The Measure of Folly

7:24pm: Be on the lookout for web treachery by my crooked and cowardly assailants. It's the only way they know how to 'win' an argument against their victim. And, true to Rochefoucauld's maxim, they receive at least the same protection as the innocent. If I have exposed any web fraud with my statements of late, as I tend to do with my comedy scripts, please flag the offenders or inform the police of them and rid the web of their abomination. MEASURE THIS How to pass the days and hours How to fake eternal bliss Here's an answer for you sharpies Grab a rule and measure this Measure dollars kept in gold bars Count the channels on your screen Put a figure to the old stars Human eye has never seen Fathom ocean's darkest depths Add up fluids in my brain Poll the people to assure you I'm the one who is insane And when done there's only one thing Left for you before you're through Measure for a cozy fit The coffin that's awaiting you ©2004. Verses by David Skerkowski. All Rights Reserved I wrote the above verses in March or April 2004. I was stuck in my parents' home, unable to secure a good job even with my web skills and diploma. A few years earlier I'd found my best friend and room mate hanging from a ceiling hook in my living room. Slightly before that, I'd lost my job, girlfriend, and car all within the span of less than two weeks. There are two kinds of writers, I guess: the first is one who fancies a career as a man of letters; the second, like myself, is one whose writing is a mere afterthought to the turmoil in his heart. (Does that qualify as a maxim? Or is it a proverb? How about an aphorism? No, I think it's too peculiar to be an aphorism.) And the turmoil which generates my writing has been greatly and deliberately increased by stars, web frauds, and the corporate media since I shared this poem in my Blogger account in March or April of 2004 and then observed it being subtly shot down on that boring science show by the bearded man and his string bean of a co-host. (What was that show called again? Oh, yes, the Daily Planet! Daily Plummet is more like it. The only 'intelligent' thing to watch on over a hundred channels and it totally sucked.) One who fancies a career as a man (or woman) of letters is one who desires respect - and seeks payment - for his or her superior intelligence. One, like myself, whose writing is a mere afterthought to the misery of his life, simply spills everything that is inside of him from a wish to somehow alleviate his suffering through the act. And yet, all those who plagiarized my work were persons who strictly wanted others to see them as intelligent. After all, the work was produced by my suffering, not by theirs. What am I criticizing in this poem? I'm criticizing the superficiality of measurements. They tell you if something is bigger or smaller, but they fail to tell you if it is good or bad. The general consensus is that bigger is better, but that is completely wrong. For example, for starters, the smaller vessels of the Royal Navy made mincemeat of the Spanish galleons when England faced Spain in the sixteenth century. And men with great IQ's are capable of even greater errors. If you want an example of how a genius can be a fool, look at Tesla with his death-ray. As he struggled pointlessly to invent an electric 'death-ray', Tesla mocked Einstein's theoretical breakthroughs. Tesla wanted to save us from world wars with a doomsday device that would assure mutual annihilation, but it turned out to be the very equations he mocked which led to its development. In the end, Tesla's mighty tower, paid for by $150,000.00 of George Westinghouse's money at a time when a ballroom gown cost $3.50, was outmatched by the awesome power of a particle so small that it is invisible even under a microscope. I recall reading in Warhol's diaries that he was invited to take an IQ test and refused. He said he didn't want people to know how stupid he was. It was an intelligent decision, even though he probably would have aced the test. I believe he would have aced it because he was Andy Warhol, not because he was overly intelligent. I'm quite certain they have two types of tests for measuring intelligence; one for those whose membership to the elite club of intellectuals is desired and one for those deemed unfit for membership, regardless of their intelligence. My certainty arises from comparing the difficulty of questions on Celebrity Jeopardy to their usual level. If it's a normal show, the question might be something like, 'From which war did the Star-Spangled Banner emerge as a patriotic hymn?' Does that sound typical? But if it's Celebrity Jeopardy, the question is modified: 'Which war, which broke out between the years 1811 and 1813, produced the Star-Spangled Banner? Tom Hanks! (Hanks' answer: The War of 1815!)' Then there is the illusion of intelligence which can be cast by being able to answer questions on a test whose subject matter is restricted to a peculiar or specialized field. Who would be able to explain terms like parsing and concatenation but a computer programmer? And yet those who lack a computer programmer's education and training are humiliated by open demonstrations of this knowledge. My greatest beef with measurements at the moment is the lie presented on my YouTube videos to represent their number of views. While I don't share my music to be popular as much as to express my heart, I certainly don't share it to be disrespected by a crowd whose respect for me is directly commensurate with the number of views they find on my web pages. Why does one of my poetry videos show no views but my own after I suffered being called Casper by a stranger in the street who obviously viewed it? Shouldn't the video show at least his views? This withholding of my real number of views has not only cost me dearly, in terms of winning local support for my efforts, it has encouraged continuous assaults against my copyright for the last ten years. I am sick to death of being called a 'hack' after sharing my most unique insights in my own words with a world that already received them from someone else who stole them from me the last time I shared them. Now, I have had to spend the better part of the last two days hearing feedback from my last post, especially with respect to La Rochefoucauld's maxims regarding cleverness. Did someone really leave a comment on my cartoon that says toon years old? Where's his view? Where's his comment? Sounds like someone who is intimidated by my 'intelligence' when my cartoons are works of my heart, more so than of my brain. It also sounds like someone who is desperate for others to find him clever. How unfortunate that my posts attract so many people of this type. And what sort of books are my detractors talking about? Do they read anything at all outside of my blogs? If all they want to do is bash the author of everything they read, why don't they go pick on Charles Dickens and give me a break? I hope that you have explored La Rochefoucauld beyond what I have shared here about him. His book is small but extremely concise. As such it is recommended by the author of its foreword as an antidote to fuzzy thinking. Television viewing causes fuzzy thinking and I think we are in dire need of this antidote. Also, as an aristocrat, he offers useful insights into the behaviour of the upper class. His truths are as relevant today, with respect to the folly of stars and their upper class friends and supporters, as they were four hundred and fifty years ago, especially with maxims like few know how to be old [the Rolling Stones?] or the most dangerous folly in elderly people who have once been attractive is to forget that they are no longer so [Goldie Hawn?]. For the poor, however, he offered little comment but to say that their physical labours free them from their minds and thus afford them happiness - the kind of comment that might have led directly to the guillotine of the French Revolution. Nonetheless, I have measured my will and found it sufficient, not only to do without smoking for the rest of my life, but to follow through with a career on the stage in the years to come. Mark my words. But who is capable of measuring the human heart? Only God. And it is the only measurement which would give us a true estimation of person's worth.
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