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.

Destroying Hell-Man's Empire

I once worked in a coleslaw factory. It was as much like Charlie's imagination of the chocolate factory in that all pre-conceptions were destroyed by cruel reality and tests. Everything is divided into departments which eventually, by secret formula held at the offices in the sky, come together to create coleslaw.

I worked in the part where the coleslaw was put into the tubs and passed onwards to the distribution networks. Before me there was the preparation of the ingredients, the vegetables and mayonnaise, and before that, I guess, there were more networks of inward distribution of the raw ingredients from other factories and farms. Inevitability, these can be divided down to The Earth and eventually upwards to The Sun. Beyond that who knows.

This is not my care in this particular post, rather it is the mayonnaise department which interested me intensely. I had no idea how this was manufactured, and never got to find out. It arrived in 3-inch diameter pipes that would run out the creamy white mystery by just the pull of a lever.

So how did mayonnaise come about at all? It now permeates much of our lives as an essential ingredient to some things, or an accompaniment to others. Once upon a time there was no mayonnaise and someone created it from other basic ingredients from somewhere else. That person then convinced other people that it was good. Soon the masses thought that mayonnaise was good. It now existed and propagated an empire and made the man that could sell it's worth very rich.

If one was now able to convince people in the opposite direction, that mayonnaise was not good - "Don't eat that, it's bad" - then it would cease to exist. No longer would there be a necessity to produce mayonnaise as people would no longer desire it and the initial thought would be destroyed by the new conceived thought. The whole empire of mayonnaise would be destroyed.

As easily as a thought can be accepted and become reality is as easy as it is to destroy it - by a thought. 

This is how an empire can rise and fall by thought alone.

P.S. I don't want to destroy mayonnaise, I'm just saying...

Filtering God

Theories are basically a thought - thoughts that for some reason come into your head. Sometimes the source of a thought is obvious - such as an observation - and sometimes a thought can seem more mysterious.

I think of these as the thoughts that come from instinct. Sometimes something seems so obvious, or something doesn't feel right, yet we ignore these feelings in favour of something more certain - some guidance. Logic and rationality are often used to give direction through evidence and expert advice.



People's thoughts and theories are lost because they are ridiculed or don't fit the narrow spectrum of normal thought. A theory should never be ridiculed - it may not be reality so call it science fiction and be Philip K. Dick. Is it then real?

After all, there have been countless examples where a theory - a thought - is shown to be true many years later. Our thoughts almost appear to fulfil themselves - did the Higgs Boson exist before Peter Higgs thought of it?

Some would say that a theory needs to be based on something, as do our thoughts, otherwise there would be infinite possibilities limited only by our imagination. How convenient.

If human civilisation is broken down and rewound, everything that exists came about because someone thought about it. Someone looked at a stick and a stone and imagined an axe, or said "this and this may break my bones but thoughts can never harm me". Could it have been the opposite?

This may explain the development of physical objects, but not the pre-installed rules of physics that determine what we can make, and even whether we can exist at all.

Were these laws themselves a thought so that other thoughts could propagate? Is everything a thought?

This train of thought has arrived where it always does - the infinite loop, or if you prefer, the Creator (in which case the timeline has a beginning, an ending and eternity, and the laws are setup by the Creator).

The Infinite Thought Loop is just an idea I had where we are the creators of ourselves, the laws that make us possible, and all the shit that we make. The loop will continue infinitely, through destruction and creation, until the result is perfection. Those instincts, gut-feelings, come from the information that is written into our DNA from past mistakes, or hidden truths. Sometimes these are deeply hidden and suppressed by the way we have been taught to live.


We are like a human scroll, the DNA helix, passed through generations, evolved naturally but corrupted by thoughts. It is like a filter in time between good thoughts and bad thoughts, and which will win. The grand filter of evolution by natural selection and random mutation may have an additional guiding force - our thoughts, which determine the path we choose.

It is clear that we are blind.
But only until our eyes are opened.

Is everything acting as a filter to achieve perfection through infinity thereby creating God itself? The story is back to front - the beginning is the end (is the beginning?) - and God is creating itself. Time is filtering the perfect thought.

This ideal of perfection requires infinity. At present we have irrational numbers in theories, which need to be approximated to be useful in the present, and all that we can build is an approximation of something that is perfect. That is why we make so much shit.

I envisage a future where the seventh seal to our imaginations is broken and anyone who's no-one can think - a new enlightenment and the next step in our evolution - the higher brain - and one step closer to escaping this planet before The Sun burns cold.

