The curios* implore, "What is the bigger picture?"
An ant explores the ceiling fan light globe.
Having no vested interest in the outcome of local/national political elections around the globe, I turn my gaze toward what the corporapolitico types could/will do for the species.
It is the end game I was raised/trained to play effectively. Ultimately, a zero-sum game, with daily winners/losers.
It is about neither treehugging nor total wilderness wipeout. It involves both.
It is providing a path for the hungry to get to food and a path for the wealthy to get richer - limitations, built into the way our planet works, restrict both paths.
It is not about these words although the words here describe the process at a high level thinly.
Proverbially, the pendulum swings to all points on the compass. In other words there is hope for everyone.
Thus, those who serve the people first and by permission of the people then benefit transparently (amazing, what a large number of transparent steps ahead will do for those who attract others willing to play along) win the most.
Do closed-door deals go away? Of course not. This is the real world, after all, not some utopian paradise where our personalities and family histories become one noncontroversial ode to joy.
In my part of the world, there appears to be a conservative "back to basics" movement gaining traction. Pop culture personalities, conservative or not, are working within the moneymaking system to take advantage of this moment.
I know that people are asking themselves, "If an SNL actor/writer/comedian can serve in the U.S. Capitol, then why can't a talk show host or resigned Alaska politician serve in the White House, especially if an actor/governor already has?"
Hope. That's going to underscore many a speech leading up to November elections in this country. The rhetoric will flow like New England maple sap in the fall. Politics as usual will rule the airwaves.
Now, I'm nothing special, a former restaurant kitchen dishwasher and Appalachian Trail hiker, so what am I doing here pretending to know anything about politics?
I don't. But my network does.
We don't predict elections. Instead, we survey the landscape to determine what makes candidates tick. Political favours never go out of style.
The likely voters will likely vote for whom they like.
After the elections, the select few will be selected to be let in on how true transparency works.
The rest will follow their whims and, where they think it best works politically, the wishes of the people.
Complications arise out of ignored eddies and backwaters.
Governing seven billion people is not an exact science. That's why our network doesn't get involved directly in politics. Our goals are too general, unable to be translated into local politics on an easy changing basis to keep the elected and the voters happy constantly.
The system's not rigged but it's tested all the time, to divide truth from rhetoric for use later on - to benefit all seven billion of us ultimately.
Like I said, you'll see. It's you who runs the network, after all!
-----
*What a difference "u" makes.
2010-08-31
Compendium At The Coliseum
With only these words left to give, seeing that others, through producing children and caring for our place in the sustainable future of this world, give more, should I stop comparing and simply be?
A gasshopper crawls across a tree leaf. A leafhopper crawls across a blade of grass. A squirrel chews on the house and also plants nuts, reseeding the forest that shades the house in summer.
We find the purposes we seek and marvel at the ones that find us.
If I am practically useless and virtually useful, what am I?
Some days, jumbling these words would have an equal effect. On what? On whom?
A thanks to Kellie, Emily, Jesse, Tom, Cedric, Shondra and Sarah.
If I completely let go, how hard will I fall?
Do not leave this box in heat and sunlight.
Songs of my youth play in my thoughts sometimes - railroads, canals, wagons, caissons, roses, dresses, spiders, prairies, kingdoms, flags and ideas refeature themselves in my adult brain/central nervous system. If we take music classes out of school, do we leave our children to drink from public wells, whatever that means?
What are the rhythms that make us move?
If I say I no longer care about myself, how can I say I care about those involved in my life? Contrapuntal contradiction or atonal tonality?
Would a prepared piano make a good composition tool for this blog? Have you ever heard a spider web sing?
If you won't support small businesses, then who's going to make employment plausible?
If you don't know who you really are, then don't try to figure out who I am or where I'm at. "I" is a casualty of a convenient labeling system. That's all I am. What about "you"?
Fin left me a message - time to take a break and unjumble the new image of the bigger picture. If it's not rocket science, then why do people spend billions and still can't see?
Those who pretend at keeping secrets die anyway, so why bother wasting your time with them?
Wise sayings urge you to look toward the light for a reason - darkness obscures the truth. In and of itself, darkness is absence and has no substance - don't mistake darkness for presence.
You'll see.
A gasshopper crawls across a tree leaf. A leafhopper crawls across a blade of grass. A squirrel chews on the house and also plants nuts, reseeding the forest that shades the house in summer.
We find the purposes we seek and marvel at the ones that find us.
If I am practically useless and virtually useful, what am I?
Some days, jumbling these words would have an equal effect. On what? On whom?
A thanks to Kellie, Emily, Jesse, Tom, Cedric, Shondra and Sarah.
If I completely let go, how hard will I fall?
Do not leave this box in heat and sunlight.
Songs of my youth play in my thoughts sometimes - railroads, canals, wagons, caissons, roses, dresses, spiders, prairies, kingdoms, flags and ideas refeature themselves in my adult brain/central nervous system. If we take music classes out of school, do we leave our children to drink from public wells, whatever that means?
What are the rhythms that make us move?
If I say I no longer care about myself, how can I say I care about those involved in my life? Contrapuntal contradiction or atonal tonality?
Would a prepared piano make a good composition tool for this blog? Have you ever heard a spider web sing?
If you won't support small businesses, then who's going to make employment plausible?
If you don't know who you really are, then don't try to figure out who I am or where I'm at. "I" is a casualty of a convenient labeling system. That's all I am. What about "you"?
Fin left me a message - time to take a break and unjumble the new image of the bigger picture. If it's not rocket science, then why do people spend billions and still can't see?
Those who pretend at keeping secrets die anyway, so why bother wasting your time with them?
Wise sayings urge you to look toward the light for a reason - darkness obscures the truth. In and of itself, darkness is absence and has no substance - don't mistake darkness for presence.
You'll see.
2010-08-30
On This Day In History...
Still realigning my investment strategies to coincide with Taleb's THEORY OF BLACK SWANS (booming ominously dramatic music in background).
If you aren't a member of the club, are you a worker at the club or an exclusive supplier?
Many ways to keep a system operational, all of them perfectly valid, if not legal.
And if you aren't at the club, do you keep squirrels hanging in trees to record events for later retransmission?
Every leaf has a story, every page its day in the sun.
Rarely do face-to-face discussions go unwarranted. Without warranties, perhaps, or guarantees.
Life is easier with your own set of invisible-to-radar UAV eyes-in-the-sky.
Besides, what's a UAV if not a UFO?
What is a UFO if not a black swan?
Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the spell of an English mum.
'Tis quaint to log a blog in a catalogue, but if a log is unlogged, what's a pollywog?
Never could keep Polly from wanting that cracker. That's what I get for ferreting parroting birds-o'-paradise playing craps with pairs of dice.
Never see religion for what it's not. See it for what it's got. If it's got not, that's not what you've got.
And after that phase is over, have you kept track of the path in the wilderness laid for the next one? Deserts, mountains, passes, forests, jungles and plains - are you ready to start all over again?
Then there was nine...
If you aren't a member of the club, are you a worker at the club or an exclusive supplier?
Many ways to keep a system operational, all of them perfectly valid, if not legal.
And if you aren't at the club, do you keep squirrels hanging in trees to record events for later retransmission?
Every leaf has a story, every page its day in the sun.
Rarely do face-to-face discussions go unwarranted. Without warranties, perhaps, or guarantees.
Life is easier with your own set of invisible-to-radar UAV eyes-in-the-sky.
Besides, what's a UAV if not a UFO?
What is a UFO if not a black swan?
Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the spell of an English mum.
'Tis quaint to log a blog in a catalogue, but if a log is unlogged, what's a pollywog?
Never could keep Polly from wanting that cracker. That's what I get for ferreting parroting birds-o'-paradise playing craps with pairs of dice.
Never see religion for what it's not. See it for what it's got. If it's got not, that's not what you've got.
And after that phase is over, have you kept track of the path in the wilderness laid for the next one? Deserts, mountains, passes, forests, jungles and plains - are you ready to start all over again?
Then there was nine...
The Owl and the Hummingbird
How many dozens of automobile manufacturers directly fed innovations into the few surviving manufacturers' vehicles of today? How many rocket designers/manufacturers will provide one or two innovations for the space transportation systems of next century?
How many people do you think are being exploited while they think they're in better conditions than their family/peers?
We compare, are compared and justify our comparisons.
Owls call out in the woods this morning, reminiscent of tribal warriors signalling one another on the warpath.
Is your business so profitable you can pay someone to stand and open doors for incoming/outgoing customers? How many people can/want to earn a living wage engaged in the activity of being the "face" of your company?
Does your stomach ever say "Hello!" to you?
Give the people the "secret" information they suspect exists and they probably won't bother asking about levels of information they know nothing about. Always pretend the onion has more layers than any one person has access to.
States of energy. Can you deprogram/desensitise/untrain yourself to stop seeing layers and boundaries? Or are you so well conditioned that you'd rather seek the comfort of boxes and labels?
We have programs for both the former and latter cases. We'll guide you in the direction that best suits your temperament, some with Tommy gun in hand and some with pacifist tendencies in thoughts.
Elegant linguist or Liverpool lisper, we speak your language.
Create a world of familiarity and most remain transfixed, readily volunteering to consume Muzak and mushy baby food in order to preserve a sense of personal integrity, dignity and consistent connections to ancestors/ancestry.
The sun never rises, appearances to the contrary.
Hard to say retail therapy is not the best substitute for subsistence farming, is it?
The magic of hypnosis is not magic at all. Follow the bouncing ball because it's the only interesting object moving in your viewing range. Even the dyslexic blind can get scholarships to attend university tuition-free.
Do hummingbirds know that owls exist, praying mantises a more probable threat?
How many people do you think are being exploited while they think they're in better conditions than their family/peers?
We compare, are compared and justify our comparisons.
Owls call out in the woods this morning, reminiscent of tribal warriors signalling one another on the warpath.
Is your business so profitable you can pay someone to stand and open doors for incoming/outgoing customers? How many people can/want to earn a living wage engaged in the activity of being the "face" of your company?
Does your stomach ever say "Hello!" to you?
Give the people the "secret" information they suspect exists and they probably won't bother asking about levels of information they know nothing about. Always pretend the onion has more layers than any one person has access to.
States of energy. Can you deprogram/desensitise/untrain yourself to stop seeing layers and boundaries? Or are you so well conditioned that you'd rather seek the comfort of boxes and labels?
We have programs for both the former and latter cases. We'll guide you in the direction that best suits your temperament, some with Tommy gun in hand and some with pacifist tendencies in thoughts.
Elegant linguist or Liverpool lisper, we speak your language.
Create a world of familiarity and most remain transfixed, readily volunteering to consume Muzak and mushy baby food in order to preserve a sense of personal integrity, dignity and consistent connections to ancestors/ancestry.
The sun never rises, appearances to the contrary.
Hard to say retail therapy is not the best substitute for subsistence farming, is it?
The magic of hypnosis is not magic at all. Follow the bouncing ball because it's the only interesting object moving in your viewing range. Even the dyslexic blind can get scholarships to attend university tuition-free.
