The Keys to My Karma

Many long years since I put pen to paper
My mind's full of mist or possibly vapour

And so my new poem is bound to be vapid
whether or not the wordflow is rapid.

But what can I tell you, what have I learned?
What have I clung to, what have I spurned?

Fell in love with my self for a decade or three
but came to my senses eventually.

And then I began to notice my flaws
transgressions, obsessions and festering sores.

I felt down, I felt out, and very unhappy
My life seemed so empty, and yes, rather crappy.

Until I remembered the rule that is golden
the one that ensures one is never beholden.

As long as you give as much as you get
you'll be free as a bird, don't ever forget.

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eBooks by Cosmic Rapture
(for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader.)

NIGHTMERRIES: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF DARKNESS. This so-called "book" will chew you up, spit you out, and leave you twitching and frothing on the carpet. More than 60 dark and feculent fictions (read ‘em and weep) copiously and grotesquely illustrated.

AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY (Vot could be Verse?). We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.

MANIC MEMES & OTHER MINDSPACE INVADERS. A disturbing repository of quirky quotes, sayings, proverbs, maxims, ponderances, adages and aphorisms. This menagerie holds no fewer than 184 memes from eight meme-species perfectly adapted to their respective environments.

MASTRESS & OTHER TWISTED TAILS. An unholy corpus of oddities, strangelings, bizarritudes and peculiaritisms, including but not limited to barbaric episodes of herring-flinging and kipper-kissing. A cacklingly bizarre read that may induce fatal hysteria. Not Recommended!

FIENDS & FREAKS and serpents, dragons, devils, lobsters, anguished spirits, hungry ghosts, hell-beings, zombies, organ-grinders, anti-gods, gods and other horse-thieves you wouldn't want to meet in a dark cosmos. Immature Content! Adults Maybe.

HAGS TO HAGGIS. An obnoxious folio featuring a puke of whiskey-soaked war-nags, witches, maniacs, manticores and escapegoats. Not to mention (please don't!) debottlenecking and desilofication, illustrated. Take your brain for a walk on the wild side. Leave your guts behind.

A Spasm of Vitriolic Verses, Hellacious Haiku, Pustulent Poems, Satanic Sonnets, Lupine Limericks and Odious Odes.

AWAREWOLF AND OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY (vot could be verse?)

A Spasm of Vitriolic Verses, Hellacious Haiku, Pustulent Poems, Satanic Sonnets, Lupine Limericks and Odious Odes. Read 'em on any device: Tablet, Smartphone, e-Reader, Laptop or Desktop.

Now at Amazon, for 99 measly cents: https://amzn.to/2zH0bJz

Adults-only, read 'em and weep. Here's a sample:

How long is the shortest Planck?

Originally proposed in 1899 by German physicist Max Planck, Planck units “…are also known as natural units because the origin of their definition comes only from properties of nature and not from any human construct.” (Wikipedia 5 Nov. 2016) The Planck length is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000016 meters: supposedly the shortest length possible in the universe.

How small is small? How big is big? How long is the shortest Planck?

There is a planck so short that anything shorter can't be measured, not now or ever, no matter how small your ruler or big your budget. The length of that planck is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000016 meters: supposedly the shortest length possible in the universe.

According to Wikipedia (5 Nov. 2016) “It is impossible to determine the difference between two locations less than one Planck length apart”. At that scale, Reality is discreet, i. e. lumpy, as opposed to continuous, i. e. without any breaks.

How quick are the breaks that Reality takes? As long as the Planck-time: a duration so short you can’t measure it, not now or ever, no matter how quick your clock.

There are many plancks in the ramshackle shack that we know as the universe. There’s a Planck mass, Planck area, Planck energy, even a Planck particle. How many plancks are there? Too many for Einstein: he wanted less wood, more marble.

Originally proposed in 1899 by German physicist Max Planck, Planck units “…are also known as natural units because the origin of their definition comes only from properties of nature and not from any human construct.” (Wikipedia 5 Nov. 2016)

Planck units are based on the Planck constant, “…a physical quantity that is generally believed to be both universal in nature and having a constant value in time” (Wikipedia 5 Nov. 2016): in other words, a number that applies everywhere, always, and never changes.

