if we were somehow able to magically leap into tomorrow, we would be in a place that had no connection whatsoever to today. It would look like absolutely nothing that we have any current awareness of. That prima materia from the future gets chewed up and digested by us in our trajectory through time, fueling our eternal present. It is like food for us. Or—are we food for it?

There is no ice cream

It has been said there is no such thing as my enlightenment or your enlightenment—there's just enlightenment. This is like saying there's no such thing as my ice cream or your ice cream, there is only ice cream, and the individual flavor of ice cream or flavor of individual associated with the ice cream is irrelevant. But I say there is no ice cream apart from my ice cream. Or yours. Ice cream does not exist except as a reality in somebody's universe. Otherwise, there is no ice cream. However, if there is, it will certainly be eaten.

Missing link

There's a piece missing in the cosmic puzzle. There's me, the world, the stars, and the ineffable absolute. That's one lonely little universe. And all the other lonely people in their lonely universes, which we pretend to share. But nothing can disguise the fact that we are all stumbling in the dark, reaching out and maybe occasionally touching something or someone that gives momentary respite. But it's not enough. What's the missing link? To find it, we have to open up. We're so closed we forget that our world is us. The universe we inhabit is us. But we are inhabited in turn by a multiverse. And it wants to penetrate us with its multifarious presence, and turn us inside out. Let it! I think of the ending of D. H. Lawrence's beautiful poem "Song of a Man Who Has Come Through.":

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.

I.Q. test

I was taking an online IQ test and was doing well until I encountered this question: "If some Wicks are Slicks, and some Slicks are Snicks, then some Wicks are definitely Snicks. Is this statement: 1) True 2) False 3) Neither." Well, the answer is obviously #2 because all we know is that some Wicks might be Snicks. We know nothing definitely. All Wicks might be Snicks, or none of them. But then I realized that #3 (Neither) could actually be true as well as #2 (False) because if the statement "some Wicks are definitely Snicks" is false, it is equivalent to saying that "some Wicks are definitely not Snicks," which is obviously false. Therefore #3 has to be true. And #1 (True) is true too, because if Truth is false, how can False be true? The true answer, then, must be all three. The sort of reasoning that got us into Iraq is of this wicksnicking variety. We knew there were Snicks out there and we wanted to stick them, but because they were so oil-slick we attacked the Wicks, knowing they were wicked and therefore some of them were definitely Snicks. So we smacked the sand-wicks and then snacked on sandwiches and Snickers. At this point I abandoned the IQ test, realizing that I had exceeded the time limit and in any case my efforts in achieving a high score would probably go unrewarded in this country under the present regime.

Down the rabbit hole

Life is perennially in development. Anything you can name is in some stage of birth, growth, youth, maturity, or death. The life-cycle metaphor is all pervasive, and, really, somewhat overbearing. Is it not possible to have some other unifying idea—one that doesn't depend for its squishy verification on the science of biology? The problem with the developmental paradigm is its predictability and reductiveness. Let's think of life instead as a drop down the rabbit hole, as in Alice in Wonderland. She drinks something and grows very small, eats something and grows to gigantic stature; nothing is predictable about it. There are no "stages of growth," and nothing can be extrapolated from the previous state. I would like to entertain the possibility that that is how life really is: not an ordered series of stages, but a plunge into the unknown. That never ends.

Updated wisdom #1

THE PRINCE: by Machiavelli

The prince should endeavor above all else to make chili, not war. Because the ends justify the beans.

Blog for your life

Little girl, why don't you stop your crying. You're gonna feel so good. You're gonna feel all right....Just come on and blog, that's right now, blog, you can do it to it, blog, everybody, blog, can you feel it. Blog for your life if you can little girl, don't hide your head in the sand little girl, blog all night against the Man or that's the end, little girl. Get your blog on!