Poetry by Lawrence R. Spencer. Poetic nonsense by Lawrence R. Spencer and others. Haiku poems by Lawrence R. Spencer.
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This game is not controlled by you.
You are a piece being played by beings
of whom you are not aware.
Create your own playground.
Don’t be a piece. Be aware.
Make your own rules.
Be a player.
Begin.
Win.
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Lawrence R. Spencer. 2012.
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In November of 1905, an enraged Mark Twain sent the following superb letter to J. H. Todd, a salesman who had just attempted to sell bogus medicine to the author by way of a letter and leaflet delivered to his home. According to the literature Twain received, the “medicine” in question — called “The Elixir of Life” — could cure such ailments as meningitis (which had previously killed Twain’s daughter in 1896) and diphtheria (which killed his 19-month-old son). Twain, himself of ill-health at the time and very recently widowed after his wife suffered heart failure, was understandably furious and dictated this reply to his secretary, which he then signed.
Transcript follows:
Nov. 20. 1905
J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.
Dear Sir,
Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.
Adieu, adieu, adieu!
Mark Twain
_________________________
REPOSTED FROM: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/youre-idiot-of-33rd-degree.html
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Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 satirical science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians. The novel explores his interaction with—and eventual transformation of—terrestrial culture. The title is an allusion to the phrase in Exodus 2:22. According to Heinlein, the novel’s working title was The Heretic. Several later editions of the book have promoted it as “The most famous Science Fiction Novel ever written”. Heinlein got the idea for the novel when he and his wife had some brainstorming one evening in 1948, and she suggested a new version of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, where a human child is raised by Martians instead of wolves. He decided to go further with the idea, and worked on the story on and off for more than a decade before it was complete. In 1962, this version received the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The book was a success from the start. Eventually Stranger in a Strange Land became a cult classic.
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“I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”
~ Charles Darwin, letter to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860
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Ichneumonidae is a family of parasitic wasps, and one of my particular research interests. If you’ve never heard of a parasitic wasp before, think chest-burster from Alien, but for insects. A more scientific definition is that parasitoid wasps lay their eggs inside or on top of other insects; those eggs then grow and develop by feeding on their host’s tissue, resulting in the eventual death of the host. Estimates of the total species range from 60,000 to over 100,000.
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Here is a list books I read (I usually listen to the audiobook version) during the last two years (in no particular order). There may have been others, but these are most worthy of mention. I have read many of these books more than once, as I consider them to be seminal works of English literature, or fundamental to an understanding of Life, Universes and Other Stuff.
I have discovered that not all “spiritual” books are necessarily spiritual. Likewise, I find that some books in the science fiction and history genre reveal a profound
understanding of the nature andbehavior of humans. For example, there is no doubt in my mind that foibles and follies described in The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon reveal in painfully absurd detail the reality that the humans who populate modern Western civilization of Europe and the United States are the very same beings who built and destroyed the civilizations of Rome and it’s immediate predecessor, Greece. And, we are the very same spiritual beings who build and destroy every civilization, life after life, again and again, in the Eternal Now.
The more things change, the more humans remain the same. If you have read the book Alien Interview, you will understand the cyclical nature of human insanity and the wicked wizards and witches
behind the “curtain of lies” that perpetuate our stupidity, brutal depravity and the inability to confront the evil beings who perpetuate our pain. Factually, the serpentine parasites who enslave the “untouchables of Earth” are terrified that innocent and honest inquiries of children and small dogs will expose and depose them from their brutal thrones of power, control and possession of the physical universe, without which they would perish in the frigid, eternal dark from which they were spawned! Likewise, The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine and the books of E.E. Doc Smith and Robert Heinlein reveal profound understandings of philosophy and spirituality that are forbidden, and unknown, in religious texts on Earth. Reading the autobiographies of Yogananda, and Gandhi, and Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain exposed me to “Spiritual Skyscrapers” who tower with magnificent wisdom and courage above the barren landscape of human inhumanity.
Such beings, who demonstrate the most powerful empathy for their fellow beings, are magnified in contrast to a race of spiritual monstrosities (the “Edorians” of The Lensman Series, for example) as elucidated with demonic eloquence by Hitler in Mein Kampf. Although the “bad guys” are just as powerful and “intelligent” as any “good guy” they are utterly and irreversibly antipathetic to every spiritual entity in every universe, including themselves! I suspect that the game of “good guys” versus “bad guys” is simply an eternal, intergalactic struggle for survival between two equally opposed races of spiritual beings who originated in different times and places, but who now coexist in the space / time continuum of the physical universe.