This is a long time, though not if thinking in evolutionary terms. So while it seems that we have a long time to continue making shit, doing nothing new, and mass producing ideas so that no-one ever needs to think of a new one again, we need a new way now. 

Instead of using the laws of physics that have been around for centuries to mass produce shit, pilfering The Earth and thus reducing our chances, let's think of new things that will sustain us until we find a way to that new Sun. Then the thoughts can be further refined and the cycle continues until...

...we get closer to infinity and God.

"Aye, with a quick wink of the eye and a God you must be joking!"

I may not believe any of this, but I thought it.

The question that every human doing should ask themselves is what should a human be-doing.

Here is me defrosting the freezer.

Some Stuff I Saw

A synopsis of a recent trip away - nothing that I done - just stuff that happened around me - other peoples stuff.

Some I liked, some I'm indifferent about, some I can't ignore.

Zeitghost - Dominik The Polish Ghost

We have a Polish ghost called Dominik living in our flat. British ghosts have reacted angrily to Polish ghosts "coming over here taking our British ghost's jobs". After all, the British ghosts are undoubtedly classic, though over-exposure and commercial cheapening through guided tours in places like Edinburgh have faded the image of the British ghost.

Dominik hangs out mostly in the hall, occasionally causing a shadow in the light passing under the door to the living room. None of this really bothers us as he's a friendly Polish ghost who loves his family and friends. Dominik often visits his family in Poland.

I was recently enlightened by Dominik on the dangers of ghost travel, and the effects of high altitude (low pressure) flights on ghosts. As the diagram below shows, the higher the ghost is in the atmosphere, the more it begins to resemble a map of Ireland.

Dominik also informs me that at high altitude 'The Cloud' super-ghost has been absorbing ghosts, expanding with the ghosting data it obtains, and slowly morphing into The World Map haunting all our futures.

We Are The Aliens

Mars once had an atmosphere a little like our own meaning that water could exist in liquid form (there have been dead rivers and ice found - they say). Liquid water is essential for the biological process of building up proteins from amino acids (think of it as the 'cement' of the bricks of life - water is the cement and the proteins are the bricks).

The atmosphere on Mars was caused in the same way as Earth - a magnetic field from the north and south poles protects us from The Sun's scorching solar wind. This field is caused by the spinning molten core inside Earth (the core is molten as it is still cooling from when The Earth formed).

Mars is smaller than Earth and so the core has cooled faster - this means Mars' molten core has (nearly) solidified and the spinning molten volume is too small to provide a strong enough magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind. Because of this, at some time in the past, Mars' atmosphere collapsed and the water (and maybe life) dried up.

So when did this happen? - about 3.5 billion years ago? - about the same time life first formed on Earth?
A coincidence too far maybe, but planetary transfer or spitting may have occurred in the catastrophic death of Mars. A death that may have been the spark that fused The Earth's primeval soup, and the death that was the beginning of life on Earth.

In short, 'We are the Aliens'.



One final question:
Can a theory - a thought - change the future of the past?

Special K Theory of Relativity

Everything is Irrelevant.
Under intense interrogation by a really cool spot super-detective dude, Sunday is slightly less boring. A visionary, role model and super cool dude more relevant than everything.

Fear, Fables and Freedom

A Bug's Life - Understanding Humans

Once upon a time there was a lonely ant.
He'd got lost from the colony where he worked.
The ant had everything an ant could ever want
...and more.

The colony grew and progress was fast, though the ant was troubled as he could not understand his instinctive urges.

One night he wandered alone beyond the leaves, these leaves diminishing by the day but necessary for the colony survival.

The lonely ant had no plan,
and met a pretty ladybird in the distant grasses.

I'm not sure where the story ends.
I hope they have many adventures and live happily ever after.

Three Wise Men & the Prodigal Sun

A fairytale I wrote for my friends' birthdays.

Command and Copper - Napkin Rising

I think I've unwittingly started a war with Alan who runs my work deli. Firstly, he turned up in a dream to tell me off for taking too many napkins. The next day we exchanged a knowing glance as I reached for the napkins and withdrew just one.

To counter I decided to offload as much copper coins as possible in my morning purchase. A preemptive strike before the psychological mind dance we do over how many napkins I take.

I think he has become wise to this and is now bombarding me with such shrapnel copper when I require change. In response I reach into my copper jar every morning thus ensuring my ensuing victory. Victory to Falon Gong!

I also think Alan is the one who pushes me into the falling dream.

