Month: November 2019 | the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 30, 2019 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This technically should be down the page, say at about Number eight. But, this week we didn’t do numbers.

Hey! Let’s do a Day in the Life of TToT post!

After all, it’s still Friday. And despite today, the day after Thanksgiving, being possessed of socio-economic benefits second only to the Golden Fleece, the Arc of the Convent and an official Buy-Two-Get-None-Free card.* I’ll take you on a typical Friday workday. Shout out to our Host, Kristi for keeping the doors open and the lights on, here at ‘the clubhouse that Lizzi created’

So, to the people** places and things that elicit a sense and/or feeling of gratitude in this week (or longer) passed.

Awake but not yet out the door

(Yes, Phyllis, having a real job, has the day off. Una is already as much on the job as anyone: sitting behind their desk, coffee at the ready, standing in front of the class, her pupils looking up expectantly, hearing the escalating roar of the machine winding up for a day of manufacturing widgets and other items. In other words, Una has started her day guarding her humans and the house).

car

Davis Ave (a renovation project that I am keeping an eye on for the owners)

Westerly (Thats the Washington Trust Bank and to the left in the background, the library)

Office

Chapter 24 the Case of the Missing Starr (First time reader? Start with Chapter 1)

THIS SPACE AVAILABLE. Anyone with a nearly-total desire to participate, try it out! Send in your Grat Item and I’ll post it here with attribution and ever thang.

Secret Rule 1.3. (In layman’s terms: Even though no one’s gonna bomb you with critical comments if your post does not have Ten (Things of Thankful). Sometimes you find it…not easy. But you persevere, (which, not surprisingly, conforms to the demographic ’round here), and you struggle like Ward Bond past Items Number 8 and 9. You have almost completed the Ten Items… how do you feel? (No, not exhausted. We’re looking for something a little less duressed… Relieved? Well, not really, but you’re getting warm. Think about the last time you took a multiple choice test. You’re focusing on the questions, the answers of which are A, B, C, & D in blocky columns down the answer page. You’re working so hard that you’re looking only at the row that you need to apply the Number 2 pencil to… then, worn to the point of considering everything is D, you look and the column you’re on? It does not…I repeat, DOES NOT! go all the way to the bottom of the paper the way all the others did… Yes? In back? Totally fricken grateful? Yes. We can accept that… that is why there is a Secret Rule 1.3)

* of course, of these three, one of the aforementioned artifacts is less likely than the other two to actually be ‘real’

** ‘people’ being defined as lifeforms with names and the capacity to return love

music

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 28, 2019 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, enjoyed by millions.

Six sentence maximum, (and minimum), on the story you write based on the week’s prompt word.

This week’s Six is an excerpt from Chapter 24 of our serial mystery, ‘the Case of the Missing Starr’

This week’s prompt word:

POUND

I sat at a table in front of a place called, Café Caffiend across from the entrance to a building known locally as ‘Big Red’; Starr Prendergast, the young woman I was being paid to find, was, according to a hopefully-reliable source, meeting someone there at noon; I loved and hated this part of the job.

At five past twelve, Starr walked around the corner and was almost to the main entrance of the blood-red office building when a woman stepped out of the shadows of the lobby, right hand extended like a salesperson meeting a client for the first time; then my day got interesting.

The similarities suggested by both of them being blond and attractive, immediately faded as I stared at woman from the building; Starr is beautiful, in great shape and impeccably, if not eccentrically dressed; the other woman was shorter, good, if not spectacular figure, and wore a dark business suit; I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

As I sat gazing past the steady stream of Chicago lunch hour traffic, my phone dinged, and, bringing it up to eye level, I saw a photo of me at my table and, through some magic of camera angles, Starr and this woman across the street.

I looked up and the other woman was staring at me with an intensity that made it feel she was half-an-inch and a midnight heartbeat from my face; she smiled, and with a waving motion, made it clear she would be very pleased if I joined them.

