So you think you can write ...
pataphor
is they can't create anymore. Sure, they can copy paste complete
websites and make it seem like they did it all themselves, but ask them
to change a single word and they run out of steam.
Let me tell you about my lizard Urbanus. He is normally not visible,
even in dreams, but when I hop in the black limousine with the coffin in
the back the hip hop boys will transport me to the bank. The coffin is a
teleporting device with the side effect of giving people a green skin.
Most people, not me. I turn into a pile of magnesium salt a few times
(we need lots of that) and end up a pale white with Urbanus around my
neck like it were some long cat doubling as a shawl.
He eats other people's parasites. Not all of them, for example not the
orange yellow fireflies that come in and out of their eyes, maybe other
pets can eat those, but he eats snakes, turning fat green guys into slim
pale ones. I wonder what effect it would have on those people once they
are transported back into their coffins and normal life.
OK, enough is enough, basta! Some people have it easy, all they lay
awake about at night is syntax errors, but how do you think it feels
like, writing in a foreign language, knowing that your expressions hit
like pliers on a pig, to give an example at the same time.
The problem is not language related, it's just normal language is not
the tool to express thoughts in, whatever language. But the only
entities that are promoted by this media are the tools and the
foreigners. You see, when the wrong people have the money and control
the market only those who obey get the job. Who will obey? Those who
have no interest in the culture because they have their own, and the
simpletons who don't even worry.
So people see those persons in the big car and with the new house and
they wonder what is wrong with the world. They start accusing the
foreigners and ask for better protection of their own culture. But the
only result is more control by the simpletons.
Some time ago I argued against Plato's idea that the elite should lead
and instead there should be a meritocracy. But I was wrong. See, when
the wrong people lead and don't let anyone in without a resume wherein
it is proven one has served the powers that be, it is natural for the
elite to step aside and let the next layer do the work until a normal
leadership based on excellence is once again possible.
But who is to decide what is excellent or not if it only is counted in
how many ways one has served the status quo? See, that is why words fail
and why you can't write.
P.
elephty
terms. If our world truly is one of base economic instincts and everything
else we do is not relevant, then it is presumed that only the self-serving
are realistic enough to lead. A problem exists within this management
style. In some circumstances managers saw their role as perfecting the
green troops so that they can eventually take the manager's place as the
manager moves into an executive cubicle or suite depending on the
profitability and the image the company wants to project. If a manager
teaches a promising underling to do the manager's job very well, the
manager gains the luxury status of having more free time. This is what
makes golf an intriguing game for the upwardly mobile. A manager's
mere presence on a golf course during a weekday is understood as
the manager has newly arrived into a higher class. The higher class
has the time and the money to pitter around a nine hole golf course
and yuk it up with like-minded associates who also have recently
arrived.
The manager stands on long sloping hills of finely manicured
grass presumably in an attempt to place a small ball in a slightly larger
diameter hole hundreds of yards away. His ability to remain composed
during episodes of poor play or deliberate loss to superiors in a behavior
known as "schmoozing," (like ass-kissing but with higher regard because
the lower status individual is intentionally and deliberately kissing ass to
benefit himself rather than performing the lower form of behavior referred
to derisively as ass-kissing, because it is insincere ego pumping in the
hope of being seen in a better light - there is a fifty-fifty chance of this
behavior achieving the desired goal of the superior's ego being pumped
without doubting the sincerity of the ass-kisser due to the superior's
belief that he is bright, talented, and worthy of any praise that comes his
way,) is similar to a "rite of passage" often seen in dramatic challenges
to an underling, inexperienced/green youths, or young men gaining
recognition for having the spirit to mature into ignorant rural knuckle-
dragging racists among some primitive tribal cultures.
The hierarchy of ass-kissing culture is certain and rigid. It teaches a
fool his place and awakens his awareness of who he can step on and
who he must ass kiss. The superior feels that since he had to go
through the sadistic demeaning ass-kissing rite, he is damn certain that
those who will follow in his footsteps will also learn to play the perverse
game that leads to the next step labeled "king of the hill" or "last man
standing." It is this culture that leads toward idiot followers being placed
in positions with status and authority.
