This blog is done

Well, folks, it has been a blast, but the whimsical revolution is finished. Ajax is retiring to the recesses of my mind and I am going to continue thinking, writing, and whimsically revolving under my real name, Paul Brodie. I'm in the process of compiling and editing (I've published a lot of typos and some unintentional grammar errors) some of my more favorite posts to put Ajax's Whimsical Revolution into an ebook. Why? Because I want to. I don't know if anyone would want to read this blog in a book format, but hopefully someone will. Also, if you are new to my writing then maybe it will be easier to get the ebook instead of clicking through hundreds of posts on the blog.
I'll post a link to the ebook once it is published. If you have enjoyed this blog, be sure to follow me at my new location paulbrodie.wordpress.com
If the new blog doesn't seem as whimsical, hang in there, I'm still working on getting all of my thoughts and interests incorporated into that location. I remain a work in progress...I mean, my internet presence remains a work in progress.
Thank you for reading!

Alaska and poetry about it

I know nothing about Alaska aside from what I've "learned" from Discovery Channel shows such as Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, and Survivor Man. Why then would I write a poem about Alaska? Because I was trying to win a creative writing contest hosted by Helium. For those who do not know, which is probably most people, Helium is a website geared towards freelance and wannabe writers. Essentially it is a knowledge base of articles written by the guy you saw at the grocery store, the woman at the bus stop, and me. I am a Helium member, contributor, author, and so forth. The hook of the site is that you can earn money, but the real hook is that you don't earn much money and what you do earn trickles in slower than ice cream melts in, yes, you guessed it, Alaska.
The point of this post is simply to post something on this blog, which doesn't happen nearly enough of late. The content of this post is to say that I wrote the aforementioned Alaska poem several weeks ago and it is still ranked 1 out of 12 posts on the Helium poetry channel. I didn't win the contest, but I was happy anyway. My made-up from nowhere poem about Alaska is ranked number 1. I haven't read the other poems, so perhaps they are all worse or less relevant than mine, but I'm happier not knowing. I think this will suffice as a blog post. And of course, what you have been waiting for, a link to my poem about Alaska.
Hmm. Jokes on me I suppose. As I found the poem page to create the link I discovered that my poem is now number 2. Thanks a lot random ranking process at Helium! You have negated this post completely! Good night, all.

Losing interest in Lost

It took some time, but I’ve finally bought into the craze that is ABC’s TV program Lost. Well, "bought in" isn't accurate, "yielded to invitations to view, for free online" is more like it.Originating in 2004 the series spanned 6 seasons and captivated audiences almost all the way through. I’ve been encouraged by friends to watch the series, but until about a month ago, I never did. The premise of the show, based on having just finished watching the entire first season, is that a plane crashes on a seemingly uncharted Pacific island and the 40+ survivors deal with it. My wife and I watched the first season on Amazon Prime beginning in July and finishing up just a few days ago. That’s my back story, now we’ll return to my review of the show.


As I said, I have been encouraged by many people to watch Lost. Everyone was always careful to not give away any of the plot twists. Perhaps if they had I wouldn’t have subjected myself to watching the entire first season. There it is, I’ve said it, I don’t particularly care for Lost. It is interesting in its use of suspense, and I do enjoy the character development with the back stories, and some of the characters are just fun, but overall, I find the series confused and disappointing. I don’t say that it confuses me, just that the story line is confused on its own.

I do not fear revealing the surprises now as the series is complete and season one is 8 years old, plus I read a study that suggested plot revelations do not spoil a book or movie experience for those who have yet to read or view them. So I won’t be concerned with keeping any secrets from you. The island the survivors are lost on is not your ordinary island. The plane was well off course and out of communication when it went down, so there is little expectancy that they will be found quickly, although many of the passengers hope for this. Overall the hope is sufficient that they delay searching for adequate food, water, and shelter for a few days. Amazingly, missing out on the basic necessities of life, and modern conveniences don’t seem to have any effect on them. They continue to look and act very healthy (physically), for the most part.