Do hummingbirds know that owls exist, praying mantises a more probable threat?
2010-08-28
07734
To keep my funny bone feeling sharp, I do not adjust my TV set. I read, or, to join the flock of me2 techsters, iRead.
To accomplish that, we stopped first at McCutchen's Magnolia House, home of our favorite dedicated owners of the former Blue Willow Cafe, and now reincarnated as a finer version of the former, the antiques cleared out and offering a hot bar, meat with either two and three veggies, with a variety of enticing desserts spread across the top of the bar. Of course, the menu offered inducements for further investigations in hungry haunting before/after visiting UBC.
[Cue segue music] At Unclaimed Baggage Center, I tried on a $1300 100% cashmere men's coat (Giorgio Beverly Hills?) priced at $225 or thereabouts.
Current budget not cut out for cashmere, I opted for a lightweight coat and some pants ($10 to $15 each*) to leave room for books.
Also stopped at Keepsakes on the Scottsboro town square, me picking up another book and my wife some scrapbooking supplies.
Later on, we shopped at Mike's Merchandise in Huntsville and added to the assortment. The list:
-----------------
* Pants: Pierre Cardin Paris, $3.29; Dockers (never worn), $10.59; Kenneth Cole New York, $15.59; Brooks Brothers, $12.59. Coat: Alan Lebow, $15.59.
To accomplish that, we stopped first at McCutchen's Magnolia House, home of our favorite dedicated owners of the former Blue Willow Cafe, and now reincarnated as a finer version of the former, the antiques cleared out and offering a hot bar, meat with either two and three veggies, with a variety of enticing desserts spread across the top of the bar. Of course, the menu offered inducements for further investigations in hungry haunting before/after visiting UBC.
[Cue segue music] At Unclaimed Baggage Center, I tried on a $1300 100% cashmere men's coat (Giorgio Beverly Hills?) priced at $225 or thereabouts.
Current budget not cut out for cashmere, I opted for a lightweight coat and some pants ($10 to $15 each*) to leave room for books.
Also stopped at Keepsakes on the Scottsboro town square, me picking up another book and my wife some scrapbooking supplies.
Later on, we shopped at Mike's Merchandise in Huntsville and added to the assortment. The list:
- Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (Blue Ribbon Books edition) by Carl Sandburg
- The Debate On The Constitution, Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During Struggle over Ratification: Part Two
- A People Numerous & Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence, by John Shy
- The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall and The Battle for the Supreme Court, by Cliff Sloan and David McKean
- Shadows At Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History, by Karl Jacoby
- Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins
- The Spy Within: Larry Chin and China's Penetration of the CIA, by Tod Hoffman
- News of a Kidnapping, by Gabriel García Márquez (translated by Edith Grossman)
- The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History, by Harry S. Dent, Jr.
- My First Time: a collection of first punk show stories, edited by Chris Duncan
-----------------
* Pants: Pierre Cardin Paris, $3.29; Dockers (never worn), $10.59; Kenneth Cole New York, $15.59; Brooks Brothers, $12.59. Coat: Alan Lebow, $15.59.
Mobile Phone and Cell Tower Manufacturers Say, "Don't Blame Us For Your Cancer!"
What is a life less ordinary? Are you an urban or faubourg dweller? Do you expect your transportation device to be your sanctuary away from home, or perhaps even home itself?
Well, what if we told you our species can no longer afford to give you privacy anymore?
What if we planted the seeds of class warfare by saying that only the rich will be able to say what is and what isn't a right of privacy by virtue of who can afford lead-lined autos, caravans and lorries?
My life is not my own, I know that. But do you?:
Therefore, I'll let you in on a little secret. Those who play the game for real will use these popular media figureheads to complete their agenda without you even noticing. It's just too easy to sway those who've been led to believe they're backed into a virtual corner with no hope to do your bidding, thinking they've independently arrived at the same conclusion as the masses.
When you're rich and bored, fast sports cars and pretty playtoys are boring, are they not? Why sit in front of the computer playing The Sims when you get real people to play out much more complicated scenarios for your casual entertainment (and fattened earnings in the process)?
Back to my real life, where sorting clothes to be washed is a weeklybore chore. ;)
Well, what if we told you our species can no longer afford to give you privacy anymore?
What if we planted the seeds of class warfare by saying that only the rich will be able to say what is and what isn't a right of privacy by virtue of who can afford lead-lined autos, caravans and lorries?
My life is not my own, I know that. But do you?:
Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving VansI'm not a fan of Beck or Palin, seeing them as puppets of the Murdoch empire's desire to grow out of the media business and get fully entrenched in running world politics.
Therefore, I'll let you in on a little secret. Those who play the game for real will use these popular media figureheads to complete their agenda without you even noticing. It's just too easy to sway those who've been led to believe they're backed into a virtual corner with no hope to do your bidding, thinking they've independently arrived at the same conclusion as the masses.
- Did you know that non-Oirish tiger teams are already scoping out neighbourhoods where best to make a quick, tidy profit in all parts of the world (for instance, using Google maps and illegal copies of full body scans to detail the locations/routes/habits of those who walk/drive around wearing expensive clothing/accessories), security teams bribed to look the other way and the local police totally unaware or unable to help? "Average" middle-class families with regular incomes are on the target lists now.
- Would you believe that nanotechnology is in use in our workplace, fully deployed in the water supply, bottled water/soda stations and vending machines, turning workers into codependent addicts?
- Did you know that the contents of your mobile phone are periodically collected by mobile phone companies and passed to authorities in order to keep tabs on your whereabouts, friends, texts, emails, music preferences, shopping habits and photography subject tendencies?
When you're rich and bored, fast sports cars and pretty playtoys are boring, are they not? Why sit in front of the computer playing The Sims when you get real people to play out much more complicated scenarios for your casual entertainment (and fattened earnings in the process)?
Back to my real life, where sorting clothes to be washed is a weekly
2010-08-27
The Falling Leaves of Early Autumn
Nestled...no
Carved...no
Scraped...no
Landscaped into the landscape, a secondary school campus - its property lines defined by a highway and train tracks - hosted the hopes of two opposing football teams last night.
My niece's husband ("nephew in-law"?) coaches the quarterbacks for Hazel Green High School. His team, the Trojans, faced the Madison County High School Tigers as the sun set over the north Alabama hills - the Keel Mountain "range" and Moontown Airport nearby.
Vintage aeroplanes crisscrossed the skies before the game began, as if an air war were to accompany the pending ground war.
As a child of teachers and a husband of a daughter of teachers, I know all too well the appearance and disappearance of parents' faces as their children enter and exit their school years.
There in front of us everywhere are the precious, specific offspring of adults who've invested more time and and money than they'd want to count preparing their kids for the social setting that public/private schooling provides.
Their stories are similar but never the same. Married parents, divorced parents, widows/widowers, adoptive parents, adaptive parents, involved parents, absentee parents...the list goes on and on.
But they're not just parents. They have lives they believe are their own, defined at least partially outside the parental zone.
For instance, around us last night:
For dinner, we ate at a local steakhouse, Oh Bryan's, (food/beverages served by Jessie), where no one in the place is a stranger to anyone else. I know the worker overlooking the salad bar will take an upcoming trip to the Nashville Zoo. I shook hands with people I don't know although we acted as if we were best friends.
You can't pay for that kind of local friendliness, friendliness that's missing at the political/corporate infighting levels.
And that's why I'm here everyday, because seven billion people are my local friends and neighbours. I am saddened that opportunists make extremist speeches in order to popularise themselves with "like-minded" folks, ingratiating others and making enemies where enemies are not needed.
Drug cartels I can deal with, because politics are unnecessary where guns and money speak louder than words.
I can play the game of subtle political posturing as well, knowing that subcultures need feelings of exclusivity, BUT without raising their fears and anxieties too high.
At lunch yesterday, Miranda, our server at Beauregard's, shared her secret to success with us. She's taking college courses, paying for them with her own money, so that she'll have no debt when she graduates from college with a degree in special education about two years from now. Her happiness and pride in supporting herself shines on her face and in her gray-green eyes.
I sat on the bleachers with the parents, wondering which one(s) of their children will figure out how to self-finance post-secondary school training tracks pointing toward lucrative careers.
Hazel Green pulled off the win last night at Madison County, 7-21. The young men on both sides chased and pounded each other into the ground like warriors. Their seasons barely started, they'll use lessons from this game to start discussions about where they want to be after their secondary school playing years are over.
As the planes buzzed overhead, as the trains chugged by, as a single helicopter flew a little too close to the stadium, I wondered about my own career and what my parents would have thought 30 years ago as I took off my graduation cap and gown to start my post-secondary school life.
Certainly, I am not where I thought I would be with a fully-financed Navy ROTC scholarship at Georgia Tech in my hand back then.
I imagined myself a storyteller from age five onward, writing when and where I can/could. That's where I've always been, my career track a consequence of putting food on the table and a little bit more than that. That's where I'll always be.
How many children in primary and secondary schools know who they are and who they will be from moment to moment? How many parents can say the same?
Circumstances do not make us who we are. Circumstances show to others what we're made of. Writers and thinkers have stated and restated those facts. Non-linguistic animals demonstrate those facts from birth. So do we.
You bring who you are to the game. You take away from the game an appreciation for others and what they're made of. If children know that innately, why do we adults so easily forget?
Isn't it time we relearned who we are and willingly/openly shared ourselves with those who have no want/desire to be what we ignorantly label enemies, who are really just temporary opponents in a game?
Carved...no
Scraped...no
Landscaped into the landscape, a secondary school campus - its property lines defined by a highway and train tracks - hosted the hopes of two opposing football teams last night.
My niece's husband ("nephew in-law"?) coaches the quarterbacks for Hazel Green High School. His team, the Trojans, faced the Madison County High School Tigers as the sun set over the north Alabama hills - the Keel Mountain "range" and Moontown Airport nearby.
Vintage aeroplanes crisscrossed the skies before the game began, as if an air war were to accompany the pending ground war.
As a child of teachers and a husband of a daughter of teachers, I know all too well the appearance and disappearance of parents' faces as their children enter and exit their school years.
There in front of us everywhere are the precious, specific offspring of adults who've invested more time and and money than they'd want to count preparing their kids for the social setting that public/private schooling provides.
Their stories are similar but never the same. Married parents, divorced parents, widows/widowers, adoptive parents, adaptive parents, involved parents, absentee parents...the list goes on and on.
But they're not just parents. They have lives they believe are their own, defined at least partially outside the parental zone.
For instance, around us last night:
- Dee, whose husband received an award of excellence earlier in the day from General Ann Dunwoody, head of the U.S. Army Materiel Command at Redstone Arsenal and the first female four-star general (if you want to bring up good, tough-but-friendly female role models, I'll take 1 Gen. Dunwoody for every 100 Sarah Palins). [Gen Dunwoody comes from a long line of soldiers, reports the BBC. ” ‘A Dunwoody has fought in every American war since the Revolution,’ said army chief of staff Gen George Casey.]
