Tag Archives: 2019

Cogs Two Ice Floes Post

Shaking the August Stick

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Shaking the August Stick

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Cognitive Dissonance

 

 

Sometime towards the end of the third or fourth week of August, usually after one or two cooler nights brings them out in droves, Mrs. Cog and I go in search of a few sturdy August Sticks. While in a pinch anything can be used, a broom handle minus the broom, an actual stick fallen from a tree or a length of small diameter metal or plastic pipe, experience has taught us the best August Stick is a thin four to five-foot-long piece of bamboo repurposed after a summer propping up some top-heavy pepper plants.

It’s happened to each and every one of us at some point in our lives. We’re walking down a sidewalk or path in the woods, under some trees or overhanging deck, or turning the corner of our house when we plow face first into a large sticky spider web. Because we don’t actually see it until we’re fully entangled, we don’t know if a spider is now stuck to our face and body and is getting ready to counter attack.

Ugh! Continue reading Shaking the August Stick →

Cogs Two Ice Floes Post

Empire in Decline – Propaganda and the American Myth

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Empire in Decline - Propaganda and the American Myth

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Cognitive Dissonance

 

 

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive…ourselves.” - With apologies to Sir Walter Scott.

 

If only life was as neat and orderly as my ancient history text book showed it to be. There it was on glossy paper, spread out across several sets of adjoining pages, maps of the ancient and modern world. Sometimes there were time lines top and bottom, along with countries helpfully outlined and identified. Underneath their modern English names were one or two older names in smaller stylized script, often including exact beginning and end dates. I remember one in particular caught my eye. “The United States of America” followed by the year 1776. But with no end date indicated, it looked like unfinished business to me. You’ve got to love those historians and their precise dates.

Of course, in reality there are no exact dates for the birth and death of city/states, other than in the historian’s mind. Children continue to be born, the old still die, and life goes on under ever changing circumstances. But you are rarely informed of the subjective nature of historical events when you’re young and impressionable, so they’re presented in the history books as cold hard facts. The last thing the reigning Imperial Empire wants is to appear uncertain about prior eons, epochs and echoes in time. Continue reading Empire in Decline – Propaganda and the American Myth →

Cogs Two Ice Floes Post

Meanderings

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Meanderings

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Cognitive Dissonance

 

 

Tis the Season

Silly season is upon us. And I, for one, welcome my alien overlords. I speak, of course, of the national presidential election cycle already in progress. Every four years, in a sort of grotesque circadian rhythm, the so-called Presidential cicadas…err…candidates, pop up out of nowhere, noisy, pesky and ultimately irritating unless you happen to be mesmerized. Unfortunately, the life span of this particular species of political pest is not 14, or even 30 days, but more like 600.

For several decades now, I have referred to this political and social phenomenon as the silly season. And for good reason I might add. At no other point in our day to day lives, except possibly Christmas, are we piled so high with such ridiculousness as when the latest pack of jabbering jackals come calling for our vote. To describe the process as political pandering would be too kind, and incorrect to boot. Essentially we are told what we want to hear and promised the moon and stars, something which speaks far more about us than it does them. Continue reading Meanderings →