But what if they’re wrong?

Lumpy or Smooth?

What's the nature of Reality: lumpy or smooth?

Concerning the answer to that question, some cosmologists have big toes; some have fat guts.

String theorists get all tied up in knots about it.
M-theorists haven’t got the branes to decide.
Relativists absolutely understand the gravity of the situation.

Light is discreet — she is made of particles, photons. No, Light is continuous — she comes in waves.

Reality is discreet: she keeps her secrets safe.
No, Reality is continuous: she has no gaps or overlaps.

Reality is smoompy, no, smumpy, no, looth.

1927 Solvay International Conference: physicists meet to discuss quantum theory. (back row L to R) A. Piccard, E. Henriot, P. Ehrenfest, E. Herzen, Th. de Donder, E. Schrödinger, J.E. Verschaffelt, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, R.H. Fowler, L. Brillouin; P. Debye, M. Knudsen, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, P.A.M. Dirac, A.H. Compton, L. de Broglie, M. Born, N. Bohr; (Front row) I. Langmuir, M. Planck, M. Skłodowska-Curie, H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, P. Langevin, Ch.-E. Guye, C.T.R. Wilson, O.W. Richardson. The only woman is Marie Curie (front, 3rd from left).

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Free Lunch (the Law of the Conservation of Karma)

The three fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, "...who spin, draw out and cut the thread of Life ... as they triumph over the fallen body of Chastity." (Wikipedia 23 April 2014). I don't know what Chastity's got to do with it. Death triumphs over Chastity? Doesn't make sense to me.

The fact that anything exists at all is a very good sign pointing to the basic fairness, rightness and justice of Everything*.

You can get a free lunch, you just gotta know where to look (Everywhere and forever, all at once.)

According to philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, “god” is the answer to the question about why anything exists. The question arises from the contradiction between a reality in which things exist, and the idea that non-existence is easier than existence. In contrast to non-existence, which requires nothing, “everything that is possible demands to exist,” as Leibniz puts it.

But the fact that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people is a bad sign, pointing in the other direction, to the basic randomness and meaninglessness of Everything.

This post is about how that apparent contradiction is resolved by the Law of the Conservation of Karma.

In physics, the Law of the Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can only be changed from one form to another.

Similarly, the Law of the Conservation of Karma states that justice (karma) cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change from one form to another. In other words, everyone gets their just desserts, maybe not at the time or in the form anticipated, but at one stage or another, at one place or another, in one way or another. Everyone gets what’s coming to them, sooner or later, here or there, once or twice, in one lump or many.

Note to Self

Must find out why I'm here.
Must discover where "here" is.
Must clarify what I am.
Must understand what "what" is, and why.
Must identify when now is, and how.
Must do all of the above, then die.

Not published in AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader. We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.

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What is and what will never be

Animated simulation of gravitational lensing caused by a black hole going past a background galaxy. ... The maximum amplification occurs when the background galaxy ... is exactly behind the black hole. (Wikipedia 14 July 2016)

The Isthmus of Isness protrudes into the Sea
of Serendipitous Stochasticity

Generic lifeforms gambol in the quantum foam
so near yet so far from any kind of home

Indeterminate are those who lack specificity
and disrespect outlying six sigma eccentricity

Estranged the Higgs boson within a dubious ontology
makes many martyrs to a furious phenomenology

White-coated observers collapse the wave function
of many a double-slitted choiceful junction

While a black hole lurks in the depths of a cavity
where nothing escapes the malevolence of a monstrous gravity

Published in AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader. We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.

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Ninja-boy and the clouds

In the dead of the day the ninja crept like a wounded hyena toward its prey. No clouds crossed the sky; the ninja wondered why. He had always wondered where the clouds go to die: a practice that had cost him dear over the years. The times, for instance, when as a boy he had turned to his father and plaintively enquired, "Oh where do the clouds go to die, daddy-san?" only to receive a swift box about the earhole, and the stern rebuke, "What the crap are you bleating now, shit-fer-brains? Jus' eat your rice and shut the fuck up!"

