Here's The Beef

The past crescendo of writings have cumulated to this point. I have decided to finish Where's The Beef? where I started with the rhetorical question: Where's The Beef? This was once an advertising slogan for beef-burgers commenting on the lack of meat, but I am not talking about burgers.

What is Where's the Beef? all about? I don't know. It was a journey. I have learned much about myself through this project. Enough to know that it is time for me to go home. I leave you with three movies that I see anew.

Firstly, and recurrently, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy was looking for her way home. Along the way she meets some friends who are equally as lost as she is. She follows the Yellow Brick Road, which turns out to be a fallacy and The Wizard a fraud.

Despite this, and the torments of the Wicked Witch of the West, she finds her way home. It was those silver slippers she'd worn all along.

That is to say, you have inside already what you seek.
The Beef is with you.

In the movie E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, a rather lovable alien is trying to find his way home and happens upon the help of a young boy. When E.T. gets sick so does Elliot, the boy. This is true, that if we harm each other, or defy nature, it will damage our own selves.

E.T. eventually finds his way home, with Elliot's help - and a few scraps of junk to "...phone home". This happens against the wishes of authorities, who want to use E.T.

One day, at a crossroads moment in his life, Forrest Gump starts running. He runs from coast to coast, and when he meets the coast, he just turns around and runs to another. People hear of this man and follow him, often asking advice. Many people are inspired or become very wealthy on the back of Forrest, but Forrest has no interest in these people's fickle realities.

One day, Forrest just stops running and says "I'm going home". All of his followers are confused and don't know what to do. They had been looking to Forrest for direction, and now they were lost. Forrest did eventually find his way home, and left a beautiful path on the way.

In understanding a story you can better understand your own. None of these stories really has an end. In a similar way, this is not an end to my story - my story has only just begun.
I'm still supping on that four year old red wine... and writing...

"Keith had finally decided to write in pen. He had always written in pencil as he had never felt so sure of anything as to make it permanent. Keith knew that his choice was of no consequence anyhow as he understood the concept of entropy, and that either way, the ink would eventually disperse, and pencil fade."

Keith Harland

A Sign Post

The other day, on the walk to work, I decided to veer off the main route. In the back of my head I knew that the diversion was in the general direction of where I was going, and so I feel defeated in my attempt at randomness. If I were really to be random, I'd change direction at undefined varying time internals and would probably converge to walking in a perfect circle.

In any case, I committed to going as far as I could off my usual route. It led me down a side street where I was amused by a sign that read 'Zone Ends'. I never knew I was in the zone. At the risk of exiting the zone, I continued and found myself at the foot of a steep bank on a dead-end street. Climbing the bank there was a small clearing and a rabbit hopped across the open green. I carried on walking through the green and into the bushes on the other side. Suddenly I was beside a major carriage-way. Cars and buses rushed past and I only had the thin edging of the bushes to walk along the road. There was no path or signs. As a pedestrian, I was not meant to walk there.

Eventually, I ended on the upper side of a bridge. Crossing this bridge from above, on a precarious feeling beam of steel, I was able to drop down the bank on the opposite side. I was now under the bridge again...

Sock Puppet

This is the day I no longer recognised the duality of socks. For as long as I've done my own washing, I would separate and neatly arrange the socks on my bed and then pair up the socks in a ball. I remember the frustration of the majority black socks being especially difficult to match. It became a matter of the thickness, the thread, and also that bit around the toes. That's how you could tell if they were inside out.

In the process of pairing my socks, I took time to notice the differences in shades of black, the very dark navy socks and brands – Wilson, Nike, Pringles. There were also the novelty socks with hilarious suggestions like – Beer Time! There were socks for days, socks for seasons, and this helped the pairing process. You would start with the easy novelty socks, then move to the thick dark socks, and so you would complete the elimination process. If you were lucky, there would be no remainder.

One day there was a remainder, and ever since it propagated with no-one ever noticing my infernal irritation at this, one of life's 'little things'. I suspect this is where things began to go wrong and I abandoned pairing my socks. “Fuck it” I said. Now I couldn't give a damn and just dump the pile in a drawer. So I get all the days mixed up, and eventually my whole life is a mess. I said “Fuck it” to lots of other things like shaving, working, getting-up – all of this simply because I no longer pair my socks.
And you know what, I couldn't give a fuck.

Around a Pound

When I was 8 the tooth-fairy left a Pound under my pillow. She moved so softly I did not stir, and at an unknown time in the night I woke.

"Wow. A Pound. A whole Pound - and it's all mine."

My eight year old lucid brain was once again fulfilled with belief.
And in my hand was money.

