This Is About Who Cares

                                                
                                               
clovers of four      before your door         
               
                                             
                                                
Honestly, even though the idea for this post         
was the result of events late last night as     
I was coursing from blog to blog--specifically
what was mentioned in comment 100 beneath         
Kasey Mohammad's Dale Smith . . . post at his 
Lime Tree, I am not certain why I'm doing this.
Maybe I sense my continuance as a viable human   
will soon cease.  Maybe I sense civilization as  
I have known it will soon cease.  Maybe it is    
both.  I do know/ the high-class intellectuals   
(some of them, anyway) whose blogs I visit do
tend to misunderstand me and may consider   
me an interloper.  Rarely are comments from       
me lengthy.  Rarely are posts on my blogs      
lengthy.  However, while I neither seek nor       
want sympathy and while most of what I will   
be sharing today is available in older posts,    
I've concluded that the major facts need to be
in one place.  So:                                 
                                                
Age: 68      Zodiac sign: metal dragon          
                                             
Health: moment-to-moment  *  My genes have    
seen to it that I would never know true health.  
Shortly after I was born I had to be returned  
to the hospital because I had impetigo.  My     
body, not unlike my psyche, is too sensitive.   
Eczema, hay fever, asthma have been with me  
from the beginning.  It has not been proven,
but at an early age I may have contracted TB    
and somehow overcome it.  Just the sort of  
knowledge that makes me want to believe in  
reincarnation when the megalomania balloon  
inflates.  Epilepsy, both frontal lobe and  
generalized.  May have had some form of it  
since childhood, but wasn't medicated for  
it until my 1999-11-01 adult onset grand  
mal seizure.  For approximately five years     
it has been controlled by Keppra.  Will be  
using a generic form of it.  Voiding, which
I thought was due to a non-cancerous en-
larged prostate.  Have had two TURP op's  
and am now no better than I was before.   
Turns out my bladder empties fine.  This
means my urethra is the problem.  It is  
messed up and the last doctor I visited  
about it said that operating on it might  
make it worse.  Ishkabibble & the double   
dribble.  Osteoporosis, oh yeah.  I am   
crumbling.  Genetics again.  I was once  
an amazing 5'6.5" tall.  I am presently   
4'11" or less.  Shortly before my rup-  
tured appendix was removed in the spring
of 1962 (another by seconds escape from  
death), I weighed 135.  I now weigh less
than 100.  Of course, I have fractured  
3 vertabrae.  Metal dragons are risk-
takers.  Have been drinking those nasty
nutrition drinks in order to bring my  
weight up.  Can't eat the foods I once  
ate, yet I need the calories.  This is  
a problem I am trying to rectify.  As   
if this were not enough, I've also had  
to have my esophagus dilated, and the  
nutrition drinks are causing a buildup   
of mucous and who knows what else.  So  
I remain what I call Earth-alive because  
someone greater than I wants me to be.   
I am certain I've escaped death at least  
three dozen times.                          
                                         
Education:  Mainly in Roman Catholic schools   
until the autumn of 1962.  Then three years  
at Wisconsin State College–Oshkosh where I
majored in English and minored in History        
and was editor of the student magazine for     
two years.  In 1965 I entered the workshop   
at Iowa, graduating in 1967 with an English  
MFA (poetry) degree.  I then took a summer    
Education course at Marian College in Fond   
du Lac.  Around 1983, while residing in UF    
town (Gainesville), Florida, I took computer
and accounting courses at Santa Fe Community
College and began studying diligently for a
GRE administered in June of 1984 at UF.  My   
score on that exam (1370) was the high point     
of my intellectual life.  Got accepted into 
the Fisher School of Accounting at UF, but   
had to drop out early in my first semester   
as I found it too difficult to bike to school   
after working all night at a Holiday Inn,
and I realized accounting was not for me.
Next I got accepted into the English PhD 
Program.  There I completed one semester,   
but again I was too worn out to concentrate
properly.  Then there was the stock market  
where idiothead tried to be a trader in an  
environment that was better for investing.
Through my own efforts and God's nudgings,
had I seen the light and had I lived till   
now after choosing the wiser path--there  
is no way to know such.  Though it doesn't
detail everything, if you are interested   
in knowing more, read Intelligence Is Not
Enough, the 19th post in Money Rho.       
                                                 
Finances:  Oh it could have been worse, but  
I played the American Dream game.  I bought   
into the oil/auto/credit paradigm.  Where   
then am I now?  I am totally dependent on   
governments; and if the gloomiest analysts   
are right, one day I will no longer have that.  
When trust leaves the playing field, the
only call that can be made is: Game over.
That is the gist of my simplistic equation:             
  capitalism = something to sell + someone  
to buy it  
For, indeed, without someone to buy it, that  
paradigm withers and dies.  In some ways this  
is already happening.  A new less aggressive  
paradigm is growing, and if it survives and  
takes over, greed will fade/ and all humans  
will be drawn closer to each other.  Call it  
what you will, I call it the inexorable force  
of God, the Omega Point, the Singularity, the  
Nth of Love.                                   
                                              
But then, I am the ghost in the dumpster.          
                                             
*                                              
                                                
                                                
                                               
                                           
rho00317