Goodbye!!

I've been gone for a while. I doubt I've run out of things to say, but for one reason or another I've run out of the desire to say them in this format. Maintaining this site has been a source of fun, education, inspiration, and occasional cogitation, but given that I've come down from the once or twice a week/month frequency of ramblings, and given that there are other things going on in my life that require attention, I'll be discontinuing the regular PoP posts. At first (near the beginning of October), I wanted to go out on a crescendo of anger and vitriol, but my thoughts and feelings have changed, or at least diminished. I've preserved them below since they may well be of importance to someone (who that may be, I don't know) other than myself.
I have no intention of removing all of the files associated with this site, so hopefully they'll stay up until someone catches up to the fact that I've been using free webspace from my college days. Perhaps I'll move to another server, perhaps not. Feel free to rummage around.
Factor number one has been time. I seem to have much less of it for many reasons, some good, some less so. Since I increased my working hours from five days a week to six (sometimes seven), I've had a lot less time to fiddle about.
Another factor, and a very good one, is unexpectedly finding love in, of all places, a grocery store. An old tale revisited with new cast and setting to those who know me well, but this time along it's going better. I definitely enjoy the time we spend together, Tania. :)
Another factor that is potentially good is that I'm redirecting my energies from occasional opinion pieces and travel logs to something a little more large scale. Being the exhibitionist that I am, I'd love to put out some samples of my work. I'm currently kicking about two novelish type projects, one based on my nearly lifelong development of RZ and his universe, the other based on social commentary from the point of view of working in a grocery store. The latter is a genre not very well explored to my knowledge outside of a John Updike short story and occasional exposes from investigative reporters. Call it the Zen of Groceries for now. Who knows where that may lead.
Of course, given my consistent inconsistency, who knows how far I'll get with either of them. ;)
Factor number two has to do with some misgivings about the way I've led my life. Granted, some of that has yielded unexpected positives, but the negatives have left me in a bind. I ask for no pity because I've brought this on myself. All I have to do now is take the long slow climb back to where I want to be. Part of this involves a certain amount of withdrawal from society and reality, some of which has manifested itself in posting ad ultimum on the web about things that, well...things that aren't necessarily getting the laundry done. Without going into too many details, my life has changed for the better in some ways, but I'm not happy with where my old ways have left me. It's like waking from a coma to find out that you're five runs down in the bottom of the ninth with two outs. Strange metaphor, I know, but it seemed appropriate.
At any rate, it's been fun. I'll be around somewhere at some point in the future on a more consistent basis, or at the very least I'll have done something worthwhile. This was worthwhile, too, but like all good things, like all things, it has to end sometime.
Now on to the random anger. Farewell!

Hail of Bullets

aka Phnom Penh '05

aka End of the Line

aka Setting the Record Definitively Wrong

aka Zen's Last Online Testament

Ahem.

It's been a fun ride.
Some final thoughts on things I consider to be important. This is all opinion, but it's my opinion.

• The Orioles' 2005 season, regardless of its outcome, shall go down in infamy in the lore of baseball.
• My deepest condolences and wishes for a speedy recovery to the remaining citizens of New Orleans.
• The puppet regime the US has installed in Iraq, while commendable in its aims, vital in its role in gathering Middle East intelligence, and preferable to the regime of rape and wholesale plunder of Saddam Hussein, will be destined to failure. It's too bad that terrorists will ultimately gain by force what the US has tried to build up by killing so many innocent people. This will be a case of good blood being spilled after more good blood for the sake of little gain. The Middle East, barring a devastating depopulation, will continue to be quite the prickly thorn in the side of world affairs for as long as oil is the lifeblood of world economy. By no means do I endorse wholesale destruction of the population of so many good people, but the forces that hate Western values are so deeply embedded that it will be impossible to extract them without far too much bloodshed.
• A similar fate will fall on Afghanistan. Since the primary export of Afghanistan is opium, this won't represent an appreciable change in the status quo.
• The United States will one day in the near future declare war on Russia. This will lead to unimaginable bloodshed. There may not be enough living beings left to count the dead.
• I firmly believe, contrary to the foolish legal principle of innocence until proven guilt, that every major league baseball player whose career started after 1980 has been encouraged to use steroids. The true numbers will never be known.
• Family is the most important thing.
• Food and shelter are even more important.
• Money is less valuable than peace of mind.
• The president of the United States is a figurehead. Nonetheless, it's hard to see how any other president than George W Bush has done more harm to the principles upon which this country was built. He may be a puppet in the hands of the industrialists who really rule this nation, but as a figurehead he will bear the blame.
• Democracy, like communism, is a wonderful idea that is far too advanced for the current state of humanity, where we keep our neighbors children starving and shed blood for the cause of dollars and material goods.
• When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth. Look at Dick Cheney and know the truth of these words.
• There is no secret society that holds ultimate dominion over the affairs of men. Anyone who believes that there is such a thing deserves scorn.
• One man CAN change the world.
• The first step down the slippery slope of future totalitarian rule is to inspire a culture of fear among the masses. This has been done.
• It makes no sense to bar airline passengers from carrying cigarette lighters on board an airplane when matches will work just as well.
• It's also very easy to incapacitate someone with a rolled up magazine or newspaper.
• Necessity is the mother of invention. With fossil fuels becoming more scarce and less affordable, how much of a public outcry will have to occur before alternative fuels become available to the citizens of the world? The answer is in direct proportion to how soon military vehicles will become independent of said fuels.
• Mankind having the key to the power held within the atom is akin to giving a cosmic idiot the power to manage and direct the affairs of the universe. It's possible that this is already the case.
• Aliens have better things to do with their time than to make crop circles and scare innocent sheep.
• There is life elsewhere in the universe. I wish I was there sometimes, but the atmosphere would no doubt be repellent and deadly to my form of animation.
• Very rarely in the course of one life has it been so easy and effortless to lose one third of one's body weight simply by eliminating alcohol from one's diet, eating less, and walking more. I have done this, so I know. It's not drugs, AIDS, or liposuction.
• Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will have a twelve-fingered kid. This will amuse the American public for years on end. To wit:
  12-Fingered baby breaks loose in LA hospital, kills twenty-five people. Authorities speculate Jennifer Aniston secretly to blame.
• Why the hell do people care about Pitt, Jolie, and Aniston in the first place? Is there something in the American ethos that secretly sympathizes with airing one's dirty laundry in public? Pitt is a philanderer of Olympic standing, while Jolie and Aniston are portrayed as saintly people who know better than we do. Men are pigs and women aren't much better. To hell with them all.
• Pardon the wholesale anger.
• Do unto others before they have a chance to do unto you. This is the American way.
• My political career, yet unborn, is now dead. This is a good thing.

Excelsior!!