But it is a TV show, so I don’t get too caught up in the fantasy aspect of how well they are doing for being in such a fix. What does bother me is that every single person on this island, aside, perhaps, from Hugo “Hurley” Reyes, is a self-righteous, irrationally proud, prejudicial creep. Honestly, other than Hurley, I think the world is better off having this collection of nit-wits confined to the island and out of our hair. Yes, even though it is only 40 people, left to roam free throughout the earth, they would do some major damage. Hardly a full episode can pass without someone jumping to judgment and accusing someone of a heinous act, or someone says “don’t tell me what I can’t do!”

As I said before, I do enjoy the character development in the story; I just wish the characters weren’t quite so ignorant. I think Lost could have been a great show, but what happened was the creators didn’t think past the pilot episode. They though “let’s do a modern twist on Gilligan’s Island, but in a drama format instead of slap-stick, it’ll be great!” So they got started writing, casting Jack the surgeon as the Professor; Kate the fugitive as Ginger; Sun the repressed wife of a mob-style hit man as Maryanne; Sayid the former Iraqi Republican Guard communications officer also as the Professor; Shannon and Boone the crazy twins as the Howell’s; Michael the divorced parent reuniting with his biological son as some form of the Skipper and also the Professor; and Charlie, formerly of rock band Drive-Shaft (and heroin addict), and the aforementioned Hurley, lottery winner and curse-bearer, as a split act Gilligan. Other characters too, some main, some not, but those are the Gilligan’s Island comparisons for the most part. I got sidetracked on that.

Well, the creators put the show together, made a pilot episode with a good hook, and then realized they didn’t have a real story to tell. Was it going to be Robinson Crusoe with a lot of people? Or would they let the Gilligan’s Island comparison be obvious? They had no idea, so what happened? They made an invisible monster that rips trees out of the ground. They put a mysterious capsule buried out in the woods. There was a polar bear, just one, that charged a group of survivors early in the series. They even added a French woman who was shipwrecked on the island 16 years earlier, who was living, in seeming comfort, all alone for all of this time. And then there is The Others. Whispering voices in the woods who are then realized as unkempt sailors on a small boat in the final episode of the first season who kidnap a 10 year old boy from the bamboo raft. It turns out the island isn’t so uncharted and deserted after all. Who knew?!

I don’t really have a review for Lost. I liked some of the episodes, or at least parts of them, but overall I found my interest waning and my distaste waxing as each episode passed. The first season was a series of let downs at various stages in the haphazard story line. I was hopeful for different characters to take the lead and build a strong working community on the island. The resources seem to be there, they have knowledge from various walks of life, but the overall theme keeps turning out to be that these people are fatally flawed and incapable of working together. They each seem to have their moments of heroism, only to be shortly followed up with villainy or something. Granted, they are under profound stress and trauma, but it just seems like they are bouncing between extremes too quickly. Maybe the intent is to show that these are “real” people and subject to weakness and flaw, which I accept, but then they should be real people all of the time and not perform miracles one minute and not know how to tie their own shoes the next minute.

I think what it comes down to is that I’m jealous; one, because I want to live on a deserted island and see if I can survive, and two, I’ve never written a television show myself. So when I see plot twists instead of thinking “oooh! The suspense is thrilling!” I think, “no! you are doing it all wrong!” Because I envy their situation. Such as when Sawyer killed the polar bear, why didn’t they try to eat it? Maybe because they still thought they would be rescued or because Locke hadn’t busted out his knife supply yet. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t have let it go to waste. I don’t know how bear meat tastes, but in that situation it seems best to find out. And other times they leave the story too full of holes. Who was Ethan? Where did he come from? Why was he helping Danielle? Why did he seem to have superpowers? Perhaps they’ll explain it in the next 5 seasons.

Yes, I will continue watching the series, but under protest. I think they had a great story and it fell apart. They got scared and thought they needed invisible dinosaurs to keep people interested. Then again, maybe I’m the only one who sees it this way. If I am, I’m 100% okay with it. In my opinion Lost is not worth its hype.