I crossed the street, the lights going red and stopping all traffic even as I approached the curb, and I found myself thinking, “Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound” and walked across South Wabash Avenue.

music

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

The Original Thanksgiving post from… -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 27, 2019 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

As a nod to our (weak) rogerian tertiary aspect* today we are re-printing original the Wakefield Doctrine Thanksgiving post. Published on November 24, 2010 we present it in it’s entirety, un-cut, un-abridged** and uncensored, complete with original music and, as an added bonus, notes and commentary from reprints in the intervening years.

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

As everyone knows we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving here in Oceania. Once a single-day holiday, calendar-creep now has it starting on Wednesday and ending Sunday night (…”man, did you see the traffic on the interstate”?). We will make every effort to keep the Posts coming, even through such a distracting time of year. (This Post is as mixed and confused as the Holiday itself).
Second only to Christmas in it’s demands upon the members (of our) culture, Thanksgiving is shedding it’s historical camouflage and coming into it’s own in terms of proscribed ritual behavior. Of course, Thanksgiving has always laid claim to being a standalone, not-a-hand-me-down, genuine American holiday, unlike those twin imported festivals, Christmas and Easter. As children we are not only taught the story of ‘The First Thanksgiving’, we even had school-directed Thanksgiving lessons.¹ As a result, it is a holiday in which it is relatively simple to know how to act properly and as such, is clark-friendly.²I probably should resurrect/re-post something from the Doctrine archives that deal with the holidays, but hey! it’s Thanksgiving Week!! And we all know what that means!

…it means stress raised to levels otherwise experienced only on Wedding Days, (the day before) major Surgery, asking a girl out for the first time and/or giving birth; all delivered to every single member of your family unit in equal doses:

the cook-person (usually the female, but not always) “hey get out of the kitchen, you’re in the way”! / “hey where did everyone go, why do I have to be stuck in the kitchen”?

the children “why can’t we go outside, we hardly know those people”! / “I will try to get home at least for dinner, but I have a term paper that has to get laid”

the relatives (old) “why I remember when you were just this tall”! / “don’t you remember when we all went to the shore, you were this tall”

the relatives (young) “why can’t we stay home and have dinner” / “there’s nothing on TV, they don’t have any video games at grandma’s house”!

the invited friends “hey, you know what would be really exciting“? / “hey, your family are really nice people”!

the turkey/the carving/the presenting of the food, “it’s over-cooked I just know I over-cooked it”! / “no, it’s just fine! It’s just that the knife is still too dull”!

the desserts “hey, more than one desert at a single meal”! / “what the hell is a ‘Mince’ and why is it in a pie”?

We all know that “the holidays” are experienced differently by each of the three (clarks, scotts and rogers) and therefore the demands of the celebrations are very effective illustration of the nature of each. But if there was no Thanksgiving, a roger would have invented it! (Actually, they probably did). Think about it! A holiday celebration that is:

based on a factual historical event (sort of)

the protagonists (of the story) are religious refugees, persecuted and driven away together on boats

food, specific food and a not-to-be-deviated-from Menu

ritual menu and a full schedule of events

shopping in herds, as the climax of the celebration (Black Friday)

a moral taught to the young: we came here, those strangers who helped us were different, (…we had a feast and wiped out their culture)

I will be so bold as to suggest that there is no more rogerian a holiday than Thanksgiving! If there was a St Roger, his feast day would so be in the last week of November. (Saint Roger; Holy Mother Church’s only self-martyred Martyr. He died at the hands of the original Pilgrims and the Wampanoags; records in Vatican archives tell us that St Roger’s suggestions throughout the day were accepted with good nature by all in attendance, i.e. “..don’t you think the deer is a little over-cooked”…”pumpkin pie? who would make a pie out of those things?”…”why is that construction-paper Indian’s head all folded”… But, as the story has it, the assembled party reached their limits when he was heard to say, “what do you mean, ‘no turkey’? the best part of the holiday is a cold turkey and pemmican sandwich at around 9:00pm’. His martyrdom is the subject of an up-coming Ken Burns documentary, “St. Roger…when enough is not nearly enough“)

And since we are on the subject of rogers and holidays, is there any human activity that is more one sided, over-hyped, expectations-sure-to-fall short, ( not counting sex on the eve of a relationship breaking up), than parades? I don’t care if you are a trombone player in the middle of the herd or someone sitting in their living room watching it on TV…you are a roger. (…Someone tell me I’m lying.)

