218: Ayatollah Jackson - à;GRUMH...

...sacred book on Sunday
machine gun every day...

[ lyrics transcription difficult ;-) they're not online and I don't have the libretto "Words"; the revolutionary stanzas alternate between French and Spanish | the vinyl | qu'est-ce que c'est, la EBM belgique? | hear for yourself then – play it loud! on their MySpace fanpage ]

Many years ago my best friend and I came up with a philosophy (originally created as a religion but believing in anything too strongly leads to trouble) called Reality Avoidance Therapy (R.A.T.), whereupon we set out to show people that life should not be taken at face value and that the beauty and humor of the world is right there in the details. Our main means of transmitting this data was to write humorous textfiles for various bulletin board systems (BBSs) with our cybercynicism... like saying that a computer mouse was "a cat toy brinking on the cheesy" and that all one needed was "a piece of string and a rock to tie it around." We believed that warm soda and cold cookies could make any day memorable. We advocated pushing a shopping cart to your bike when at the market, or through the carwash or line of cars at the bank. "When you feel your sanity is fraying, that's progress!" We wrote a bunch and then we slipped away from being productive.

One of the biggest tenets of the philosophy was that there were two types of practice: "Good R.A.T." is the lie that you tell yourself to get through the day, knowing deep down that it's not true and not trying to convince anyone else. "Bad R.A.T." is the lie that you tell yourself and others, but you are the only one who believes it. We had examples to cite at that -- his roomie Tim lived in a basement and lived for fantasy role playing games and comicbooks, he was Good R.A.T.; a friend's roomie (later a coworker) Sterling changed his personna about as often as he changed his underwear and would spontaneously give his phone number to girls within 10 minutes of meeting them, he was Bad R.A.T. Tim knew he was wrong but he was happy and it had no effect on anyone else -- Sterling was the butt of many jokes and made the fatal flaw of believing his own hype.

I leave this posting with the source of my life's tagline, written in November 1993: Whenever and wherever possible, take the smug down a notch. Should they be so unwise as to rebut you, say something cryptic then leave snickering.

I don't imply there's a direct link between the photo, the song, and the story.... but surely one exists. This dead house is near the entrance of the Lutheran cemetary I do the most stone and scene photography at, a few blocks from my home.

Taken on: October 14, 2008

Tags:

365

à;GRUMH...

Sets appears in: • Abandonment • 2008: Lyrical 365

Groups appears in: • Project 365 • Living Tacoma

Camera: Kodak Z650 Zoom, f/2.8, 1/30 sec, 6.3mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Kodak Z650 Zoom
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	0.033 sec (1/30)
Focal Length:	6.3mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Gain Control:	Low gain up
Color Space:	sRGB
Show full info

Stats: 2,750 views / 6 comments

go back

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder