One Blue Pill Please for the 4th of July

firework for blue pills So, we got over the 4th of July without any bigger harm - or did we?

Watching all the happiness of the parade down main street and then the fireworks in the evening and smelling all the BBQs going full blast I could not help remembering the movie The Matrix.

Neo: The Matrix?

Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
(Neo nods his head.)

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.
(In his left hand, Morpheus shows a blue pill.)

Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
(In his right hand, Morpheus shows a red pill.)

Morpheus: You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
(Long pause; Neo begins to reach for the red pill)
Remember — all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.

There, did you see - Neo reaches for the red pill. And that’s were all the events of the 4th of July were different. In each parade there was a free helping of blue pills. In each burger flipped there was a blue pill right there in the center. So that they all could wake up in their bed and believe whatever they wanted to believe.

Somehow I must have gotten a little dose of that nasty red pill. Otherwise I would not have noticed the following. The parade down main street. All happy people on both sides in lawn chairs cheering and waving to all the paraders. Not that many, it’s a small town and most of them were probably out taking advantage of the 4th of July sales at the local Target.

But the few paraders had a lot of fun. When can you go up and down the main street on your bike showing off that you can do some cool wheely. Up and down and then once more with lots of cheers.

How long?

Until a cop car rolls slowly down the street and ordering them to stop over their authority-inducing speaker system - you know Darth Vader like - you can’t really understand what they say, but you certainly know there is something that is not approved of and you better stop whatever that may be.

The tragic is that all these cheerers did not see anything wrong with that! But I can’t help noticing that that cop just misused his power - he has no right whatsoever to tell any parader what to do as long as he is not endangering anybody but himself - and none of them did - big street!

I wonder - there was also an antique fire tank truck parading down the street, stopping ever so often and spraying water onto the appreciative viewers (it was a rather hot day after all) - were there dissolved blue pills in the water?

What, you don’t really see what’s my point? Here is one - the US celebrated the independence from King George of Britain. Much of the disagreement with the homeland was over the steep taxes George raised and the great number of officers that were around to implement British government. The taxes people went to war over were in the range of 2 to 3 percent - how much do you see of your paycheck today after all taxes and other gifts to the government are deducted? And today there are - what- about one million people working for the federal government alone - I believe there weren’t that many immigrants in America when these immigrant said - ENOUGH!

Posted by Merlin Silk - July 7th, 2007

Jul

3

Nike’s Slogan “Just Do It!”

Filed under Fun Stuff | Leave a Comment

(republished from another blog with permission)

I just saw this and it cracked me up - so I had to share it - sorry for that.

Nike - Just Do It!

Isn’t it amazing how the meaning of things change depending on what we think about them?

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do - don’t think that Nike will love it though. Amazing how one little shift of context can totally destroy the creative work of a whole advertisement team.

Accumulated Comments for This Post

12 comments

28 Sep 2005 @ 19:15 by Kathie Lynch @68.101.175.211 : inspiration
Hey, when you have to go, you have to go! I wonder what she did to the guy who took her picture.

28 Sep 2005 @ 21:03 by Ed Dawson @66.245.205.64 : Tsk!
You PEE-pul!!!!!

Ed

28 Sep 2005 @ 21:52 by Kathie Lynch @68.101.175.211 : hilarious
Glad we’re not PUU-puls!!!!

28 Sep 2005 @ 22:22 by Dennis Dragomani @68.111.132.21 : Puerile Porcine Patter
This is not as bad as the little piggie who went “wee wee” all the way home.

28 Sep 2005 @ 23:34 by Ed Dawson @66.245.205.64 : Butt…
Please note, GeZi, that she has crack DOWN, not UP!

29 Sep 2005 @ 00:32 by Ge Zi @24.126.199.23 : ED - that hurts!
ok, ok - that requires another reply from you, right - let me have it - ouch, that will create another one

But anyways - the nice way of ‘Just do it’ is that from now on this thing is stuck in my mind - nothing else I can see/hear when I see Nike.

… and now you have that too ;-)))

29 Sep 2005 @ 20:20 by Ed Dawson @66.245.205.207 : stuck images?
Actually no I don’t. I don’t get stuck pictures and automatic image bank. So, no, when someone says “Just do it” I will only bring up that image if I wish to do so. :))))
cheers
Ed

29 Sep 2005 @ 22:43 by Ge Zi @24.126.199.23 : and …?
… do you wish to? ………. I do ;-)))

1 Oct 2005 @ 02:14 by jerryvest : This image reminds me of Sidney
Freedman on Mash…remember when he was leaving the operating room he proclaimed…”Boy’s and girls, pull down your pants and slide on the ice!”

He was a hoot.

1 Oct 2005 @ 11:28 by Tim @80.1.233.191 : Love it!
Hey GeZi. I just got your NewCiv internal e-mail that you sent on July 9th - relating to ACIM and clearing. You can contact me at my blog in the URL link here. Best, Tim

1 Oct 2005 @ 18:19 by Ge Zi @24.126.199.23 : Tim,
what is NewCiv internal e-mail and how could/did I sent this?
I went to you web site - very impressive!
But I did not see how I could contact you from there.
Cheers
G

1 Oct 2005 @ 19:37 by Tim @80.1.233.191 : Now Fixed
GeZi, should now be fixed (see bottom of right-hand NavBar - remember to refresh browser)
NewCiv internal mail is am option to e-mail someone within the NewCiv Network rather than externally. Either way, would be great to receive and comm from you ragarding ACIM ‘vs’ Clearing.

Posted by Merlin Silk - July 3rd, 2007

Jul

1

The Statistics of Terrorism

Filed under Larken Rose, Thoughts | Leave a Comment

drowning in bathtub You know, if you don’t have anything to say yourself, at least quote somebody.

That seems to be the tenor of a majority of blogs - and I don’t say that’s a bad thing. boing boing for example consists to a bigger part of quotes from other people or stories the original bloggers found in the vast reaches of the internet. So it saves me a lot of time to just look at boing boing and get informed (I know it’s biased and so I don’t take it as the sole source of my data stream.)

After that introduction is should be clear that today I don’t have any of my own thoughts but are intending to quote somebody. This somebody is again Larken Rose, who, in his latest news letter, has some eye-opening things to say.

I particularly like the thingy about the bathtub control.

Dear Subscriber,

I’ve been surprised by how blunt I can be, and still not offend most of you. So far my most effective offending-you message seems to be my message about how the Constitution didn’t work. (Around 40 people unsubscribed after that one.) But that’s still well under 1% of the list, so you people apparently have pretty thick skins. So I’ll try again:

If you live in the U.S. and worry about terrorism, you’re a gullible bonehead. It’s getting pathetic how easily the government and the media can lead the American public around by their emotions, in any direction they choose. “Oh my gosh, I’m scared of global warming!” “Oh my gosh, I’m scared of gun violence!” “Oh my gosh, I’m scared of terrorism!” The general public worries about and is scared of whatever they’re TOLD to be scared of. A particularly hilarious parody of this fact can be found here:

http://www.ihateronpaul.com

There you can see a string of politician rhetoric which is OBVIOUSLY designed to SCARE you. Politicians are constantly talking about terrorism, and how they neeeeeeed more power to combat it. But, even accepting on blind faith the government’s version of what happened on 9/11 (which I don’t), is fear of terrorism rational?

Statistically, no. I hate to mess up their mind control by citing facts, but the following site gives some basic statistics about causes of death in the U.S.

http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm

Assuming the stats in 2003 weren’t drastically different from the preceding years, here are a few facts that you should keep in mind:

1) In the last decade (1997 to 2007), you had about a 1/100,000 chance of being killed by a terrorist attack. (That’s the population of the country divided by the number of people who died on 9/11/01).

2) In the last decade, you were about 170 times as likely to be killed in a car accident as you were to be killed by a terrorist act. Let’s do a little graphic to illustrate the ratio:

Killed by terrorists (1997-2007):
*
Killed in car crashes (1997-2007):
************************* ************************* ************************* ************************* ************************* ************************* ********************

(So are you 170 times more scared of driving than you are of terrorists? I am.)

3) In the last decade, you were as likely to drown in your bathtub as you were to be killed by a terrorist act. (Where is the clamor for “bathtub control”?)

4) In the last decade, you were twice as likely to die from cold weather as you were to be killed by a terrorist act.

5) Last, but not least, in the last decade you were more likely to be SHOT AND KILLED BY AMERICAN LAW ENFORCEMENT than you were to be killed by a terrorist act. Don’t believe me? Look at the bottom of that page, under the Orwellian heading “legal intervention.” (347 events per year adds up to well over 3,000 in a decade.)

(Yes, I know that using the word “you” is a bit of an over- generalization, since people in different categories obviously have different risks, but you get the point.)

People are constantly telling me how we neeeeeeed “government” to protect us (a topic I’ll discuss more soon). When the government, with the help of the mainstream media, is constantly telling you to be SCARED of things–except for itself, of course, which is what you SHOULD fear–and then painting itself as the solution to all those problems, it’s no wonder so many people think we need it. All our lives we’ve all been bombarded by the propaganda of tyrants, telling us that the world would be CHAOS if they aren’t given the power to protect us. Even a lot of pro-freedom people still have a ways to go to overcome that indoctrination.

Sincerely,
Larken Rose