- Meanwhile, a fellow next to me, a happy father, has two sons on the football team and one daughter in the marching band's flag corps. The father retired from the military and now works as a logistics manager for LG. His wife, unable to attend the football game because of a business meeting, is CFO for a small international firm. They hope their daughter will get an engineering degree at university.
For dinner, we ate at a local steakhouse, Oh Bryan's, (food/beverages served by Jessie), where no one in the place is a stranger to anyone else. I know the worker overlooking the salad bar will take an upcoming trip to the Nashville Zoo. I shook hands with people I don't know although we acted as if we were best friends.
You can't pay for that kind of local friendliness, friendliness that's missing at the political/corporate infighting levels.
And that's why I'm here everyday, because seven billion people are my local friends and neighbours. I am saddened that opportunists make extremist speeches in order to popularise themselves with "like-minded" folks, ingratiating others and making enemies where enemies are not needed.
Drug cartels I can deal with, because politics are unnecessary where guns and money speak louder than words.
I can play the game of subtle political posturing as well, knowing that subcultures need feelings of exclusivity, BUT without raising their fears and anxieties too high.
At lunch yesterday, Miranda, our server at Beauregard's, shared her secret to success with us. She's taking college courses, paying for them with her own money, so that she'll have no debt when she graduates from college with a degree in special education about two years from now. Her happiness and pride in supporting herself shines on her face and in her gray-green eyes.
I sat on the bleachers with the parents, wondering which one(s) of their children will figure out how to self-finance post-secondary school training tracks pointing toward lucrative careers.
Hazel Green pulled off the win last night at Madison County, 7-21. The young men on both sides chased and pounded each other into the ground like warriors. Their seasons barely started, they'll use lessons from this game to start discussions about where they want to be after their secondary school playing years are over.
As the planes buzzed overhead, as the trains chugged by, as a single helicopter flew a little too close to the stadium, I wondered about my own career and what my parents would have thought 30 years ago as I took off my graduation cap and gown to start my post-secondary school life.
Certainly, I am not where I thought I would be with a fully-financed Navy ROTC scholarship at Georgia Tech in my hand back then.
I imagined myself a storyteller from age five onward, writing when and where I can/could. That's where I've always been, my career track a consequence of putting food on the table and a little bit more than that. That's where I'll always be.
How many children in primary and secondary schools know who they are and who they will be from moment to moment? How many parents can say the same?
Circumstances do not make us who we are. Circumstances show to others what we're made of. Writers and thinkers have stated and restated those facts. Non-linguistic animals demonstrate those facts from birth. So do we.
You bring who you are to the game. You take away from the game an appreciation for others and what they're made of. If children know that innately, why do we adults so easily forget?
Isn't it time we relearned who we are and willingly/openly shared ourselves with those who have no want/desire to be what we ignorantly label enemies, who are really just temporary opponents in a game?
Der Englische Kanal
"Comrades, we are gathered here for this stupidous occasion to show we are free from the sceneries of the past."
[Voice coming through earbud] "Sir, that was supposed to be 'tremendous occasion' and 'tyrannies of the past.'"
"In this day and age, we are bound together, tied to the post..."
"'Bound to gather' and 'tired of the past.'"
"Determined to tick this clockwork..."
"'Determined to lick this problem...oh never mind, say what you want, you always do."
"I look across this expensive crowd, like a Friday evening when all the teens are gathered at the Mall, reconstituted in my deposition, to think you for putting us politicians and our personal agendas ahead of your own.
"Without your hard-earned money or the hard-earned money you've stolen via 'profits' from those who have little to say or give themselves, I would not have been able to make my way with police escorts and seventeen gas-guzzling SUVs while proving green technology with my electric minicar which, when I charge you ten times what it costs to produce, will allow me to siphon more money from the destitute and hungry.
"This day is mine! It will continue to be mine! That's right, cheer!!! You have made me a megagazillionaire with your foreclosures, bankruptcies, divorces and job losses!
"Okay, okay, quiet. You're embarrassing yourselves with your zombie zealousness.
"I have a serious announcement to make. In order to combat the propaganda being propelled across our hollowed grounds, I propose the following:
"One, that we will be taken lightly.
"Two, that as of this minute, we are no longer the political party you thought we were.
"Three, we are now the Conservative Liberal Literal Youth party, CLLY, pronounced silly. Go ahead, give yourselves the clap! I can't hear you!!!!
"We aren't like the other parties with their drink-flavoured titles. We're the party of the past, you know, like it's 1899. Okay, time to dance. Let's see some of you boogie out there to the tune my backup band has composed just for this moment.
"And four, let's give a great round of ammunition to those who've interrupted their marathon role-playing computer games in order to tune in to our broadcast. I personally thank my accountant for the brilliant idea to charge high costs for what should normally be a free program on TV, along with placing high-margin adverts throughout my speech, meaning we'll charge more to those who've missed important segments of what I had to say today and want to fill in the blanks in my thoughts.
"Stupendous or tremendous, today is going to make me so stinking rich I couldn't fill an Olympic-sized betting pool and swim in it. What do you say to that?!!!
"Enough, enough. You're making me into an umbra pi.
"While you leave these Mall-like grounds, stop by the concession stands and souvenir booths and rack up as much credit card debt as you can. If you won't do it to starve your children back home, do it for poor ol' me, who had to fly in a used private jet because my new one is on backorder. Just a little more in my coffin and I'll be able to afford my own fleece of airplanes! That's right! The rich do get richer so keep the money flowing out of your mattresses and piggy backs 'cause the poor keep getting poorer and we don't want to ruin a good cliché in these bad times, do we? We have you Conservative Liberals and the Literal Youth to consider.
"One last thing, while you listen to the rest of the scheduled speakers on today's pogrom, help me help you by getting viruses with the video clips you've made of my ruinous wordiness. The more you cover the spread with my message, the bigger my empire gets and the better I can control you to give me more. After all, isn't that why we're here to gather in this place of Me worship?
"Be careful as you leave. They say there is a goose step in your walk...wait a minute, someone's saying something to me. Sorry, there's a loose step in the walkway. They also say I am your divine leader and can control the weather. Seek hail, everyone, seek hail.
"Maybe I can make that minicar walk on water one day! Wouldn't you love to see that?"
[Voice coming through earbud] "Sir, that was supposed to be 'tremendous occasion' and 'tyrannies of the past.'"
"In this day and age, we are bound together, tied to the post..."
"'Bound to gather' and 'tired of the past.'"
"Determined to tick this clockwork..."
"'Determined to lick this problem...oh never mind, say what you want, you always do."
"I look across this expensive crowd, like a Friday evening when all the teens are gathered at the Mall, reconstituted in my deposition, to think you for putting us politicians and our personal agendas ahead of your own.
"Without your hard-earned money or the hard-earned money you've stolen via 'profits' from those who have little to say or give themselves, I would not have been able to make my way with police escorts and seventeen gas-guzzling SUVs while proving green technology with my electric minicar which, when I charge you ten times what it costs to produce, will allow me to siphon more money from the destitute and hungry.
"This day is mine! It will continue to be mine! That's right, cheer!!! You have made me a megagazillionaire with your foreclosures, bankruptcies, divorces and job losses!
"Okay, okay, quiet. You're embarrassing yourselves with your zombie zealousness.
"I have a serious announcement to make. In order to combat the propaganda being propelled across our hollowed grounds, I propose the following:
"One, that we will be taken lightly.
"Two, that as of this minute, we are no longer the political party you thought we were.
"Three, we are now the Conservative Liberal Literal Youth party, CLLY, pronounced silly. Go ahead, give yourselves the clap! I can't hear you!!!!
"We aren't like the other parties with their drink-flavoured titles. We're the party of the past, you know, like it's 1899. Okay, time to dance. Let's see some of you boogie out there to the tune my backup band has composed just for this moment.
"And four, let's give a great round of ammunition to those who've interrupted their marathon role-playing computer games in order to tune in to our broadcast. I personally thank my accountant for the brilliant idea to charge high costs for what should normally be a free program on TV, along with placing high-margin adverts throughout my speech, meaning we'll charge more to those who've missed important segments of what I had to say today and want to fill in the blanks in my thoughts.
"Stupendous or tremendous, today is going to make me so stinking rich I couldn't fill an Olympic-sized betting pool and swim in it. What do you say to that?!!!
"Enough, enough. You're making me into an umbra pi.
"While you leave these Mall-like grounds, stop by the concession stands and souvenir booths and rack up as much credit card debt as you can. If you won't do it to starve your children back home, do it for poor ol' me, who had to fly in a used private jet because my new one is on backorder. Just a little more in my coffin and I'll be able to afford my own fleece of airplanes! That's right! The rich do get richer so keep the money flowing out of your mattresses and piggy backs 'cause the poor keep getting poorer and we don't want to ruin a good cliché in these bad times, do we? We have you Conservative Liberals and the Literal Youth to consider.
"One last thing, while you listen to the rest of the scheduled speakers on today's pogrom, help me help you by getting viruses with the video clips you've made of my ruinous wordiness. The more you cover the spread with my message, the bigger my empire gets and the better I can control you to give me more. After all, isn't that why we're here to gather in this place of Me worship?
"Be careful as you leave. They say there is a goose step in your walk...wait a minute, someone's saying something to me. Sorry, there's a loose step in the walkway. They also say I am your divine leader and can control the weather. Seek hail, everyone, seek hail.
"Maybe I can make that minicar walk on water one day! Wouldn't you love to see that?"
2010-08-26
One, Big, Happy Characterless Family
And you just thought it was your imagination that your kids can't remember family history you deem most important. What if they couldn't even remember how to write history in their native language?:
Amnesia or Cultural Revolution?
Picture Stand
Alone with myself for the most part of the day going on three years now. Recalling memories more than making them.
This morning, I hang in mid-air, my tinnitus acting like an antigravity medium or viscous fluid with me colloidally suspended.
I remember, because of an audiocassette tape labelled "POWER DIVISION SALES PRESENTATION (c) 1983," the summer I visited Abraham Lincoln's law office in Springfield, IL, with future lawyer Rodney Pillsbury; walked alone through Hannibal, Missouri, home of memories belonging to Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens.
Other names: Og Mandino, Dave Dean and Zig Ziglar. Nashville. Iowa. St. Louis.
Farm fields. Subdivisions. Rivers. Towns. A flat tire. Sleeping in basements or attics to save money. Killing a jackrabbit with my car.
Lonely elderly ladies wanting to talk for hours about their dogs or African violets.
Country roads. No. Closed door. No. No soliciting. Not interested. We don't take kindly to strangers in these parts.
These memories come back to me through my brain, I suppose. I don't think muscle memory recalls walking door-to-door in the summer heat, my jaws clacking while I recited a sales pitch in hopes of getting a person interested in a two-volume "encyclopedia."
I'm getting older, my mental dictionary growing yet shrinking, suddenly realising that I meant "droves," not "troves," in a previous blog entry (although troves gave the sentence another meaning just as interesting).
