Pilot's Log

Dad was watching the early Seventies Western movie Chato's Land on TH¡S tonight. In it, Charles Bronson is a renegade Indian being chased by a posse led by Jack Palance. As I looked in between my Internet activities, he told me "It's almost over; there's only a couple guys left in the posse."

And I told him, "If Charles Bronson is being hunted by other men, he'll usually kill them all and get away with it."

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of October 8, 2009

In 1968, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn finished his book The Gulag Archipelago, a scorching indictment of the oppression that he and his countrymen suffered under the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union. Banned for years, it was never formally published in his home country until 1989. Even after that, the new Russian government tried to control the teaching of history by suppressing texts like Solzhenitsyn's. This year, all that changed. The Gulag Archipelago became required reading in Russian high schools. At last, the truth is officially available. (Maybe one day the equivalent will happen in the U.S., with alternate histories by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky and James Loewen finding their way into the curriculum.) I celebrate this breakthrough as a symbol of the events that are about to unfold in your personal life: the long-lost truth finally revealed.

I saw that book last week in the paperback bargain bin at the Dandridge library. I didn't pick it up because I had other priorities in mind at the time.

I rather doubt there are any "long-lost truths" left to be found in my life beyond the missing links of my family line. And even so, what benefits could they have for me this late in my life? Not that I like the idea of ignorance for ignorance's sake. There is no bliss in not knowing the world around one's self.

Hey. Have you any idea how hard it is to find decent floor plans of Graceland over the Internet? I had to go all the way to a site in Holland for some...

You see, the MJ saga has brought back memories from the summer of 1977 when Elvis Presley died. For a while, I'd had an idea for a story, with the working title Equation, partly based on the time-travel stories of Heinlein, and somewhat akin to The Butterfly Effect, but told from the side of the character whose life is the one initially being meddled with, rather than the meddler. Well, the character in question is an 11-year-old boy in 1977, and his first adventure makes him something of a celebrity. In a following segment, he gets invited to a party at Graceland by Lisa Marie...and one of the other guests there is a teenage friend of hers name of Michael Jackson. Well, the hero knows their destinies, but there's the ethical dilemma of whether to speak or stay silent. Whether to tell the truth, however offensive or dangerous it may be, or enable their fantasies.

I know I'm not the only one to think these things...but what if hindsight ISN'T 20/20 vision?

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Tell. If it happened to me I'd want somebody to tell me.

I Googled myself and saw that somehow there is a "Stephen Bierce" registered with a website all the way in Mongolia. Been there since last year. I don't remember signing up for it...or for yet another Yahoo! identity I found that may or may not be attributed to me.

Is there a racket for cloning peoples' online identities in order to establish authenticity and then doing something nefarious? This is just very weird.

FP

PS: Somehow one of my userpics was changed and I didn't do it. I was not amused.

Was just listening to "Fresh Air" on the radio. The guest was the writer and director of the upcoming movie Breach. He said (I'm free quoting) "The role of the camera is to show the truth that the characters don't want told."

Via jokermage:

You scored as Existentialism. Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” “It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.” --Jean-Paul Sartre “It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.” --Blaise Pascal More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page... </td> Existentialism 80% Utilitarianism 65% Hedonism 60% Justice (Fairness) 60% Strong Egoism 40% Kantianism 35% Nihilism 30% Divine Command 30% Apathy 20% What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03) created with QuizFarm.com

I think I was a little scattershot with my answers, but I suppose it bears out. I hold to the Maoist view that Religion Is Poison, but won't begrudge anybody who actually finds their lives are healthier through their religious experiences. It really isn't up to me to judge what works for a society, only what works (or doesn't) for myself. In the meantime, if there are Higher Powers (singular, plural, or unifying), then my relationship with such things are between me and them, and no other person has the right to tell me otherwise. I believe in the right of the believer to believe, the right of the skeptic to question, and the right to be left alone.