The Button Tin

Time to relax.
As a kid I did this by matching up buttons my Mum collected in a wee cylindrical tin, shorter than it was wide, that once had some sort of shiny fake-ruby things that I now realise were sweets. 

These were gone by the time I noticed it, and Mum had put buttons of so many interesting styles, colours and shapes. 
Sometimes there were buttons with pictures.

It was my favourite thing.

There! I'm all relaxed now.

The Tree of Life

Here are three trees that are part of my life. There are actually five trees I can think of that affected so much as to remember them. The two I haven't got pictures for are not included as I don't have a picture, and so will probably visit them soon and update. Road trip!

The first tree is one that represents what I think true love is. True Romance is carving names in nature...
... or digging each others grave in the woods, side by side, and filling your others with the dirt from your own - keeping each other alive.

The second tree is one that more than a few birds call home. It's like an ant colony of bird's nests. I bet they have some cuckoo parties. Sorry about that - it's a language trick, not a joke.

The third tree is the tree of hanging shoes, which is eerie and surreal if you associate the shoes with living people. There are either a lot of missing people somewhere, or a lot of people missing a shoe.

Edit: As promised, and I don't know who I promised, here are the two trees that I have no picture for. The first one was known to us as teenagers as The God tree and I've just sketched out it's position near the lake.

Hopefully The God tree still stands unlike what I now call The Gone Tree. The Gone Tree is now one of those new-build estates.



So I have 4/5 trees left. Maybe they are my life force, like lives in a computer game. Sometimes when you kick over bin and walk over a full cooked turkey or an apple your current life goes up a bit, but extra lives come along occasionally too. I should plant a tree.

Edit Edit: And so here is The God Tree in light dispersing beauty.

Fairytale of the Flat

...and imagination became an equation.

The Irrationality of Rationality

It should be said that my own belief about this mental illness is that there is nothing existentially wrong - it is my reaction to a society construct that I don't fit, and the little pockets of humanity, loving family and friends, nature, music, art is why I'm still around. Real people congregate in invisible circles under darkness as society becomes more homogenised. If this continues to the extent of all time then everything will be the same and there is nothing.

George Ritzer describes this process in society as McDonaldization, which is the belief that everything can be rationalised. However we know that people often act irrationally. So I take this idea that we are rationalising the world and therefore attempting to have all people acting rationally all the time, and propose that this is in fact causing our species demise and the bubbling of mental illness.

I do this by arguing that explicit (Euclidean) mathematics itself does not exist as it is a rational process - the one rational process of analysis that causes nothingness.

I begin this by considering the squaring the circle problem.
The expression "squaring the circle" is sometimes used as a metaphor for trying to do the impossible.
Wikipedia - Squaring the Circle

 

Then it is necessary to think about transcendental numbers - which apparently don't exist as they go on forever and are known as irrational numbers. But what if it is actually the rational numbers that don't exist - these are numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.

This might seem like madness to most by now I know. So think of it this way. Everyone understands that everything is decaying. By that logic, and that is ironic (take note Alanis), if you take two items that are exactly the same and add them then the sum will be slightly less than 2. The answer will only be 2 at a certain point in time but we cannot pause time (without Bernard's Watch).

So if you are to solve the squaring of the circle, the squaring the circle problem effectively doesn't exist as neither would you.
So for my own existence, irrationality is necessary.

And hence the irrationality of rationality.

What I am trying to say is that mathematics is an abstract idea that has no relation to the physical world. The world is full of irrational numbers that define how the physical world works so as to be unpredictable with absolute accuracy. It may be argued that the margin of error is so small as to be insignificant, however this may be a simplistic waver. A small error may be greatly amplified as it propagates through unknown systems to have completely unexpected and therefore unpredictable effects. This may be the mathematical realisation of what is poetically described as the butterfly effect.

This is the problem of numbers and using non-human techniques to create order in a society of human beings (who have become human doings in the ordered unfolding Orwellian prophecy). The most natural way to behave is irrationally. The moral is, I think that disorder is caused by order - and I just need to learn to cope with all the order around me and know inside that I'm right.

Order should only be used to create the machines - this maintains our control over them. So if order is being used for humans, who is in control? So I say bend and break the rules but don't be a dick.




I'm a man of science but I'm also a man.

This form of dual rationality-irrationality needs to be skewed more irrationally - thinking, questioning and constantly creating your universe. This includes science, arts, thinking through the unsolved mathematical problems, music, doing things for no particular reason but that you love them.

This includes loving people too,

So I conclude, for everything to work, we must find Bernard's Watch.