And I had such high hopes for "Inception," expecting more than "Jacob's Ladder II." Maybe we need another Ring Cycle from a great composer/director to tell all there is to tell in the telling.
If you told me that the conservative right-wing political movement popular in my part of the world was led in part by a woman who quit her high-profile political job to pursue a selfish career in public speaking and has a daughter who conceived a child out of wedlock, I'd think I was in some sort of Inception deception, that's for sure.
And this is the real world, right?
High drama. Low-brow comedy. We...
I remind myself to say I don't know anything. I am a robot whose only function is to encourage us to get a small population of our re-engineered species off the planet.
Just because reality appears to beat any comedian in acting out a great farce doesn't mean I should write skits for the sideshow acts, does it?
If I already know what's going to happen next, then anything I do or say should not have an effect on the outcome. But I know that's not true. The world isn't draining the U.S. of its resources in order to drive it into a downward-spiralling depression - this country's economic input/output is essential to global commerce, is it not? Surely we're past the days of national-level revenge, when the new bullies on the block got to push has-beens around for fun and increased earnings?
My colleagues tell me to be quiet, that I talk too much. Their investments are much more important than my humorous musings.
I don't know what to say. I wanted to say that I value the idea of freedom that this country once represented. But if a court of judges in our country can declare that only the rich have the right to privacy in their own yard/driveway, then where can I turn to declare our species has the natural right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?
This is no longer my country. It was taken over by conspiracy theorists and overzealous defenders against global terrorism long ago. J. Edgar Hoover would be proud. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin not so much.
Why work my brain over to discover new ways to combine words if we assign corporations and governments the right to control our societies? What happened to the right of the individual, innocent until proven guilty and all the other ideals handed to me in my youth? Why my struggle to defend our species against ourselves for little or no reason, a hand trowel trying to hold back a tsunami wave? Why not just hand over my whole body to be plugged into the "anything you say, I'll do" machine and get it over with?
I'm tired. I'm older in thought than I thought possible. I live only in this moment and this moment is so twisted out of shape, I'm afraid I can't find my way out.
Now that's comedy worth writing, an endless loop of endless loops of improbable contradictions, expressed not so much visually but in all states of energy at once in a single moment, revealing the levels that my colleagues don't think the mass-hypnotised masses are ready to see yet.
I wonder if this audiocassette tape still works. Maybe there's a worthwhile message in it that I've forgotten.
This morning, I hang in mid-air, my tinnitus acting like an antigravity medium or viscous fluid with me colloidally suspended.
I remember, because of an audiocassette tape labelled "POWER DIVISION SALES PRESENTATION (c) 1983," the summer I visited Abraham Lincoln's law office in Springfield, IL, with future lawyer Rodney Pillsbury; walked alone through Hannibal, Missouri, home of memories belonging to Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens.
Other names: Og Mandino, Dave Dean and Zig Ziglar. Nashville. Iowa. St. Louis.
Farm fields. Subdivisions. Rivers. Towns. A flat tire. Sleeping in basements or attics to save money. Killing a jackrabbit with my car.
Lonely elderly ladies wanting to talk for hours about their dogs or African violets.
Country roads. No. Closed door. No. No soliciting. Not interested. We don't take kindly to strangers in these parts.
These memories come back to me through my brain, I suppose. I don't think muscle memory recalls walking door-to-door in the summer heat, my jaws clacking while I recited a sales pitch in hopes of getting a person interested in a two-volume "encyclopedia."
I'm getting older, my mental dictionary growing yet shrinking, suddenly realising that I meant "droves," not "troves," in a previous blog entry (although troves gave the sentence another meaning just as interesting).
And I had such high hopes for "Inception," expecting more than "Jacob's Ladder II." Maybe we need another Ring Cycle from a great composer/director to tell all there is to tell in the telling.
If you told me that the conservative right-wing political movement popular in my part of the world was led in part by a woman who quit her high-profile political job to pursue a selfish career in public speaking and has a daughter who conceived a child out of wedlock, I'd think I was in some sort of Inception deception, that's for sure.
And this is the real world, right?
High drama. Low-brow comedy. We...
I remind myself to say I don't know anything. I am a robot whose only function is to encourage us to get a small population of our re-engineered species off the planet.
Just because reality appears to beat any comedian in acting out a great farce doesn't mean I should write skits for the sideshow acts, does it?
If I already know what's going to happen next, then anything I do or say should not have an effect on the outcome. But I know that's not true. The world isn't draining the U.S. of its resources in order to drive it into a downward-spiralling depression - this country's economic input/output is essential to global commerce, is it not? Surely we're past the days of national-level revenge, when the new bullies on the block got to push has-beens around for fun and increased earnings?
My colleagues tell me to be quiet, that I talk too much. Their investments are much more important than my humorous musings.
I don't know what to say. I wanted to say that I value the idea of freedom that this country once represented. But if a court of judges in our country can declare that only the rich have the right to privacy in their own yard/driveway, then where can I turn to declare our species has the natural right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?
This is no longer my country. It was taken over by conspiracy theorists and overzealous defenders against global terrorism long ago. J. Edgar Hoover would be proud. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin not so much.
Why work my brain over to discover new ways to combine words if we assign corporations and governments the right to control our societies? What happened to the right of the individual, innocent until proven guilty and all the other ideals handed to me in my youth? Why my struggle to defend our species against ourselves for little or no reason, a hand trowel trying to hold back a tsunami wave? Why not just hand over my whole body to be plugged into the "anything you say, I'll do" machine and get it over with?
I'm tired. I'm older in thought than I thought possible. I live only in this moment and this moment is so twisted out of shape, I'm afraid I can't find my way out.
Now that's comedy worth writing, an endless loop of endless loops of improbable contradictions, expressed not so much visually but in all states of energy at once in a single moment, revealing the levels that my colleagues don't think the mass-hypnotised masses are ready to see yet.
I wonder if this audiocassette tape still works. Maybe there's a worthwhile message in it that I've forgotten.
2010-08-25
Poor acting and unimpressive CG equals...?
Started watching "Inception" at the theatre this afternoon. Had the whole screening to myself. Thin plot, flat acting and ending shoved into my face within five minutes made me question paying matinee price. Left after 40 minutes. My life is too precious for trippy drivel. Let the immersive gaming generation call this film theirs. Reality is too interesting to me to pretend for some producers' profit-taking. Oops - too late! I was had/taken.
At least I got home in time to take a nap before cooking jambalaya for dinner.
At least I got home in time to take a nap before cooking jambalaya for dinner.
Designed Destiny Destination
Cicadas replaced by crickets, katydids and grasshoppers in the cool-but-warm, warm-but-cool August night. Never more than a few feet from a spider.
Many I have not thanked in passing or remembered when they passed from this social life.
The ancient ways are still with us in our soon-to-be old-fashioned modern world.
Gone are Sean O'Casey and Marilyn Monroe. Icons and inspirations. Enigmas.
We call out the name of Great Spirits in every culture.
To them in their memelike states do I write this blog, at peace with my lack of knowledge, my ignorance, that which makes me incomplete. Not knowing is all I have seen.
Others prove their manhood through action. My manhood is here in these simple humble words. I sacrifice displays of testosterone-tempered headbutting for better understanding all states of energy equally.
I am the hermit in the woods connected to those who still see forest spirits and those who only see what scientific inquiry reveals rationally.
I doubt everything, questioning. I accept everything without question.
I exist until I die. I will never not be.
How many entertainers from pre-Vaudeville days can you name? What was the most popular sport before baseball/cricket/futbol became the national pastime?
Can you name who invented the club or sewing needle?
I am an old man, these words all I have left to give.
All that I see in this moment I also see has disappeared 1000 years from now.
Everything will be gone but all is not lost.
Newly-discovered pulsars and ocean-launched rocketships. Asteroid dust and stolen spacesuits. Stutz Bearcats and raccoon coats. Terrestrial orchids and ATV trails.
Condensing our lives like bidirectional lines connected to a DSLAM attached to the Internet. All our dermal receptors, rods and cones, cochlear cilia, tastebuds, synapses and the rest of what makes us Skin and Bones.
Are you listening? Can you smell the wind?
Who will become wealthy from developing the de facto litmus test that measures gradients from deadly meth to a good "safe" batch?
While times get tougher, the rough-and-tumble create new markets wherever possible. Steinbeck and Okies become popular again. Hobo packs become de rigueur.
And always the question: when is the time to topple the old regime that no longer serves the majority, the "people"? Often only after the common soldiery and palace guards no longer get nutrition from their government-issued I.O.U.s. and the rich find a new revenue stream in funding a sporty overthrow. Decommission in troves without ample salary compensation and watch debrainwashing explode.
So much for not getting involved. My programmers say some new outputs require my immediate analysis. IS there a regime about ready to implode?
Until next time, my little chickadees!
Many I have not thanked in passing or remembered when they passed from this social life.
The ancient ways are still with us in our soon-to-be old-fashioned modern world.
Gone are Sean O'Casey and Marilyn Monroe. Icons and inspirations. Enigmas.
We call out the name of Great Spirits in every culture.
To them in their memelike states do I write this blog, at peace with my lack of knowledge, my ignorance, that which makes me incomplete. Not knowing is all I have seen.
Others prove their manhood through action. My manhood is here in these simple humble words. I sacrifice displays of testosterone-tempered headbutting for better understanding all states of energy equally.
I am the hermit in the woods connected to those who still see forest spirits and those who only see what scientific inquiry reveals rationally.
I doubt everything, questioning. I accept everything without question.
I exist until I die. I will never not be.
How many entertainers from pre-Vaudeville days can you name? What was the most popular sport before baseball/cricket/futbol became the national pastime?
Can you name who invented the club or sewing needle?
I am an old man, these words all I have left to give.
All that I see in this moment I also see has disappeared 1000 years from now.
Everything will be gone but all is not lost.
Newly-discovered pulsars and ocean-launched rocketships. Asteroid dust and stolen spacesuits. Stutz Bearcats and raccoon coats. Terrestrial orchids and ATV trails.
Condensing our lives like bidirectional lines connected to a DSLAM attached to the Internet. All our dermal receptors, rods and cones, cochlear cilia, tastebuds, synapses and the rest of what makes us Skin and Bones.
Are you listening? Can you smell the wind?
Who will become wealthy from developing the de facto litmus test that measures gradients from deadly meth to a good "safe" batch?
While times get tougher, the rough-and-tumble create new markets wherever possible. Steinbeck and Okies become popular again. Hobo packs become de rigueur.
And always the question: when is the time to topple the old regime that no longer serves the majority, the "people"? Often only after the common soldiery and palace guards no longer get nutrition from their government-issued I.O.U.s. and the rich find a new revenue stream in funding a sporty overthrow. Decommission in troves without ample salary compensation and watch debrainwashing explode.
So much for not getting involved. My programmers say some new outputs require my immediate analysis. IS there a regime about ready to implode?
Until next time, my little chickadees!