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The Bindu of a Naked Numbskull

Portrait of Thomas Aquinas painted by Carlo Crivelli, 1476

"How many angels can dance on the point of a pin?" is a question first asked by such truth-seekers as Aquinas in the glorious age of scholasticism, when metaphysical nitpicking, hair-splitting and name-calling were the order of the day.

Counting angels is not easy when they’re standing still, let alone jitterbugging on emptiness. And if the dimensionless point at the end of a pin were as infinitely rich in potential as the bindu of Hindu metaphysics, to count the angels you'd need some really tight air traffic control.

But if the point were a dome, and the angels were very thin, how many could dance on the head of a bald man?

Becoming bald is a process involving a diminishing number of hairs. But let's get specific. At the loss of which hair, precisely, can the label "bald" validly be applied? Or, if you're loading straw onto the back of a camel, what is the number of the straw that breaks the camel’s back?

Most if not all questions about moving from one state to another involve a paradox. According to the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno, motion is an illusion, and yet he sat on many stools. Paradoxes are like boogeymen: they seem scary and threatening but when you look closely they lack substance. Most if not all paradoxes emerge from the inherent limitations of human thought and language. Resolving them is simply a matter of accurate definition.

For instance, baldness could be defined as the mean headhairiness density of 0-2 hairs per square centimetre across more than 94.2% of naked numbskull.

Alternatively, we could apply a reductive definition paradigm based on recursion theory. If a full head of hair comprises, say, a million hairs, baldness could be defined as the phase transition marked by the loss of hair #999,678, and absolutely and totally bald, as the end-state marked by the loss of hair #1, i.e. the ultimate hair (hair #2 is the penultimate).

Similar methods can be applied to counting straws and camels.

Now if there’s no bijection, this post can draw to an ignominious close.

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Awarewolf

I came upon a golem
“encountered” one might say
eating dust as golems must
all bloody, muddy day.

I came upon a zombie
a zombie that I saw
gobbling brains ’til brainy stains
remained upon the floor.

I came upon a vampire
a vampire I did see
drinking blood that streamed in flood
bright red quite readily.

I came upon a werewolf
“awarewolf” as it were
hungry eyes saw my demise
my death, if you prefer.

I came upon the humans
in their global sauna
they ate a world and then they hurled
their guts out in a corner.

Sign of success (dream)

I am employed by a firm of consultants. My office is in the middle of the alfresco dining area of a luxury hotel. I am happy. I feel good. I am not concerned about the fact that my office is in a terrible mess: papers everywhere, ashtrays full of butts and ash, and strange green caterpillars crawling all over the back of my chair.

The caterpillars have long, bristly hairs. Could they be dangerous? Are the hairs tipped with potent neurotoxins? Should I kill the caterpillars? I decide not to.

I find a sign on which most of the lettering is faded and illegible but I can read some of the words: "Director of Superannuation… in honour of… recognition… excellence…"

Two workmen enter the office wanting to affix the sign. We have a friendly conversation. I say "I'm amazed, astounded, really bowled over. Nobody tells me anything. It's the first I've heard of it. Without any inappropriate modesty I feel it is richly warranted…"

The workmen respond by saying they have known about it for some time--the fact that my achievements are to be recognised by means of the sign. The workmen go away. I go for a walk in the garden. When I return, the sign is no longer to be seen. I search my office, but the sign is nowhere to be found. The green caterpillars are still crawling on the back of my chair. I am not worried, or upset. I feel cheerful. I suspect the workmen may have taken the sign. But they probably have a good reason for doing so. I don't know what that could be.

President Bill Clinton enters the office. He is CEO. He knows about the sign. We look for it together.

"You are one of my best generals," he says to me.

Tomb-Sweeping Day

Five coloured papers placed on the mound of a grave in Bukit Brown Cemetery, Singapore, during Qingming Festival. There is a shrine to the Earth Deity (土地公 Tǔ Dì Gōng), also known as 后土 (Hòu Tǔ; "Backing of the Land"), on the left of the gravestone. Photo by wikipedia User:Jacklee.

Thursday 4 April 2002 was a very busy day. It was Children's Day, Tomb-Sweeping day, and the Death of President Chiang Kai Shek Day.

