Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Friday ADD Irregulars, WSN Speculators, PHAM & Misfits, Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversant, Lurkers and all the rest of good souls wandering about on Locals on a Friday.

A little read from Viva la Repartee complied by Mardy Grothe,

In 1882, the twenty-eight-year-old Oscar Wilde embarked on a yearlong lecture tour of America. During that much heralded trip, he traveled to more than seventy cities and towns across the U.S. and Canada, lecturing on art and the aesthetic movement to intellectuals in Boston, farmers in Nebraska, and miners in Colorado. With his velvet coat, frilly silk shirts, and patent leather shoes, Wilde looked every inch the English dandy. He also shocked people with his open displays of sensuality (when he met Walt Whitman in New Jersey, the two men greeted each other with a kiss on the lips). Wilde’s tour started with a bang on January 2, 1882, when he arrived at New York Harbor. Asked by a U.S. Customs official if he had anything to declare, he famously replied:

I have nothing to declare but my genius.

A decade earlier, when the teenage Wilde was a student at Trinity College in Dublin, the provost of the school was a larger-than-life figure named John Pentland Mahaffy. An ancient history scholar, Mahaffy was an extraordinarily clever fellow whose witty replies were legendary. In one popular story, he was engaged in a heated debate with a women’s rights advocate when the woman charged, “What is the difference between man and woman?” In an instant, Mahaffy answered:

Madam, I can’t conceive.

Mahaffy’s brilliant reply—simultaneously blending the two separate meanings of the word conceive—has been celebrated by language lovers ever since.

In the age of WOKE witty remarks and funny quips are enjoyed by fewer and fewer individuals. Many are conditioned to join the ranks of the pre-offended or perpetually offended. I cannot think of a more miserable state of mind or operative attitude to embrace than one of anticipated offense and every ready injury. You will not know any happiness and probably experience a ton of emotional or mental maladies in your inability to laugh at reality let alone trying to appreciate it.

I would think to think I am a common sense skeptic, I am conservative in many regards but not all, I am a major fan of wrestling with reality rather than engaging in words games to deny reality. I tend to be a let bygones by bygones and as long as people aren't exploiting others in their actions. Exploitation- my simple definition - taking advantage of the naïve or innocent because of their ignorance or trust (especially children) or acting against the expressed will of another by the use of shame, guilt or intimidation to bend their wills to your beliefs. Yes, yes, I know about the abuse scandal of 2002 and the Inquisition and know the irony, but only the WOKE believe in zero forgiveness and holding others to the worst chapters of the past. Personal and communal reform are always needed, but reform honors and sifts the past and does not completely condemn it. You will never know wholeness of person if you do nothing but reject your past. You gut your personal narrative and will suffer the consequences.

Remember gentle reader, you can never escape the sins of the past with the Gospel of WOKE and you are an inescapable inheritor of the failings of you ancestors. Only the atonement and willingness to public degrade yourself and uncritically accept the ideology of the WOKE can you enter the lowest rung of acceptability. Stay in you lane racist and acknowledge your superiors.

I am listening Nerdrotic talking about season 3 of Picard. I am a kindred spirit with Gary and almost 100% accept his analysis of destroyed franchises and corrupted story telling in the age of WOKE. I am still suffering a bad case of curmudgeon shock at the desecration of Luke Skywalker in the Last Jedi. The Mandalorian won me over temporality to Disney+ for two seasons but that was about the only reason to subscribe to it. When the "Don't say gay" lie was promoted in the media and the Mouse signed on for it, I was done. The Evangelical Wokes never bothered to read the bill or if they did they immediately embraced the lies and repeated it often enough to make it credible.

Sorry for digressing on my curmudgeon rant. I am a mostly joyful realist, not an naïve one, and my inner curmudgeon is nourished by what I see as the rejection of reality and the constant churning of the narrative crock of crap I see the outpouring from the CABAL day in and day out. Skepticism, mockery, a playful wit and sense of humor make watching the crapfest manageable. Of course faith is the bedrock, but that is a given in my engagement with reality. I am a realist because of my faith, not in contradiction to it. There is one reality - try to make some headway into it before your expiration date catches up with you. Have a great day my friend and thanks for indulging me if you have read along this far.