Friendly friends and On some of Meta's new patents.

I wished them all well--a very deep dark well where their screams would find no foothold whatsoever; but no, in seriousness, "as long as your interests don't contradict with my interests".

And even then, if they do contradict, if the twain touch felicities, if the proton streams cross--in a blinding flash of time-killing world-devouring paradox, I would be chasing at their heels like a puppy with a delighted smile on my face, "do good! do good!"

"To thine own self" and all that, Thoreau and his lives of quiet desperation: oh these walls we build, these little guiles and daydreams, such that we can barely see our hands, our fingers, right before our very eyes, and Facebook planning on telling people when not to log on, patenting the software feature, a "time-out" or "day off" feature to keep eyes from bogging.  The key is not to say when to log off, but when to log on: they will let you know--or the content mode where only the very most "importantest" things are shown, or other modes, where one can veritably swim in a sea of friend content, random and unmerciful.

My most friendly friends, sparing my spittle in this desert of ingratitude, sparing it to splash it across their jaw and eyelids: "Ho, friends!  Look what we begot at last brooking, our own chords and pullets, our own jack-jaw fogmouth such as of the positioning of personalities in hopes of future favors, nude photos, and other such."  In a word, the old dark alchemist dream: gratitude.

I dangle a long chord, myself, down there, and they don't see at first: a low blood sugar brain haze, don'cha know, and I say, "hey stupid", and such as it is, the world has lost nothing nor gained anything, but in the spiritual balance, there is a burst of gratitude that comes, and part of me, the mystic, wonders if that is not unseated and redistributed from someone else, at that time having experienced a reversal of fortune, i.e. Karma.

"There would have been time for such a word hereafter."

Of Cleanthes, from earlier, the somewhat illiterate of the Stoics that trained physically to no end, built himself large, as they talk in the old literature of diet, exercise, dress code, and cold water hyjinks.

Of Cato, to stand firmly against the entire lot, perhaps a hundred of them in the room, and only he in opposition, defending virtue, defending truth, staying steadfast for the interest of the republic.

That was physical courage and moral courage.

Epictetus the slave Stoic: Temperance.  As a slave, he supped the dregs, and worked his life away, but did he complain?  It was like Viktor Frankl, in the sense that the horrible experience only sharpened the point he was trying to make, putting ink on his quill and words in his mind to be transcribed and still learned into the far future.

To Seneca: Wisdom, a life of plenty, a man of property, reputation, renown, high-ranking friends.  The high-ranking wanted to learn from him, and he took unto himself a student that he called friend, or was it a friend that he called student?  That one had seen the example of Seneca, and thusly of his own accord, embarked on a long spiritual journey to learn the ways of Seneca.

Such is the way, life sometimes is coarse, but other times, its more stuffed with cake frosting and pet dander, like in Nicole's purse, and at best, we could just hope to advise in some form or fashion--if she took the notion to really listen--the man in her ear, the little complaint box that is social media--and when caught in mid-stroke somewhere along the avenue, she bursts into a Beatle's song, which perversely undoes all consequence, as if reality itself were put on too high a shelf for the angry public to reach, and as if she were a child, inspecting her cuticles for more of the cake frosting: firmly forbidding her to ruin her supper of one meat, two veg, and a sensible desert--but its her "butt medicine" she says, the cake frosting, her weight gain supplement and it clogs her too, like cheese does a lot of people, so all the better, and her doing the evil eye and Sicilian curses at the plumbing snake--why, if I had to entirely piss-away two hours, Nicole, yer know, yar bajangoes and all that.

Kind of a rough-hewn stick-frame and an old C10, kind of a "up yours" to the focus groups that cause all of our new products to be so terrible.  "The ones with the money" that they gather, black people names for Toyotas, and people making careers on things that aren't productive: in fact, oft-times, the least-paid of the work force seem to be the people feeding us, keeping us alive, consequently, and the people making the vanity items seem to be retiring early.  How easy to forget what's important, what's core business, and replace that with some odd little daydream.  And then Facebook was trying to show me pornographic videos, something of a woman showing me her tattoo("I look innocent, until you see my tattoos"), and how many young Davids and Erics had plastered sperm over it already, spackled it neatly away into the land of post-orgasm forgetfulness, under a rising tide of slumber, even as she talks about needing an iTunes card and all; she wants love, she says.  Fifty dollars and a constant stream of empty small talk on the messenger: do you have Whatsapp, Telegram?

And the Gaineys had hanged sausage in the smokehouse; I seen it, a glimpse, and smelled of it walking back from the old hidden well.  "You can climb out of this well before sundown, I'll buy you a Steam card".  "My love." It was cheaper just to use a shotgun shell and let her body feed the wildlife: kind of cross-cut Jeffrey Dahmer ran through a super collider with the modern bald Johnny Depp, and we get almost to that level of near-terminal creepage, where I'm in Nicole's handbag trying to actually sniff the cake frosting.  All the while, the whole time, I'm skulking around like creeping dementia, texting randomly to the girl in the well.  "Hi."  And then: "Talk to me, baby.  I haven't made you mad?"

How many of these people had forgotten, turned their backs on the core business?