In any event, my own memories of (childhood) Thanksgivings are all about the walnuts. (Among the several once-a-year foods) a bowl of nuts was put in the living room for the guests but the cool thing was that the nutcracker and those pointy-picking-something-out devices were included. I did not, and still do not like walnuts, but the chance to use the implements was the high point of the day. (…well that little memory-leftover has nothing to do with any of the rest of this trainwreck of a Post, lol)

1) such as pageants and plays and a whole bunch of shit that we were forced to make out of construction paper (using those rounded scissors and that white-paste-stuff that you could never keep off your fingers) and then the fuckin head of the Indians you so carefully crafted would get folded over and the whole thing still had to go up on the border around the blackboard of the classroom.

2) you really should not need this explained to you…about clarks…and holidays.

*****

Commentary/Intros from previous T-Givings:

November 23, 2011:

‘J’accuse!* that turkey did not commit suicide!…the Wakefield Doctrine Holiday-style’

Thanksgiving Day¹ is the holiday that, if we did not already know that there exists a personality type referred to as a roger, someone else would have pointed it out to us.  Perhaps the task would have fallen to an Art Professor in a land grant college somewhere in the Midwest. We can imagine the epiphany …in the middle of the night (during his sabbatical devoted to the study of the works of Norman Rockwell)
” My god! Norman’s work is not just a robust and healthy celebration of paedophilia! He has been trying to tell us to transform our culture!  …for all good Americans to come forth and show their appreciation of patriotism, consumerism and child-abuse!!”

We have, from time to time, been accused of indiscriminate use of hyperbole in these pages, however, just consider the astounding level of pervasiveness of the ‘Holiday of Thanksgiving’. It is not enough to close the Post Office system and all other government agencies² , no it is not, this Holiday actually attempts to compel normal, rational, adult people to sit in front of the television and watch a Parade involving giant balloon representations of out-of-print newspaper cartoon characters! Who the hell watches the Macy’s Day Parade on purpose?!?  Throughout the entire morning of Thanksgiving, you simply cannot escape the pageantry and spectacle, broadcast live and has as the ’emcees’, News Anchors from the major networks morning news shows!  ( “Thats right, Matt! That’s Kenny Chesney and Taylor Swift on the Snoop Dog float… it says here that her eye makeup took 12 hours and 6 pounds of aluminum foil chips to create!!” ). Like a Hieronymus Bosch painting done in ‘live-action’, the whole country is exposed to hours and hours of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade… more than 3 hours of parade music and floats (” … hey, Anne isn’t the next float from your hometown”? “That’s right Al! it’s my old Alma mater, the East Clydesdale High School Marching Band playing a medley, ‘Straight outta Compton’, ‘Fuck tha Police’ and ‘Gangsta Gangsta’ ).

Why do we say Thanksgiving is the most rogerian of all holidays? Simply because Thanksgiving is about the how, not the why. As a holiday and a cultural event, this particular holiday tells it’s participants exactly what to do; what to eat and how to cook it! Taught from childhood, every member of our culture knows precisely how (and) where they are expected to spend the Holiday! Thanksgiving is about family and if there is anything that rogers fake better than anyone, it is the joyful appreciation and celebration of the family.

November 26, 2013:

”the votes are in! Reader’s favorite T-Cell Day Post’ the Wakefield Doctrine ‘telling you what for, for 4 years… now trademarked ‘© !’

Thought I would get us in the mood for the upcoming consumptials with a re-print of a previous Thanksgiving Post. I will keep this intro brief as the Wakefield Doctrine has a disturbing tendency to take over, even when I’m feeling like not writing a new Post! (If the truth be told, especially when I do not want to write a new Post). Seeing how we’re all kinds of semi-mainstream these days, it might be right for me to apologize to the Norman Rockwell fans out there….nah sorry guys, the dude was twisted. In any event, here’s a Post from the year 2011. (the ‘c’? oh that! yeah, the trademark papers came through the other day…we all kinds ‘o rogerian now, what with the government backin our moves an such. keep your hands off the Doctrine, bitches…we gots ourselfs some major referential authority.)

lol (no, I don’t really think that Mila was at the First Thanksgiving, but I would loves to find me a photo of Alice in, like post-apocalyptic, Pilgrim duds…. damn!)