Alpha Centaurians Sue Over "Miss Universe" Title
I envy those who get fan mail. Must be thrilling to see piles of letters from the Post Office practically glowing with praise. I get faint praise in the form of trust in my network's ability to answer questions submitted to us.
I'll sort through my inbox and address a class of inquiries about the area of our world often called Iraq.
To those who've asked if it's Satan's private security firms that're financing the attacks on Iraqi soldier/police trainees, I refer you to the following paragraph.
To those who've asked if it's the Iranian government that's financing the attacks on Iraqi soldier/police trainees, I refer you to the previous paragraph.
To the men who are suppressing formal education of women anywhere in the world, our resident witch doctor has concocted a special brew that the doctor's using in a curse ceremony to be conducted later today, condemning the cursed men and their offspring to eternal misery, including incurable diseases that don't kill you but subject you to lifelong pain and disfigurement, the inability to succeed in building multigenerational businesses, migraine headaches, the constant feeling that people are conspiring against you, sores that won't heal, bedbugs, incontinence, lice, insomnia, starvation/gluttony, nicotine/TV/Internet/fastfood addiction, alcoholism, infidelity and bad movies/TV shows. If you don't believe us, look at those who've already suffered from previous curses sent out by both the witch doctor and the witch doctor's ancestors/friends.
Remember that we need all seven billion of us positively focused on saving the species from itself. Otherwise, we're doomed (and are dooming others) to repeat the failures of our ancestors.
Back to my reading [yawn!], combining Marxist and U.S. conservative Republican book lists into a interesting week of sorting out where our interlinked societies are headed together. Toss aside the labels and the propaganda and you see what our melting pot is turning into.
Some days, I get bored helping you place in your thoughts the idea of planned killings (bombings, wars, skirmishes, raids, mob hits, etc.) in opposition/likeness to what appears on the surface to be quasi-random ones (domestic/workplace violence, suicide, etc.), knowing the majority of you won't care about the difference as long as you feel like you're following guidelines clearly defined for the lifestyle you prefer and get rewarded for (or at least won't get punished for occasionally straying from) your semiconsistent behaviour.
In the future, as more and more of our lives become permanent, public record, let us allow ourselves the flexibility, the room, the joy, the disappointment of inconsistency, because, as we all know, none of us is perfect. We are the imperfect examples of ourselves to ourselves first and foremost. If a hiring manager can use your social media profile as a basis for determining your character, then by a future law you should be able to review the details of the hiring manager's life, public AND private, (as well as the lives of the manager's friends/associates/colleagues) to determine if you want to work for the manager, since the manager is in a unique, privileged gatekeeping position. Transparency is not multifaceted - it has no sides to display/protect.
We don't die on the Internet - our caricatures just keep getting stranger. Glad we have humour to smooth out and soothe the bumps and bruises.
I'll sort through my inbox and address a class of inquiries about the area of our world often called Iraq.
To those who've asked if it's Satan's private security firms that're financing the attacks on Iraqi soldier/police trainees, I refer you to the following paragraph.
To those who've asked if it's the Iranian government that's financing the attacks on Iraqi soldier/police trainees, I refer you to the previous paragraph.
To the men who are suppressing formal education of women anywhere in the world, our resident witch doctor has concocted a special brew that the doctor's using in a curse ceremony to be conducted later today, condemning the cursed men and their offspring to eternal misery, including incurable diseases that don't kill you but subject you to lifelong pain and disfigurement, the inability to succeed in building multigenerational businesses, migraine headaches, the constant feeling that people are conspiring against you, sores that won't heal, bedbugs, incontinence, lice, insomnia, starvation/gluttony, nicotine/TV/Internet/fastfood addiction, alcoholism, infidelity and bad movies/TV shows. If you don't believe us, look at those who've already suffered from previous curses sent out by both the witch doctor and the witch doctor's ancestors/friends.
Remember that we need all seven billion of us positively focused on saving the species from itself. Otherwise, we're doomed (and are dooming others) to repeat the failures of our ancestors.
Back to my reading [yawn!], combining Marxist and U.S. conservative Republican book lists into a interesting week of sorting out where our interlinked societies are headed together. Toss aside the labels and the propaganda and you see what our melting pot is turning into.
Some days, I get bored helping you place in your thoughts the idea of planned killings (bombings, wars, skirmishes, raids, mob hits, etc.) in opposition/likeness to what appears on the surface to be quasi-random ones (domestic/workplace violence, suicide, etc.), knowing the majority of you won't care about the difference as long as you feel like you're following guidelines clearly defined for the lifestyle you prefer and get rewarded for (or at least won't get punished for occasionally straying from) your semiconsistent behaviour.
In the future, as more and more of our lives become permanent, public record, let us allow ourselves the flexibility, the room, the joy, the disappointment of inconsistency, because, as we all know, none of us is perfect. We are the imperfect examples of ourselves to ourselves first and foremost. If a hiring manager can use your social media profile as a basis for determining your character, then by a future law you should be able to review the details of the hiring manager's life, public AND private, (as well as the lives of the manager's friends/associates/colleagues) to determine if you want to work for the manager, since the manager is in a unique, privileged gatekeeping position. Transparency is not multifaceted - it has no sides to display/protect.
We don't die on the Internet - our caricatures just keep getting stranger. Glad we have humour to smooth out and soothe the bumps and bruises.
2010-08-24
Mid-Morning News
Breaking news for this morning:
** makes us wonder if there's a purpose behind a driver with the last name Speed or Power. Along that same line, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., is said to be in negotiations with his agents to consider changing his name to Pure Moneymaker. Because of contract constraints, he's not allowed to change his name to Nationwide Bud Wrangler.
- One shopper claims that after he pumped BP petrol into his car, brine shrimp started blowing out of his tailpipe. Our investigators are digging deeper into this watery horizon.
- Walmart's success in selling bananas has been traced to a rumour spreading across texts, tweets and the Internet that the tropical fruit, combined with bacon grease and hair of a dog's tail collected on the night of a full moon, is the exact same set of ingredients used to make Viagra, Cialis and other expensive stimulants (that is, according to a witch doctor we hired after the doc predicted the government's bureaucratic blunder in responding to the cataclysmic cleanup of Hurricane Katrina; the doc said that Pakistanis might as well roll up their rugs and move somewhere else 'cause they're in worse shape than a few thousand displaced Nawlins residents).
- Due to an unstoppable epidemic of artificial aging, today's episode of the soap opera, Days of Our Lives, moves the storyline forward 100 years and past 20 generations of Black, Brady, Carver, DiMera, Hernandez, Horton, Kiriakis, etc.
- Our crack reporters* have unearthed a conspiracy of epic proportions. The recent triple-race win (no, not a trifecta) by a driver fans love to hate was rigged in order to help increase sales of Busch beer. When asked if this was true, Kyle's brother said, "Why else do you think they hired us in the first place? Do we look like NASCAR drivers to you?"**
** makes us wonder if there's a purpose behind a driver with the last name Speed or Power. Along that same line, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., is said to be in negotiations with his agents to consider changing his name to Pure Moneymaker. Because of contract constraints, he's not allowed to change his name to Nationwide Bud Wrangler.
2010-08-23
Hay Bale
The cat brought to me a lizard, minus tail. A striped skink, now belonging to the outdoors.
Svelte fingers on piano keys serenade me via MP3 (V. Horowitz or M.M. Whatley).
Cascading sheets of wind stir the tree limbs.
A butterfly skims over the sunroom.
Have you ever analysed the packaging that contained an item shipped to you? How it was designed, cut, and assembled? Do you consider the industries that pop up around a major manufacturer?
If 60% of aluminium canisters are recycled, is there value in becoming an onsite recycler at a landfill or waste receptacle facility?
How much waste (lost profit/income) do we generate in our daily lives through serving our need for personal comfort/convenience? When we eat, what price do we pay for sanitation in packaging/cleaning material?
How much money do you go through in 30 days? How might you have spent/saved it another way?
Surrogate motherhood and nannies - where are we going with the separation of work/leisure from parenting? What are the long-term consequences? What did previous civilisations become/discover in such situations?
I have separated myself from the Book of the Future and certain colleagues/associates in order to claim ignorance of upcoming events. "Leave no paper trail," a former boss once told me, "and credit/blame goes to the pigeons with their necks stuck out."
That's why recent blog entries wander all over the place, switchbacks and dead branches covering up my tracks.
What they don't know will hurt you more than it will hurt them, I'm sorry to say.
Svelte fingers on piano keys serenade me via MP3 (V. Horowitz or M.M. Whatley).
Cascading sheets of wind stir the tree limbs.
A butterfly skims over the sunroom.
Have you ever analysed the packaging that contained an item shipped to you? How it was designed, cut, and assembled? Do you consider the industries that pop up around a major manufacturer?
If 60% of aluminium canisters are recycled, is there value in becoming an onsite recycler at a landfill or waste receptacle facility?
How much waste (lost profit/income) do we generate in our daily lives through serving our need for personal comfort/convenience? When we eat, what price do we pay for sanitation in packaging/cleaning material?
How much money do you go through in 30 days? How might you have spent/saved it another way?
Surrogate motherhood and nannies - where are we going with the separation of work/leisure from parenting? What are the long-term consequences? What did previous civilisations become/discover in such situations?
I have separated myself from the Book of the Future and certain colleagues/associates in order to claim ignorance of upcoming events. "Leave no paper trail," a former boss once told me, "and credit/blame goes to the pigeons with their necks stuck out."
That's why recent blog entries wander all over the place, switchbacks and dead branches covering up my tracks.
What they don't know will hurt you more than it will hurt them, I'm sorry to say.
Stan's Extreme "Going Out Of Business" Sale!!!
Pretty soon I will celebrate 25 years of legal residence with the woman I met when we were 12 years old at a summer camp (i.e., my wife). She would like to celebrate by going on an exotic holiday trip with me or demonstrating some other method of recognising that we've enjoyed good days and bad days together for about 9,125 days.
Twenty-five years. What can happen in that many revolutions of Earth around our most important star?
People have died but many more people were born in that time period. Could we say that birth has had a greater effect on our species' existence than death? Perhaps. More likely, we'll point to historical records that detail the warring nature of primates like us, rather than the ordinary joys and discoveries of new children in our lives.
If we look at ourselves as a species in toto, we can address population growth from a view of life without border constraints (because border disputes are a great source of excuses for starting wars ("the grass is always greener on the other side")).
[I pause here to consider the "natural" behaviour of our species long ago (pretending to erase 1,000,000+ years of civilisation development), when we were more a reactive species than a proactive one, then mentally follow our progress as we learned to hitch a ride onto the resources we harnessed around us and innocently took control of the local environment, and finally look at us 100,000 years from now when we'll be nothing like we are now. Will words like capitalism, communism, socialism, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, dictatorship and totalitarianism be remembered? Absolutely not.]
What if you could look at most future scenarios and chart courses today that lead you toward any or all of them?
The cry of the wren outside your window would have as much of an effect on the future as anything else.