On and on and on

Okay, okay, timeout! I’m reading a Reuters news article on Yahoo! News and I find the following: “Groups calling themselves The Descendants of the Prophet Brigade and the al-Habib al-Mustafa Brigade said on a Facebook page they were jointly responsible for the bombing, which they said had killed 50 soldiers.”


I deleted my Facebook account just over two months ago. I’m pleased to announce I am living a happy and normal life. I appreciate the freedom of speech and expression afforded by the Internet, and I am not calling for censorship, but let’s just stop and think about this for a minute, terrorists and armies are announcing their efforts through a Facebook page? Twitter wasn’t good enough? Needed more than 140 characters I suppose.

I’m not even sure what I find unsettling here, but it is something. Perhaps it is the association I have in my mind with Facebook as a way to connect with friends and brag about personal accomplishments in order to garner attention. I suppose that fills the need for claiming responsibility for a terrorist action. It all just seems really ridiculous. But I don’t know why it should, Facebook is the new newspaper. Underground and revolutionary movements thrive on communication ability. In the past this meant having a printing press. Now it means having an Internet connection.

Regardless of why this was shocking to me, I’m concerned over how well we all just sit back and let these things happen. The wars I mean, not the Facebook postings, well maybe that too in some cases, but I’m talking about the wars primarily. The world as a whole has no clear purpose or direction. This planet is a wayward teenager, listing about, looking for cheap thrills, trying to find their way. There is simply too much selfish pride. It is actually unfair to call the world a teenager, unfair to the teenager that is. The world isn’t listless or lazy, it is selfishly proud.

No one is willing to bend on their culture enough to accept anyone else. You don’t have to bend on your personal morals in order to appreciate a differing point of view. Unfortunately so many cultures embrace immoral behavior, yes, immoral from my perspective, but all cultures have these things. Those are the aspects of culture that need to be forgotten. Selfish pride stands in the way, individually and collectively. Science needs to forget about Mars, global warming, and fat-free foods for a while and focus on human relationships and selfishness. I guarantee if we can eliminate selfishness we will eliminate a lot of these other issues we are spending our time on. Stop treating the symptoms and treat the underlying issue.

I suppose it will treat itself eventually. The cancer of pride eventually kills the body. Or we could forget the 401k and the thrill-seeking and unite ourselves as a human family. We can work the land and feed ourselves and our neighbors. We can teach each other the good customs and traditions we have that educate and build our communities. We can enjoy laughter and exercise and healthy competition. Or we can keep on with our contentious one-upmanship, fighting, and exploitive entertainment. If we all quit being selfish we can turn this thing around.

How to fix everything

I found an interesting quote in a comment string under a news article regarding a current political event. The quote was posted as follows:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:
from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.
Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813)

A quick search in Google tells me that this is a composite quote, not necessarily by Tytler as the comment poster cites it, and possibly of unknown origin. I feel like I’ve been through this all before, finding a quote I really liked, searching for the author, and finding that it has been attributed to several people, throughout time, and across nations. Well, it isn’t important who penned the words; the important thing is the apparent truth of them.

The cycle set forth, from bondage to faith to courage to liberty to abundance to selfishness to complacency to apathy to dependency and back to bondage, is prevalent in all aspects of life. You can find this cycle of behavior in your own life. It appears in individual behavior and in group behavior, and if you look into history, it appears in the course of large nations. What intrigues me is that it always seems to happen, and that it is clearly happening in the United States right now.

I can’t fully imagine a war fought on U.S. soil, but some of the current events seem to point that way. Thinking about this cycle of bondage points that way, too, if we look at the U.S. over the last 60 years. There was great prosperity and abundance after World War II. There were ups and downs along the way, but for the most part, the latter half of the 20th century was prosperous. The result is Generation Y, intent on finding pleasure, immediate pleasure, in all aspects of life. They, along with many of the generation that made them, (I’m on the cusp between Generation X and Generation Y, so I don’t know how I fit into this mess), therefore, we, are selfish, complacent, and apathetic.