* the Wakefield Doctrine is founded on the proposition that we are, all of us, born with the capacity to experience the world in one of three ways: as an Outsider(clark), a Predator(scott) or a Herd Member(rogers). At an early, early age we take on one of the three perspectives and develop our personalities in the context of this, what we call the predominant worldview. We never lose the potential to experience the world as do ‘the other two’, however, in some they are in namesake only, in others these can have a significant and noticeable effect. They are referred to as secondary and tertiary aspects. Myself as an example: I’m a clark (predominant worldview) with a (strong) secondary scottian aspect and a (weak) rogerian tertiary.

** one of the really fun products of the Wakefield Doctrine was the isolating and identifying of a characteristic of the rogerian worldview called a rogerian expression. Here is the link that explains it. From above an example: the ‘unabridged edition?’ the rogerian expression would have it ‘the unabashed edition’

lol… yeah, I know!

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine, three personality types

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 24, 2019 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is (or will at least begin as) a written-on-my-phone TToT post. (Which can be good and, less than good).

Am at work and needing, for a little while, to sit in the car. So what’s a 21st Century real estate agent gonna do? Yes sir! Write a post.

We have Kristi to thank, as each week she provides the link thing that puts thumbnails at the bottom of this here page here, that way sensible, concise, engaging and heartfelt writing on the gratacious* side of life is a click away. Until then, you got us at the Wakefield Doctrine to while away the time with…

Back at the keyboard! Not that the elapsed time since the above ellipsis, (something like seventeen hours), is entirely due to my attempting to write a post on the phone, but I will totally start this week’s list with…

1) I am so glad I don’t ‘have to’ write on a phone. (Relative to my normal state of mind, sitting here at my computer, phone-writing is like one of those annoying plastic puzzles from the day, the little square that had littler squares inside and you’re supposed to be able to get them in sequence…without breaking it apart and gluing it back together. yeah, right.)

2) Phyllis She is one of those people with the ability/patience to actually work the above mentioned ‘Get The Numbers in Proper Sequence’ puzzle. Note: I didn’t say ‘play the puzzle’ lol

3) Una Who would watch patiently as I tried, (not so patiently), to ‘Get The Numbers in Proper Sequence’ and, when I threw it across the yard, (provided I didn’t have any glue on hand), would happily run and bring the puzzle back.

4) Friends in the virtual world. I got back to my bloghop roots this weekend and joined Kristi (and Mardra) over at the ‘Finish the Sentence Friday‘ ‘hop. (Old story short, this was the first ‘hop I participated in, back in the earliest days of the Wakefield Doctrine blog. Kristi and the other hostinae were so good at hostifying** that I become a regular there. (Well, as regular as a clark ever is)).

5) The Case of the Missing Starr. Chapter 23 (~~Due out this afternoon. Consult your local listing for time etc~~) Available Now! Hey! Question: So I’m doing this as a serial story. A chapter each week. I enjoy this approach, as it amounts to ‘semi-live writing’. As a seat-of-the-pants writer, this is not without a fair amount of risk. Write yourself into a corner and you have a problem, ’cause you can’t go back and re-write at least not after its been sent out to the world. Anyway, over at the Facebook I started out pasting the chapters directly, each week. Now I’m putting the link to the blog where I’m keeping the story. Its way easier to read back chapters and such. The question is, would sending out a ‘Like this Page’ to all my friends on Facebook be annoying? (Only asking ’cause, well, I’m a clark, ya know?)

6) The Six Sentence Story. Always a place for honing the skills and getting bummed out at how could your contemporaries are (ha ha ¹)

7) work: for being of such a nature as to allow me relative freedom of time (there it is again! the topic ‘Time’ has been all over, this weekend.) There is a price for such freedom, i.e. certainty of a paycheck each week, but then again, uncertainty is the legend at the base of every map of the world of the Outsider.