Twenty-five years of staying loyal to the concept of matrimony. Some would call it sexually monotonous or morally uninteresting (as in the quote, “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”).
Of course, marriage is a relatively recent addition to our growing millennial-long list of acts of civility.
Essentially, marriage was one way to [try to] guarantee that two people will, barring major illness or unexpected death, raise their offspring together without forcing their children's complete care onto the already-full lives of others.
Is monogamy an inherent genetic trait? I don't know. In any case, our thoughts - the superset of ideas we pass from one generation to the next - have superseded the trait, if it exists/existed.
I have faced physical sexual temptations in my married life and resisted all of them. Does that make me any more or less interesting to others? I don't know.
Marriage is the only commitment I've ever made that I intended to stick with. Whether it was my general cultural training, Boy Scout training, religious training, and/or genetic disposition that encouraged that point of view, I don't know and it doesn't matter to me. The fact remains that my life partner and I chose each other after years of being friends.
We haven't had children together so we've shared our lives and bounty with nieces, nephews and the community at large, instead, while remaining physically/mentally faithful to one another (I admit I have made "what if" comparisons throughout my married life but have never found anyone more compatible than my wife).
I've met people who shouldn't marry and shouldn't have married. But at the same time, they have been or could have been good parents. Therefore, marriage and parenthood are not necessarily synonymous.
While watching a family of titmouse birds make their way through the forest past our house, I think about the family that is my species spread around Earth.
How do we as a species reconcile civil/religious differences in the definition of marriage and parenting? Can we?
If life is a series of coincidences, accidents and other intersections of space and time that from at least one perspective a person could label a "black swan"...
If up to 40% of births are tied to extramarital encounters...
Will a "Brave New World" or "Matrix" future of society-in-general raising our children from birth redefine the civil union between two people?
Or will we, as an expanding population of ever-more-diverse specialised subcultures, always have conflicting views that provide individuals the right to choose which one works best for them in the subcultures they wish to live?
You see, I have considered this issue here before, so I wonder, if this is my planet, why others who might have read my words or been unknowingly influenced by them, would question the location of a religious center in which people who also fear extremism as much as others (after all, the 9/11 attack hijacked their religion from them) promote civil unions similar to my view.
At last, I find myself at the bottom of this blog entry knowing none of this really matters. Whether the Ottoman Empire, the Mayan Empire, the British Empire, the Russian Empire or the Mongol Empire reappears in a new form (eventually showing once again that there's no such thing as "too big to fail"), we're still one species of individuals figuring out how to make our way through life relatively free of oppression in order to live as children and/or parents, married or otherwise. Ultimately, these are just a few paragraphs of procrastination while I momentarily put aside thoughts of how/where to get the money to finance a fancy 25th wedding anniversary celebration with my wonderful wife.
Twenty-five years. What can happen in that many revolutions of Earth around our most important star?
People have died but many more people were born in that time period. Could we say that birth has had a greater effect on our species' existence than death? Perhaps. More likely, we'll point to historical records that detail the warring nature of primates like us, rather than the ordinary joys and discoveries of new children in our lives.
If we look at ourselves as a species in toto, we can address population growth from a view of life without border constraints (because border disputes are a great source of excuses for starting wars ("the grass is always greener on the other side")).
[I pause here to consider the "natural" behaviour of our species long ago (pretending to erase 1,000,000+ years of civilisation development), when we were more a reactive species than a proactive one, then mentally follow our progress as we learned to hitch a ride onto the resources we harnessed around us and innocently took control of the local environment, and finally look at us 100,000 years from now when we'll be nothing like we are now. Will words like capitalism, communism, socialism, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, dictatorship and totalitarianism be remembered? Absolutely not.]
What if you could look at most future scenarios and chart courses today that lead you toward any or all of them?
The cry of the wren outside your window would have as much of an effect on the future as anything else.
Twenty-five years of staying loyal to the concept of matrimony. Some would call it sexually monotonous or morally uninteresting (as in the quote, “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”).
Of course, marriage is a relatively recent addition to our growing millennial-long list of acts of civility.
Essentially, marriage was one way to [try to] guarantee that two people will, barring major illness or unexpected death, raise their offspring together without forcing their children's complete care onto the already-full lives of others.
Is monogamy an inherent genetic trait? I don't know. In any case, our thoughts - the superset of ideas we pass from one generation to the next - have superseded the trait, if it exists/existed.
I have faced physical sexual temptations in my married life and resisted all of them. Does that make me any more or less interesting to others? I don't know.
Marriage is the only commitment I've ever made that I intended to stick with. Whether it was my general cultural training, Boy Scout training, religious training, and/or genetic disposition that encouraged that point of view, I don't know and it doesn't matter to me. The fact remains that my life partner and I chose each other after years of being friends.
We haven't had children together so we've shared our lives and bounty with nieces, nephews and the community at large, instead, while remaining physically/mentally faithful to one another (I admit I have made "what if" comparisons throughout my married life but have never found anyone more compatible than my wife).
I've met people who shouldn't marry and shouldn't have married. But at the same time, they have been or could have been good parents. Therefore, marriage and parenthood are not necessarily synonymous.
While watching a family of titmouse birds make their way through the forest past our house, I think about the family that is my species spread around Earth.
How do we as a species reconcile civil/religious differences in the definition of marriage and parenting? Can we?
If life is a series of coincidences, accidents and other intersections of space and time that from at least one perspective a person could label a "black swan"...
If up to 40% of births are tied to extramarital encounters...
Will a "Brave New World" or "Matrix" future of society-in-general raising our children from birth redefine the civil union between two people?
Or will we, as an expanding population of ever-more-diverse specialised subcultures, always have conflicting views that provide individuals the right to choose which one works best for them in the subcultures they wish to live?
You see, I have considered this issue here before, so I wonder, if this is my planet, why others who might have read my words or been unknowingly influenced by them, would question the location of a religious center in which people who also fear extremism as much as others (after all, the 9/11 attack hijacked their religion from them) promote civil unions similar to my view.
At last, I find myself at the bottom of this blog entry knowing none of this really matters. Whether the Ottoman Empire, the Mayan Empire, the British Empire, the Russian Empire or the Mongol Empire reappears in a new form (eventually showing once again that there's no such thing as "too big to fail"), we're still one species of individuals figuring out how to make our way through life relatively free of oppression in order to live as children and/or parents, married or otherwise. Ultimately, these are just a few paragraphs of procrastination while I momentarily put aside thoughts of how/where to get the money to finance a fancy 25th wedding anniversary celebration with my wonderful wife.
2010-08-22
Frozen Spoonful Of Hormonal Goodness
Guess keeping unnatural cow products out of our diet is the best way to avoid problems? Maybe:
Is Your Favorite Ice Cream Made With Monsanto's Artificial Hormones?
Is Your Favorite Ice Cream Made With Monsanto's Artificial Hormones?
A Running Bucket
Despite not knowing the value of validity, the thought experiment persists: would I be surprised to know no one reads this blog because I really don't exist?
The tall, thin stalks around me are not tree rings. The absence of direct sunlight in the middle of the day is not clouds. Labels exist, representing nothing.
What, then, do I represent?
Small thoughts. Medium-sized thoughts. Large thoughts. The watery reflection of sunlight dancing on the underside of a fig leaf. Are they not all the same?
States of energy.
Yet pain feels real. Healing takes time.
I cannot absent self from self. There is no way for this intersection of states of energy to exist outside the moment.
To reorganise the unstructured...to see that seeing creates the illusory importance of seeing...
The earthworm is as destructive a force in reducing ecosystem diversity as we are, no more aware of its unintended consequences eating dirt than I am writing these words.
To speak the language of the stars, one loses all sense of self, no longer tied to translating the indecipherable into a species' limited means of communicating.
States of energy.
When we learn more, when we create a space traveler which is us (a thinker) and yet not us (different materialistic composition), we have accomplished more than we'll ever know.
The space traveler will create its own missions, duties, and sense of destiny, and we'll hope but never know if any likeness/memory of us goes along with it to encounter that which we've dreamed of from our prehistoric days of seeking - permanent fertile land (for it, in that case, not for us).
What of us? We'll still find ways to travel in our current forms, tearing down and rebuilding civilisations for the sake of variety (as the cast of characters constantly changes). Over long stretches of time, the ecosphere will absorb our changes, changing us as we keep changing it.
Every moment is a point of no return, the tipping point from which we roll over into the next moment.
Time to join my feline friends in a nonpurposeful, unscheduled catnap and dream of what our new form will be like when we're no longer us in a moment I may not live to see. A beam of invisible light is as much a form as a body...zzzzz...
2010-08-21
Orchid Flower Stalk
A person asked my opinion about upcoming rallies and if it's true that police and military will secretly support (or turn around and conveniently miss) crowds taking over buildings, businesses and media outlets of the local establishment during the climax of one particular rally.
My opinions do not matter so I changed the cable TV tuner setting to the Easy Listening digital radio channel. There in front of me is an image of Chet Atkins while the tune "Old Fashioned Love Song" gently serenades the nearly-empty living room.
What would Chet say to a question about his opinion concerning [inter]national political movements?
He'd probably laugh, strum a few bars and ask if I had a particular harmony in mind to hear him play.
These moments and the moments around them make me believe more and more that we'll figure out how to make heroes out of quadriplegics, attaching their brains and brain-feeding parts to electromechanical wonders that allow them to live an indeterminately long time while exploring the outer reaches of our solar system and beyond, either directly living aboard spaceships or acting as virtual pilots/scientists taking care of shipboard occupants such as plants and animals we want to set down on extraterrestrial bodies to see how they adapt.
I don't have any answers to give you, only questions and suppositions. My life is what I see right here, warts, freckles and all, not a caricature/projection standing on top of a stage pulling the puppet strings of an audience.
By proposing sometimes absurd scenarios, I'm letting the thoughts that pass through me as a node in the network of interconnected beings reach those who desire to make changes for whatever reasons, purposes or unknowable outputs they create.
Along the way, I'll recall the country life my parents' generation lived, when the Greatest Generation Ever faced fascism, world war, economic collapse and other disasters they were willing to overcome together, knowing some of their solutions were not perfect or ideal but suited for the moments they called their own.
Rights, wrongs, absolutes and relativity are words. When is murder justified? Is hope ever completely lost?
I don't want to be right, but when I'm right it feels good to know that something out there aligned with my thoughts. However, I don't need a whole society to align with my thoughts to feel right. I feel right now because a cat came up to me, looked me over and purred simply because I reached out and rubbed its fur. I feel right because sometimes I remember to pour water over the leaves and roots of a potted orchid sitting on a table on the back deck and a flower stalk is coming up, my having very little to do with the everyday exposure of the orchid to dew, sun and windblown nutrients. I feel right because I can imagine words that miraculously appear on the LCD screen in front of me because my fingers can find keys to press without my looking down at them.
Did Putin magically put out all the Russian fires on his own? No. But you can bet he felt right when fighting fires himself. Did Thomas Jefferson feel right while writing the next to next to last draft of the Declaration of Independence, aware that his colleagues would wordsmith their own versions, given the chance? No. But he knew he was on the right track.
