fag of freedom flying

I'm preparing to reenter the workforce and dread it. Work feels like slavery. "I'm gainfuly unemployed," I once said after quitting a demoralizing job.

When defining slavery and employment, I'm slippery between synonyms. Slavery is bowing to work under threat. There are also dire consequences if we don't work for money: a life of poverty and severe limitations on where we go, what we eat, medical attention, friends, etc. We don't use the phrase wage slave to be ironic -- we often believe and behave as slaves. I gotta, I must, I haveta.

If working for money is the opposite of slavery then freedom is money, or freedom can be bought for money. Maybe we can agree money buys power. Let's shake on it: the opposite of slavery is not freedom but power.

When I shout "I need freedom," I euphemistically intone, "I want power." Wanting power is not a bad thing. I need control over objects and influence people to get food, shelter, etc. But we are nice people and will keep saying we want "choices", "liberty", "freedom" -- while blithely hoping for pain-free and fear-free circumstances.

If there is a state of freedom -- IF -- it is the belief that I can make pleasurable choices. I say pleasurable because I can't ignore the positive emotional exudation of the word "freedom". It's abit like a religion; there is no freedom without belief. When we believe we are free we become factories manufacturing choices. Just watch me, I can, I will, why not?

But I'm no believer. I can't believe in abstractions. The best I can do is pull on a persona of hope. And I'm not playing cynical; masks restore damaged skin.

Homo's pun wisdom

There have been no posts for many days because I've been a victim of my own disorganized thinking. But this isn't going to stop me from posting any longer. Why don't I post lists of disordered thoughts? Hopefully there will many more editions of Homo's Pun Wisdom, as well as lists of paradoxes, subjects that I've never heard songs about, and human behaviours which should be banned.

Some people don't get puns; these people are the groaners, those who groan. On my off days I groan too. But on my good days the meaningless pun gives me a tiny satori, a petty mort (petite more). I don't get this flash of joy because the pun is funny - that couldn't be possible. Maybe it's because the pun reveals the flaws in our thinking - after all, rationally we shouldn't accept most puns - usually meaningless word plays on thoughts which formerly made sense. And knowing how we don't know is more telling than the truth.

A street person at Commercial & Broadway held a sign: "I'm broker than the 10 Commandments." This shouldn't be funny, but it made me laugh - laugh enough to spare some change. And it shouldn't be funny because "broker" does not mean more broken. Yet we recognize the homophony and we make false connections between discreet thoughts.

So, the meaning of a pun is often pointless, but its always for a good cause. Well, before I get hung up I'll drop the phoneme.

1. keep out of harem's way
2. the lengths a ruler will go to
3. I smelt something fishy
4. a tenant of our faith
5. faux pause
6. colour is a dyer need
7. mail bonding
8. face, the see-side
9. a merde of cows
10. infant isle: try all of the innocents