The concept must have elapsed me, for the next thing I did was inexplicable. I had been lovingly and tightly tucked in by my mother, and this new Pound I balanced on the tip of my tongue.
Quickly it agitated into a wobble and lost itself over the side. It had fallen straight down my throat.

Then I had learned my first lesson in money. You can't eat it. You may have five thousand Pound coins but no food, and then you would die.

Feeling I had lost something that I wanted, I went to my parents bed-side and told them.
"I swallowed the Pound the tooth-fairy left for me."

I cried, but not for my own well-being, but for the Pound. My parents were more concerned for me and brought me to a hospital where an X-ray showed a Pound at a crossroads between my lung and my stomach.

Luckily that Pound went into my digestion system. Later, I shat that Pound into a bucket and my devoted Granny fished it out with some rubber gloves. There were ideas to have this Pound put on a chain for me to keep - after all it had been inside me. I had other plans though, as those irresistible sweets I'd taken as an early vice would tell. The exchange was made, the sweets were mine, and the Pound was in the system.

It still is. It is part of the monetary system that enslaves mankind.

The Seven Wonders of The Flat

I live in a weird flat where everyday is the same day but different too. There is a Polish ghost called Dominik, things are not quite perfect - the heater in the hall doesn't work, the shower occasionally goes cold then hot again and light-bulbs give up at abnormal frequency.

There are also Seven Wonders of The Flat...

Flat Wonder #1 - Sideshow Bob
- has lived in flat from ancient past despite periods of drought and ignorance. It's the great pyramid of the flat.

Flat Wonder #2 - The Four Holes
- some say it was a bracket for something but the position doesn't make logical sense. Others say it may have played a part in securing chains for S&M games.

 

Flat Wonder #3 - The Sofas
- declared the most perfect objects ever made.

Flat Wonder #4 - The Single Double Electric Socket
- only the right one works. Many a phone battery has been tricked and wasted time by putting faith in all that it appears to be.

Flat Wonder #5 - The Opposite Fridge
- the door opens to the unorthodox side and newcomers find things are not as expected. Everyone soon learns and adapts and even naturally switch when faced with a 'normal' fridge door.




Flat Wonder #6 - The Lengthy Rules of the Windows
- no-one understands their strict demands.

Flat Wonder #7 - The Seventh Seal
- this door should never be opened. It is the Pandora's Box of the flat.

 

Just another day in paradox.

Monkey Seeks Fortune

"So you want to be a pirate eh?
You look more like a flooring inspector"

Seeking fortune? Be careful what ye seek...

A story of a lesson learned in time. The Everyman looking for something that doesn't exist, his quest, tests, lessons, guided by know-it-alls who know nothing, and despite all fallacies, finds that what he was looking for was seeking him too.

Wacky Space Races

There was a time where I may have given the impression that I didn't care about the environment. One example is the post where I said we should strip the planet bare and build spaceships.
WTB - Join The Space Race - Nov 2009

However, I do care for the environment and recycle as much, and use as little, as possible. My recycling journey was detailed in this post.
WTB - Recycling Romance - Apr 2012

Now it may appear that I am making a post by recycling old posts, and this is true, but there is a point. I believe in caring for the environment, and all living things, but for a higher purpose.

In truth, extending human consciousness as long as possible so that more vessels can experience and study this strange human condition - more "Riders on the Storm". When writing this in November 2009 it all seemed so wacky and the tone of my post satirical.

Now it is June 2013 and something has changed in my perception of reality, quest for a purpose, belief in humans, or all three. Regardless, I'm sane and "sanity is a full time job."

Scientists think that they have found three habitable super-Earths orbiting a Sun about 22 light years away.
BBC News - Super Earths

Would you runaway with me?

Let's stop the lock-out loop state that is the social brain-rot disease of capitalism, wasteful ground-hog days and redundant cycles, and set our eyes skyward again...

...once I've had one more bottle of hard liquor to cure the present... and procrastinate the future.

Just imagine the wars and all the great stuff we could destroy and sell on super-Earth. There are also other Earths to trade and fight with. No longer will the supply of slave labour be restricted to one world, and inter-planetary war will be awesome to watch from my sofa on the new-Earth's government run TV channel.

Depending on the planet we make home, the year will be 28, 39 or 62 days long. How many days holiday do I get? I'm not signing any changes to my current contracted 35 days holiday per year and so am aiming for the 28 day year planet. Then I'm owed days back every year until capitalism has fully repaid it's debt to Earth#(n+1) and contributed to the upstart and sustainability of Earth#(n+2) where n>=0.

I use (n+x) to notate that this may not be Earth#1, as pondered here.
WTB - We Are The Aliens - May 2013

What is n? - the number of Earths we have lived on and escaped. Could it be > 0? What could be x? - the number of Earths we seed with life. We already know x>=1 since we are here.
Wacky space races indeed.