We want services, but we don’t want to pay for them. We know there are a lot of people struggling in the world, but we’d rather watch people eat live tarantulas in prime-time than figure out how to help feed the children being neglected down the street. We know that people are suffering, but we don’t care. We are dependent upon the “gracious” hand of Uncle Sam. I have been thinking that the government has become its own entity that it was no longer made up of people, that it no longer represented the people. I hoped that the people still consisted of the types in the faith and courage part of the cycle outlined above. Now I wonder. Maybe the government really does represent the people. Maybe the greed and corruption we see in the government isn’t some separate body from the people of this country, but is an accurate sample of the people of this country. If this is the case, it is time for a new declaration of independence.

Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress declared independence from the British Monarchy on behalf of the people living in the American colonies at the time. Great Britain fought against the rebellion, but lost. Human liberty won. Human liberty is now threatened again, but not by the control of a foreign government. It is threatened by the control of a domestic government; it is threatened by the people of the country. We are endangering ourselves. How do we declare independence from ourselves?

War? I can’t picture what it would look like, and I hope it doesn’t come down to that. But the alternative is changing the way we do business (meaning how we conduct ourselves in general, day to day), and this doesn’t seem to be a realizable option. Without a change, without war, it will continue to stagnate and putrefy, and we will find ourselves in bondage.

As though we aren’t currently in bondage, I believe we are. In our country of liberty, I am not free to own anything of my own accord. Most items are taxed at point of sale, and then again yearly through registration fees, property tax, and income tax. I might buy a vehicle, but then I’m required to register it every year and be covered by insurance. If I don’t buy insurance, I can be fined, another form of tax. Now we will enter a similar process with health insurance. Buy it or be taxed. I can “buy” property, but then I pay taxes on it every year. If I wanted to have my own farm on which I raised crop and animals enough to provide for my family, I couldn’t do it unless I paid the taxes and licensing fees to do it. There is no ownership, there is only rental.

I might not be so unhappy about the arrangement if the rental fees I paid to the government were used for the purposes they are marketed to be used as, or at least, if the purposes they are used for were relevant to me. I understand property taxes insofar as they pay for local shared utilities and services. I can see the wisdom in this type of community living, what I cannot see the wisdom in is these monies being used to pay someone an extravagant salary and retirement. It has all gotten out of hand. And we’ve done it to ourselves. We have given up on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in return for a little security on what we have at the moment.

At some point we gave up our faith, and relied upon our own courage. But that was imperfect and we got scared, so when we developed any kind of abundance, we safeguarded it, but not through faith and personal courage, through fear and reliance upon an outside influence. All we had to do was give up a little bit of our liberty in exchange. So we did. And then with the security it gave, we fell into complacency, and ever since the carpet has been being pulled out from under us, inch by inch, a little at a time, until now we are on the very edge, about to have it yanked out from under us completely. The sick joke is that we are the ones pulling the carpet! We are about to pulled the carpet right out from under our own feet and then act surprised when we are lying face down on the floor.

We built a house of cards and it is about to fall over. Will we be able to rebuild that house of cards, or will someone else get to the deck first and change the game? In reality the game already changed a long time ago. While some were still working on the house of cards, others were slowly taking cards off of the house and reshuffling them in preparation for a new game. We can all buy in to the new game; of course, the ante is your freedom.

There is one answer, and it is found in that cycle describing our return to bondage. The path starts out in bondage, and the delivery from bondage is found in faith. Faith is the answer. The beauty of the process is that it can be restarted at anytime. We don’t have to return to full bondage (remember, we are already in bondage), we can go right to increasing faith, and then when we are able to incorporate courage, and abundance, we go right back to faith. It can be done, but only if we eliminate selfishness. Again, the root of all problems is selfishness. Meaning the solution to all problems is humility. Further, the root and solution to all problems lies within each individual person in choosing how they will live and relate to other people. Now for the whimsical portion of this revolution, we have the power within us to affect this change; we have always had it, just like E.T., Dorothy, and Rocky IV.