So it is and will be. People innocent of crimes will be murdered in the name of a cause others claim is greater than any one individual. In that case, to whom do we assign the feeling of being "right"?
I can place a safe bet that 100 years from now no one will remember my name as I remembered it belonging to this aging body (what it felt like to be me at 5, 15, 40, etc.).
That's how I look at our moments together, as if we're looking at them 100 or 1000 years from now, the details lost in torrential rains of time. That's why I look backward at the arguments of 100 or 1000 years ago and read heated arguments that make no sense to me now.
Ten steps forward and ten steps backward at the same time. See what really matters.
Do you know the wonderful feeling of waking up in the morning, unshackled from the false sense of security that history books provide, fully aware that this very moment is all you'll ever have? I hope you do.
I live here and now, on this planet with about seven billion of us, seeking solutions that take all of us into account. These words are part of my daily meditation/prayer cycle, indicative of my bodily limitations.
In fact, that's what we do together, even if we don't put it into phrases like that. We're almost completely unaware of our interconnectedness, using subcultural blinders to pretend others do not exist who do not feel "right" to us, even though we depend on them as much as we depend on those in our subcultures.
We won't solve world hunger anytime soon, due to artificial subcultural barriers. But we can still save our species and the ecosystems upon which we depend while trying to reduce hunger, poverty, illiteracy, gender inequality and other social conditions we deem problematic.
All while having a good time poking fun at ourselves.
A sleepless night or two ago I enjoyed watching two young raccoon siblings tussle on a sunlight in the sunroom at 1:30 in the morning. That's the feeling from my childhood I try to capture and reenact several times a day - playfulness at pretending to be a ferocious fighter with fellow members of my species.
Contrary to what my government tells me, I have no enemies. Sure, there are people who would kill me if I was standing with my U.S. passport held high in their midst, but they aren't my enemies - of course, their image of what I would represent is an enemy to them. Instead, they are just whomever they want to be and pose no real threat to me, because I want them to exist and learn to focus their enemy hating/fearing/killing energy on more important issues.
I'm a realist. I know people are training recruits to kill people like me and we need protective measures to prevent them from succeeding. At the same time, we don't need to justify the trainers' and recruits' self-delusional hatred (but again, I'm a realist and know there are whole industries that intentionally provoke the anger of others (the never-ending (never-ending (never-ending)) cycle of the dance of subcultural clashes).
My response is to make fun of all of us, hoping we'll see the folly of our old habits and find other lucrative ways to prosper from/with one another.
Why don't you find out for yourself? Join the Global Humour Brigade and enjoy a romping good time!
Anyone got solid bets riding on the next UFC bout? Nothing like a caged bloody battle to rattle your senses and make a few bucks in a friendly wager.
My opinions do not matter so I changed the cable TV tuner setting to the Easy Listening digital radio channel. There in front of me is an image of Chet Atkins while the tune "Old Fashioned Love Song" gently serenades the nearly-empty living room.
What would Chet say to a question about his opinion concerning [inter]national political movements?
He'd probably laugh, strum a few bars and ask if I had a particular harmony in mind to hear him play.
These moments and the moments around them make me believe more and more that we'll figure out how to make heroes out of quadriplegics, attaching their brains and brain-feeding parts to electromechanical wonders that allow them to live an indeterminately long time while exploring the outer reaches of our solar system and beyond, either directly living aboard spaceships or acting as virtual pilots/scientists taking care of shipboard occupants such as plants and animals we want to set down on extraterrestrial bodies to see how they adapt.
I don't have any answers to give you, only questions and suppositions. My life is what I see right here, warts, freckles and all, not a caricature/projection standing on top of a stage pulling the puppet strings of an audience.
By proposing sometimes absurd scenarios, I'm letting the thoughts that pass through me as a node in the network of interconnected beings reach those who desire to make changes for whatever reasons, purposes or unknowable outputs they create.
Along the way, I'll recall the country life my parents' generation lived, when the Greatest Generation Ever faced fascism, world war, economic collapse and other disasters they were willing to overcome together, knowing some of their solutions were not perfect or ideal but suited for the moments they called their own.
Rights, wrongs, absolutes and relativity are words. When is murder justified? Is hope ever completely lost?
I don't want to be right, but when I'm right it feels good to know that something out there aligned with my thoughts. However, I don't need a whole society to align with my thoughts to feel right. I feel right now because a cat came up to me, looked me over and purred simply because I reached out and rubbed its fur. I feel right because sometimes I remember to pour water over the leaves and roots of a potted orchid sitting on a table on the back deck and a flower stalk is coming up, my having very little to do with the everyday exposure of the orchid to dew, sun and windblown nutrients. I feel right because I can imagine words that miraculously appear on the LCD screen in front of me because my fingers can find keys to press without my looking down at them.
Did Putin magically put out all the Russian fires on his own? No. But you can bet he felt right when fighting fires himself. Did Thomas Jefferson feel right while writing the next to next to last draft of the Declaration of Independence, aware that his colleagues would wordsmith their own versions, given the chance? No. But he knew he was on the right track.
So it is and will be. People innocent of crimes will be murdered in the name of a cause others claim is greater than any one individual. In that case, to whom do we assign the feeling of being "right"?
I can place a safe bet that 100 years from now no one will remember my name as I remembered it belonging to this aging body (what it felt like to be me at 5, 15, 40, etc.).
That's how I look at our moments together, as if we're looking at them 100 or 1000 years from now, the details lost in torrential rains of time. That's why I look backward at the arguments of 100 or 1000 years ago and read heated arguments that make no sense to me now.
Ten steps forward and ten steps backward at the same time. See what really matters.
Do you know the wonderful feeling of waking up in the morning, unshackled from the false sense of security that history books provide, fully aware that this very moment is all you'll ever have? I hope you do.
I live here and now, on this planet with about seven billion of us, seeking solutions that take all of us into account. These words are part of my daily meditation/prayer cycle, indicative of my bodily limitations.
In fact, that's what we do together, even if we don't put it into phrases like that. We're almost completely unaware of our interconnectedness, using subcultural blinders to pretend others do not exist who do not feel "right" to us, even though we depend on them as much as we depend on those in our subcultures.
We won't solve world hunger anytime soon, due to artificial subcultural barriers. But we can still save our species and the ecosystems upon which we depend while trying to reduce hunger, poverty, illiteracy, gender inequality and other social conditions we deem problematic.
All while having a good time poking fun at ourselves.
A sleepless night or two ago I enjoyed watching two young raccoon siblings tussle on a sunlight in the sunroom at 1:30 in the morning. That's the feeling from my childhood I try to capture and reenact several times a day - playfulness at pretending to be a ferocious fighter with fellow members of my species.
Contrary to what my government tells me, I have no enemies. Sure, there are people who would kill me if I was standing with my U.S. passport held high in their midst, but they aren't my enemies - of course, their image of what I would represent is an enemy to them. Instead, they are just whomever they want to be and pose no real threat to me, because I want them to exist and learn to focus their enemy hating/fearing/killing energy on more important issues.
I'm a realist. I know people are training recruits to kill people like me and we need protective measures to prevent them from succeeding. At the same time, we don't need to justify the trainers' and recruits' self-delusional hatred (but again, I'm a realist and know there are whole industries that intentionally provoke the anger of others (the never-ending (never-ending (never-ending)) cycle of the dance of subcultural clashes).
My response is to make fun of all of us, hoping we'll see the folly of our old habits and find other lucrative ways to prosper from/with one another.
Why don't you find out for yourself? Join the Global Humour Brigade and enjoy a romping good time!
Anyone got solid bets riding on the next UFC bout? Nothing like a caged bloody battle to rattle your senses and make a few bucks in a friendly wager.
2010-08-20
Plant Lite
My colleagues and associates are busy making plans, leaving me a moment to contemplate nothing.
Fidel knows what's going on. He had the opportunity to cooperate, looking at life from the inside looking out, but chose not to. Even so, he's still part of the party to the first party. You just won't find him listed on the guest list but he's fully taken into account all the same.
I am red in the face from trying to tell you that all seven billion of us are involved so don't get twisted around, thinking you'll find some deep, dark secret others haven't discovered.
Everything is right here in full view.
We listen to the wrong narratives, easily distracted.
Let the repetitions go. Meditate by not meditating (or pray without praying). The signals will reveal themselves in their complex but simple forms.
I was tempted to refeed you the information via the methods you've been raised to prefer - religion, politics, gossip, pop idol worship, etc. - look at how many people fall for/into the temptation to administer/practice/believe.
However, that's not me. I don't want worshippers, people who love and/or fear me.
I don't want to be me to begin with so why would I want people to want to know or be like me?
So I'm back to the drawing board, letting my associates and colleagues continue pursuing targets on avenues we laid out in the first wave of the "transition."
For instance, we have people who will put on the label of Taliban telling you they are stoned...I mean, stoning people, as if in an act of defiance. We have put them out there for you to compare stoning to execution (i.e., capital punishment (btw, in the U.S., we call national politics "Capitol punishment")) and abortion.
It is what we do, giving you options to consider. If you don't know what the alternatives are, how can you truly understand the concept of absolute freedom?
Speaking of abortion, did we tell you we have a research lab setting up artificial wombs to which we attach so-called aborted foetuses? The children we are raising from these foetuses will serve us in future waves, their having been fully integrated into the upgraded biological network implant / DNA modification system some of you are already participating in.
If you want backroom deals where the few control the many, we can give that to you. Instead, we'd rather have the full ecosystem function semi-autonomously in order to optimise the outputs of the main functions we provide one another freely.
For some, there's no way to convince you you aren't being controlled by the alien voices in your head telling you that beings on another planet are lonely and want to help us build spaceships in order to send us their way.
For the majority of you, the voices in your head have familiar identities attached to our cultural training.
I'll say it again. I'm not here to refute your arguments/statements that the voices are real. If that's what gets you going, keep going.
Freedom is all I'm after. The freedom to write what I want, even if I don't write what I want in this family-friendly forum (self-censorship is the responsibility I uphold in protecting the freedom of all of us to speak freely).
This just happens to be the moment in which I live, a moment that others are chronicling as history. Having seen the past and the future in many, many, many of its forms, I have little to say here that will directly impact history as we want to write it.
Almost all of our heated discussions in this moment will be forgotten. In the cycles we like to repeat, none of our heated discussions will reveal anything new.
I am unimportant. I am a messenger for the voices of our ancestors and the voices you will hear on street corners, Internet videos and media outlets we haven't dreamed up yet.
I am not the message. You are.
The consequences of our actions are predictably inconsequential. The border dispute you carry on with your neighbour can be wiped out in an ecologically disastrous instant. If you want us to demonstrate that to you again, we can (and will).
As far as I'm concerned, I can die today or tomorrow. I'm an ordinary member of my species and always will be. My life is limited to a speck, a dot, a blip of time between a beginning and an end over which I have no control. The species does not die when I do. The planet will absorb the particles, the states of energy, of which I'm composed, without skipping a beat.