Personally, I have grown weary of mortal games. I write books that suggest alternatives to the physical universe logic of dichotomies: life /death, good /bad, black / white, life / death, up /down, in / out, etc.,. I prefer the “illogic” of immortal spirits, infinite possibilities and unlimited imagination! Life, and Universes, and Other
Stuff are created from and sustained by the “no-thing” of Eternal Spiritual Beings. However, I have read that the spiritually ignorant physicists of western universities are finally beginning to “grok” that Quantum Mechanics has been known and understood by the Vedic sages and gurus of India for more than 10,000 years. Light, energy, matter, forms and spaces are contrivances of our own imaginations.
In spite of all the books I’ve read, I have, as yet, not discovered the solution to escaping the “Wheel of Life”, or the Cycle of Birth and Death. I hope that the books I am planning to read during the next year will provide me with some real answers, as I’m not getting any younger. Religious lies and rhetoric notwithstanding, not a single author of a book I’ve read has died and returned to tell us how to “escape from Earth”. If you have read a book that verifiably solves this problem, please let me know. I will add it to my list of “must read” books.
— Lawrence R. Spencer. October, 2013.
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The History of The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire (Unabridged), by Edward Gibbon
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, by Robert Heinlein
Strangers in A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures, by Virginia Morell
The Art of Happiness, by Howard C.Cutler, with the Dalai Lama
Mein Kampf, by Aldolph Hitler
Vermeer: Portraits of A Lifetime, by Lawrence R. Spencer
The Skylark of Space: Skylark Series #1, by E.E. Doc Smith
Skylark Two, by E.E. Doc Smith
Skylark of Valeron (#3), by E.E. Doc Smith
Skylark DuQuesne: Skylark Series #4, by E.E. Doc Smith
The Lensman Series, (6 books) by E.E. Doc Smith
Triplanetary
First Lensman
Galactic Patrol
Gray Lensman
Second Stage Lensman
Children of The Lens
The Spacehounds of IPC, by E.E. Doc Smith
The Oz Factors, by Lawrence R. Spencer
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Valis, by Philip K. Dick
Alien Interview, Edited by Lawrence R. Spencer
The Dying Earth, by Jack Vance
An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, by Mohandas (Mahatma) K. Gandhi
1,001 Things to Do While You’re Dead: A Dead Persons Guide to Living, by Lawrence R. Spencer
The Bhagavad Gita, by Phoenix Books , Barbara Stoler-Miller (translator)
The Big Bleep: Mystery of A Different Universe, by Lawrence R. Spencer
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius, by Marc J. Seifer
Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda
Our Occulted History: Do the Global Elite Conceal Ancient Aliens?, by Jim Marrs
My Inventions, by Nikola Tesla
Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott
Sherlock Holmes: My Life, by Lawrence R. Spencer
Ubik, by Phillip K. Dick
Vermeer: Portraits of A Lifetime, by Lawrence R. Spencer
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break: A Novel, by Steven Sherrill
Winter of the World: The Century Trilogy, Book 2, by Ken Follett (partial)
Coming of Conan The Cimmerian, by Robert E. Howard
A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1, by George R. Martin
The Dispossessed: A Novel, by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: The millennium Trilogy, Book 1, by Steig Larsson
The Vortex Blaster, by E.E. “Doc” Smith
The Republic, by Plato
Fall of Giants: The Century Trilogy, Book 1, by Ken Follett
The Confession: A Novel, by John Grisham
Sherlock Holmes: My Life, by Lawrence R. Spencer
Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
Enders Game, by Orson Scott Card
Autobiography of Mark Twin (Unabridged), by Mark Twain
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, by Loa Tzu, translated by Stephen Mitchell
The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers, by Will Durant
You See But You Do Not Observe, by Robert J. Sawyer
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine
The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1 and 2, by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Valley of Fear, by Arthur Conan Doyle
His Last Bow, by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Under the Dome, by Stephen King
The Rape of The Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D.
The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, by Frances Stonor Saunders
The Magus of Strovolos: The Extraordinary World of a Spiritual Healer, by Kyriacos C. Markides,
1984, by George Orwell
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
The Rise of The Fourth Reich, by Jim Marrs
The Face, by Dean Koontz (and, about a dozen of his other books in years past! )
Meditation on Living, Dying and Loss, by Graham Coleman with the Dalai Lama
Tick Tock, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
Dracula, by Bram Stoker