According to Wikipedia: "The Qingming or Ching Ming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English, is a traditional Chinese festival on the first day of the fifth solar term of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar. This makes it the 15th day after the Spring Equinox, either 4 or 5 April in a given year. ...

"Qingming has been regularly observed as a statutory public holiday in China. In Taiwan, the public holiday is now always observed on 5 April to honor the death of Chiang Kai-shek on that day in 1975. It became a public holiday in mainland China in 2008."

My diary says it's celebrated in Taiwan on the 4th April, but Wikipedia is probably right about it being the 5th.

I know it's unworthy of me, but I can't help but imagine a "bizarro-world" in which the festival of Tomb-Messing Day is celebrated. On that day, everyone has to go to the nearest tomb and mess it up -- throw garbage at it, or dead leaves, or evil sandwiches. It's also known as "Disrespecting Your Ancestors Day".

Banquet for bacteria

From Einstein we learn about the relativity that applies to aspects of time and space. But relativity is even more absolute than Einstein imagined! Everything is relative, including the meaning of words, the meaning of meaning, and meaning itself. The truth we assign to things is never true from all perspectives.

Consider, for example, a picnic in the park. Mum, dad, and a couple of kids, sitting on a blanket eating sandwiches, boiled eggs, and other picnic food. One of the kids is unable to eat all of the food ze has taken (the "...eyes bigger than your stomach..." syndrome). Ze surreptitiously disposes of the uneaten food by throwing it into the bushes.

One of the parents notices and criticises the child along these lines: "Don't throw that food away, there are people starving in XYZ country. What a waste! I paid good money for that. And another thing, haven't I told you not to litter? You are spoiling it for everyone, making a mess like that!"

Harmonies of baked liverwurst

The faint tinkling of fairy music
evaporating on the sparkly misty meadow
fleeing the Blade of Intention
fearing cold nakedness
its verisimilitude stillborn, sometimes rebirthed:
Harmonies of Baked Liverwurst.

Encircling that which won’t
or that witch will
shorn of etymological linguini
equilibria egregiously punctuated
its verisimilitude quiver-cursed:
Harmonies of Baked Liverwurst.

Arrowshot, debarked and deboned
so very like the river
burst its bank, the peoples’ bank
sea-stark, unthroned
its verisimilitude to health renursed:
...

The laziest man in history

Once upon a time there was a lazy man, the laziest man in history. His name was Henry Peter Gaines.

He was so lazy that he couldn’t even do the things he enjoyed doing like eating and watching television, because it was just too much effort. He was so lazy that he found it an ordeal to do nothing but mooch around the house all day in his dirty underpants munching pistachio nuts and quaffing fizzy drinks.

As well as being lazy (some would say because of being lazy) he was also very bored — so bored that on weekends and holidays he could think of nothing better to do than to sleep.

Every Friday night, for instance, Henry would go to bed around nine, nine thirty. He would wake up around eight on Saturday morning, doze in bed for an hour or two, then get up and shuffle to the toilet. After that, he would either go back to bed, or make himself a cup of tea then try and decide how to spend the day.

where consciousness lives

A process is a frozen pattern. Consciousness is a process and cannot be found at any material address in this or any other universe or reality. Patterns, on the other hand, can be found at many material addresses, including wool, cotton, polyester and many others in the fabric of reality.

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many mansions

What do we mean by "real"? Is matter more real than energy? Is a tree more real than the idea of a tree? Is the idea of a tree real? Are ideas real? Is a sound more real than a thought? Is actuality more real than possibility?

What is an action? Is an action real? An action is not a physical thing. It is not a thought. Or is it?

Is the idea that there is (are) a god (gods) less real than the fact (assuming it is a fact) of there being a god or gods?

In my father's house (the multiverse/reality) are many mansions: the Mansion of Matter, the Mansion of Mind, the Mansion of Memory, the Mansion of Mystery, to name but a few.

You can find roast chicken in the Mansion of Matter. You can find a recipe for roasting chicken in the Mansion of Mind. You can find molecules in the Mansion of Matter. You can find ways to understand what a molecule is in the Mansion of Mind.

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