8) Great call last night. Friend of the Doctrine, Cynthia called and we three regulars² had the grandest of times!³

9) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE

10) Secret Rule 1.3

* not a ‘real’ word, however we claim the credentials of those with good intent. (Who shouted, ‘Next two exits!! ?)

** still not a ‘real’ word

1) I shouldn’t joke and should be embarrassed at how true it sometimes is

2) yeah, I know… regular

3) a shout out to anyone of an age when that particular expression was met with a smile of appreciation and acknowledgement

Music

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: the Wakefield Doctrine

FTSF -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 23, 2019 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

‘Finish the Sentence Friday‘ (FTSF) is the first bloghop we actively participated in and, as such, has always held a special status here at the Doctrine.

Kristi was one of the hosts when I first started to contribute ‘sentence completion posts’. I enjoyed a double benefit as a result of being invited to participate: the quality of writing was such that I had something to reach for and, the special brand of odd, that is often the hallmark of Doctrine posts, stood out in relief to the quality of writing otherwise in evidence.

Now, of course, its Kristi and Mardra and, more often than, Tamara.

This week’s FTSF is a photo-prompt. (At the top of the post). We are also invited to avail ourselves of the phrase, ‘Time Stands Still’. (in the interest of leavening whatever ideas are rising as we sit down at the keyboard.)

Man! Is there any concept more seductive and catnip-like to a clark* than the concept of time? And, always near at hand, time travel?

No. No, there is not.

I wrote a Six Sentence Story yesterday about how, at the death of a loved one, time stood still. It wasn’t ‘standing still’ as in, prolonging a moment as much as it was ‘standing still’ because time ceased having relevance. Had I looked at a clock at that moment (in my story), I would’ve seen the second hand move around the dial; always fleeing, forever being drawn back before getting completely away. It simply did not matter. At the time.

I suspect we’ve all experienced this kind of stillness of time.

As to the question: does Time past us or do we move through Time? I tend, of late, towards the former view. Time as a quality of reality.

(uh oh)

Readers of the Doctrine know how much we loves a good metaphor. So, seeing how it’s Saturday morning and there are no good cartoons on anymore, indulge me the following:

We are creations of (fill in your preferred belief, i.e. God, the Goddess, Vishnu, whatever) and Time is the creation of the devil, (fill in your preferred manifestation of the Opposition, i.e. Lucifer, Satan, Bayer AG**)

And while we manifest as, well, as ourselves, Time manifests as a wind. Sometimes its a summer breeze, making us feel comfortable and hoping for it to never change; other times a winter’s gale pressing us back, bringing tears to our eyes. Time is a form of the atmosphere in which we exist. How we experience depends on us and it. Even the quietest of days, maybe laying in bed late at night, we’re tempted to think, Time is not a wind. Its so peaceful and still. And then we feel a chill.

At least that’s what occurs to me as I try to Finish (this) Week’s Sentence.

…what? the part about Time being a creation of the devil?

Consider walking into a breeze (or a headwind), you feel what? Resistance, it becomes more difficult to get to where you’re going, right? And, sometimes, we feel the wind at our back and surely thats a good thing, correct?

(Remember, our little theory says that Time, a totally intrinsic quality of reality, is a creation of the devil.)

How often do we feel like time is slowing down. Or spending up? If we see, in our future (especially the immediate future), a event that we do not consider good, does time speed up or slow down? Christmas as a child, who out there doesn’t remember how the winds of time blew as Christmas approached?

Only the devil (or a blogger) would suggest that if time were a wind and blowing against us, our approach to an event (or a person or the completion of a task) would feel like its taking forever. And, with a dentist appointment at the end of the week (or a final exam or a breakup), who doesn’t believe that Lucifer would smile at the notion that, with the wind at our back it would feel like time was speeding up.

…

*For anyone unfamiliar with our little personality theory, the Wakefield Doctrine a clark is one of three personality types (we call them predominant worldviews). I’m not going to reveal which of the three I am (lol) all you need to do is read the blog.

** sorry, an inside joke coming from a work-in-progress where the antagonist is Bayer AG (unlikely? I don’t think so, go read up on the dark castle in Leverkusen, Germany and then ask me why…lol)

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