Another reason that the sewage floats on top of the water rather than
remains
hidden in suspension among the water molecules is that perfecting the
underling to give his manager leisure time contains an underlying threat. If
the underling becomes competent before the manager is ready to be
promoted the underling may take the manager's place sometimes referred
to as restructuring, change in mission, or an updated image. To spare the
manager the humiliation of becoming a loser when he thought he was at the
top of his game; after all, he had been playing golf during normal working
hours for a few months, he is given a certificate of achievement, an
excellent
referral, and a bonus meant to appease the manager's wife, (these trinkets
will not fool prospective head hunters, because they understand the
necessity of playing the game in this manner - it reduces work place
"postal"
events, but no one, always respectfully and politely, will hire him.
Therefore,
the astute manager is left with one alternative.
Instead of the manager perfecting his replacement he takes the offense
long before the threat arises and misleads the replacement, skillfully and
deceptively, always careful to appear to be doing his best with the new
people, but in the end the new batch are simply not up to the task. The
upper management levels cannot be enhanced because the wily manager's
strategy is to cripple real or imagined threats while treating the
non-threaten-
ing less capable employees as if the will ever have a chance in hell of
being more than a work place parasite or chump. Occasionally, the manager
will offer one of the green parasites up for examination by an executive and
he will find the parasite lacking due to the careful grooming by the chump's
manager. The up and comer is always almost there. He kisses ass with
a certain amount of realism. He works overtime for nothing. He makes the
god-awful mistake of following the manager around as he struggles to grasp
exactly what it is that gave the manager his position. The chump does not
understand that the reason the manager continues to hold his own is that
he is the firewall between brighter employees and the executives.
This situation can continue for as much as a decade assuring the manager
a percentage of paid retirement and a couple of fancy but cheap bonuses.
The bonuses are just high enough to give the manager the opportunity to
tell stories to those who are curious why the manager left five to ten years
early when if he had only hung on he could have retired at ninety percent
of his pay grade before he became a manager. The manager will have
framed goodies to show off, several good stories about how necessary
he was to the operation and finally, he will have an example of how badly
the company needed him when it fails because it could not find even dull
witted and paranoid people like our example manager to replace the
talented people who left the company.
One may ask what all of this had to do with the author's post about a vast
expanse of useless space where imagination should exist. The synergy
can be explained quite simply. The executives and the management of
the company shortly after being shone the door of early retirement at
small percentile retirement benefits is that they were all consumed by
lice. In a little under two years the lice multiplied so rapidly that the
enormous populations living at first on their hosts gradually infiltrated
the retirees lungs until there were so many of them in the ex-employees'
lungs that they suffocated the hosts to death. No one in the U.S. understood
the
cause of these copycat deaths until the writing of this article.
Unfortunately,
the parasites do not play golf so they did not develop a strategy that would
allow the hosts to survive.
I admit to the heavy-handed high schoolish feel of this grand tragedy, but
I am the manager who decided to come clean before being assigned to
a nice nursing home not far from where my wife ran over a neighbor's dog
and committed suicide five days later. She was always a little slow about
recognizing how she really felt. This is also the reason she never killed
me.
Sometimes one gets lucky during abundant syntax errors.
"pataphor" <pata...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hbsbs8$f7h$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
pataphor
[firewall theory trickling down on us]
> The up and comer is always almost there. He kisses ass with
> a certain amount of realism. He works overtime for nothing. He makes the
> god-awful mistake of following the manager around as he struggles to grasp
> exactly what it is that gave the manager his position. The chump does not
> understand that the reason the manager continues to hold his own is that
> he is the firewall between brighter employees and the executives.
An old and respectable theory, still with a lot of explanatory power,
especially when academia and politics are added into the mix, turning it
into a generalized social fire walling model.
However, now that the Internet is 40 years old we see the firewalls
having trouble holding their position, because on the one side we have
some of the people they protect going for the easy money and on the
other side the underlings are overtaking them left and right because
they now have ways around the information monopoly.
> One may ask what all of this had to do with the author's post about a vast
> expanse of useless space where imagination should exist.
If imagination existed there then maybe it could be translated back into
reality, maybe with interesting results.
P.