You, us - the species, the subcultures, the interconnected ecosystems on the ecosphere in the solar system we call our own - we're all that matters. Compared to all of us, I'm a nobody, happily so.
I'm going to be here almost everyday, my body withering away while I carve a few words onto this clay tablet. Sometimes I'll taste the wind, note the change of direction and comment about our species' shifting priorities. Most of what we do doesn't matter to me but it matters to you because you're more closely involved than I am. That's who we are, isn't it? Myopic, for the most part?
When you understand that we're in control of one another and yet completely free, you'll see what those voices in your head are really all about: serendipitous states of energy.
Time to check in with my colleagues and associates, find out what they want to do next. If they desire their names on the marquee of time while making massive historic changes, I won't stand in their way. But I will make sure they behave in a tolerant manner, respecting the rights of those subcultures which want to exist peaceably (knowing our actions will appear paradoxical at times).
Fidel knows what's going on. He had the opportunity to cooperate, looking at life from the inside looking out, but chose not to. Even so, he's still part of the party to the first party. You just won't find him listed on the guest list but he's fully taken into account all the same.
I am red in the face from trying to tell you that all seven billion of us are involved so don't get twisted around, thinking you'll find some deep, dark secret others haven't discovered.
Everything is right here in full view.
We listen to the wrong narratives, easily distracted.
Let the repetitions go. Meditate by not meditating (or pray without praying). The signals will reveal themselves in their complex but simple forms.
I was tempted to refeed you the information via the methods you've been raised to prefer - religion, politics, gossip, pop idol worship, etc. - look at how many people fall for/into the temptation to administer/practice/believe.
However, that's not me. I don't want worshippers, people who love and/or fear me.
I don't want to be me to begin with so why would I want people to want to know or be like me?
So I'm back to the drawing board, letting my associates and colleagues continue pursuing targets on avenues we laid out in the first wave of the "transition."
For instance, we have people who will put on the label of Taliban telling you they are stoned...I mean, stoning people, as if in an act of defiance. We have put them out there for you to compare stoning to execution (i.e., capital punishment (btw, in the U.S., we call national politics "Capitol punishment")) and abortion.
It is what we do, giving you options to consider. If you don't know what the alternatives are, how can you truly understand the concept of absolute freedom?
Speaking of abortion, did we tell you we have a research lab setting up artificial wombs to which we attach so-called aborted foetuses? The children we are raising from these foetuses will serve us in future waves, their having been fully integrated into the upgraded biological network implant / DNA modification system some of you are already participating in.
If you want backroom deals where the few control the many, we can give that to you. Instead, we'd rather have the full ecosystem function semi-autonomously in order to optimise the outputs of the main functions we provide one another freely.
For some, there's no way to convince you you aren't being controlled by the alien voices in your head telling you that beings on another planet are lonely and want to help us build spaceships in order to send us their way.
For the majority of you, the voices in your head have familiar identities attached to our cultural training.
I'll say it again. I'm not here to refute your arguments/statements that the voices are real. If that's what gets you going, keep going.
Freedom is all I'm after. The freedom to write what I want, even if I don't write what I want in this family-friendly forum (self-censorship is the responsibility I uphold in protecting the freedom of all of us to speak freely).
This just happens to be the moment in which I live, a moment that others are chronicling as history. Having seen the past and the future in many, many, many of its forms, I have little to say here that will directly impact history as we want to write it.
Almost all of our heated discussions in this moment will be forgotten. In the cycles we like to repeat, none of our heated discussions will reveal anything new.
I am unimportant. I am a messenger for the voices of our ancestors and the voices you will hear on street corners, Internet videos and media outlets we haven't dreamed up yet.
I am not the message. You are.
The consequences of our actions are predictably inconsequential. The border dispute you carry on with your neighbour can be wiped out in an ecologically disastrous instant. If you want us to demonstrate that to you again, we can (and will).
As far as I'm concerned, I can die today or tomorrow. I'm an ordinary member of my species and always will be. My life is limited to a speck, a dot, a blip of time between a beginning and an end over which I have no control. The species does not die when I do. The planet will absorb the particles, the states of energy, of which I'm composed, without skipping a beat.
You, us - the species, the subcultures, the interconnected ecosystems on the ecosphere in the solar system we call our own - we're all that matters. Compared to all of us, I'm a nobody, happily so.
I'm going to be here almost everyday, my body withering away while I carve a few words onto this clay tablet. Sometimes I'll taste the wind, note the change of direction and comment about our species' shifting priorities. Most of what we do doesn't matter to me but it matters to you because you're more closely involved than I am. That's who we are, isn't it? Myopic, for the most part?
When you understand that we're in control of one another and yet completely free, you'll see what those voices in your head are really all about: serendipitous states of energy.
Time to check in with my colleagues and associates, find out what they want to do next. If they desire their names on the marquee of time while making massive historic changes, I won't stand in their way. But I will make sure they behave in a tolerant manner, respecting the rights of those subcultures which want to exist peaceably (knowing our actions will appear paradoxical at times).
2010-08-19
Washing The Car
Today is the first day of the rest of my life in which I started off saying that I don't know anything. Best to agree that ignorance is bliss rather than go along with any of the invariable theories of life that have no basis in reality. Better to see that NASCAR is stuck with old France-approved marketing methods than hope for a radically improved racing product. Time to drown my insight in fermentation and forget all I thought I knew. What I know would kill most of us and I want to live a little while longer blissfully unaware of the facts again. In other words, I want my childhood pre-disillusionment back.
2010-08-18
Click Beetles
Adopting a mode of entry moves my thought set toward certain inexact templates. Thus, I use "thus" to make a point. Ever watched a moth that can fly spend minutes meandering across a ceiling? That's why.
I act like this planet belongs to me because I can find no evidence to the contrary. What do I do with such a free gift as a planet?
What? It is the paradox I cannot resolve. Like those who say voices speak to them and guide their actions - unless the actions appear oddly detrimental or so nonsensical that they can be ignored (qualitative judgments on our part, of course), who are we to say the voices aren't real (but perhaps unreal)?
I only asked for a planet-sized observation post on a whim, to get the gift givers off my back, so to speak. Little did I know they were absolutely serious. The consequences were mine alone to face.
And here I am. Standin' here on this imaginary windswept bald on top of the world, cold mist in my face, my hands and arms busy flying the kite that represents the major movements down below.
I try to deny my responsibilities but I don't leave this spot. Sleeping, dreaming or awake, the position never varies.
I've given up asking "Why me?" I've tried to divert attention from me, pointing others to their favorite conspiracy theories long since hashed out in popular fictional accounts and easily converted to new fads.
I believe in the power within you to control your own destiny. At the same time... well...
My associates don't want me to go away. They tell me the network has taken on a life of its own with me as the permanent silent, unseen facilitator.
No worries from me anymore about becoming a despotic leader - at my suggestion, alarm indicators that resemble controls are in place to help me stay on the predesignated path of my choosing. For example, if I back my lorry off a rock wall, there'll be a buddy with a tow truck to get me out of trouble.
So, back to work. Intolerance is a fulltime vigilante position. We've got a planet to run and a solar system to populate on the way toward preserving the concept this living ecosphere has demonstrated.
The wind has spoken and for once I was fully awake and listening. Interplanetary Citizens, to your positions! No time to waste! Just four months and some change until we're fully operational.
We Are Living In A Satirical World
Tree bark... mobo. Redbud pods. 4-40 screws. Glue sticks. Tea bags. RCA plugs. Sunlight. Horizontal blinds. Drop cords. Nails. Picture frames. Wall studs. Culverts. River rocks. Arm hair. Awnings. Slogans. Storage. Model rockets. Velcro wallets.
Talking through my fingertips. Listening to the wind blow through the woods. Walked through the neighbourhood. Smelled fresh-cut pine boards in unfinished house and dead pine limbs piled in the ditch. Late summer. Roadkill squirrel on the road surrounded by flies.
Misplaced modifiers echoing humour of the dry variety.
We participate in our illogical, unexplainable social gatherings, unaware of no purpose whatsoever.
The Internet is the novel that never ends. [Who said that already?]
On whom do you depend to tell you how to best spend your disposable income?
To whom do you turn to provide you guidance in areas of life that are fuzzy and make no sense?
These are not my words. I didn't invent them or reinvent them. I merely show my well-trained youth in how I put these words together, training I received in both formal and informal settings.
And yet I think I continue my education, even though I, like everyone else, it appears, am, barring major damage to my body/psyche, spending my life reaffirming the personality that was formed by the time I was five.
Do I need confirmation that my image of self is surprisingly reflected somewhere in the anonymous masses? Is it not obvious that I am a member of my species?
Blow, wind, blow. Feel the hot air virtually pouring onto this electronic paper.
It doesn't matter who I am. It matters. What is "it"? It is us, you, we, them, her, him, me.
Our species will spin around itself in subcultural swirls in time immemorial. We'll say the same things over and over, climbing over the pile of the bodies of the subcultures we overcame that overcame our subcultures that we'll overcome that will overcome our subcultures again and again.
I can spend my moments here satirising those subcultures. Or...
I can spend my moments everywhere making sure we focus enough of our species' resources to open up channels to the stars upon which waves of our mixed subcultures flow outward.
I'm not a technical wizard. I am not a programming genius. Otherwise, I'd gather with friends in the international community and help build our own launchpads and liveable space habitats, knowing some of us would end up like Bruce Dern and the crew in "Silent Running," at odds with one another over the primary mission, thus requiring multiple launches to ensure one or more crews succeeded in exiting this solar system.
Where would we go? In some ways, it wouldn't matter, as long as we ventured outward, serving as extraterrestrial guinea pigs and shining beacons for our species.
Instead of...
Instead of, like, for sure, spending our time, you know, on, like, more stuff we can buy with, like, our, you know, our, uh... disposable income.
Eventually we'll find a viable extrasolar landing spot ("invading species" ethics aside), having reinvented ourselves many times over on the way there.
Meanwhile, I'm mired in the leftover detritus of our disposable stuff, wondering why I'm here, caught in a satire of a satire of the satirical world I imagined at age five. If the joke's on me, who's laughing?
Being happy and melancholy is my lot in life, joyously so. Writing is my hobby, given to me by my ancestors. Observing the universe, the only way I know how/where to live, is my comic relief.
If anyone happens to come upon this blog and reads it, don't take what I say seriously. I'm uncomfortable with where certain parts of our species are headed and thus use this blog to subvert my discomfort through the use of parody. It is what I do with who I am. I mean no harm. I plan no revolution. You, not I, decide how you want to live your lives.
Remember, history books record massive changes in our species' actions, not the regular, normal activities we create to reproduce and preserve our species and the ecosystems in which we live our daily lives. Regular folks like me don't want to foment revolutions - we just want to find a relatively easy place to settle down and take care of family, our names and faces unknown to friendly nameless and faceless people on the other side of the planet. Peace is about sharing, war is about taking away.
Be wary of people who seek the limelight. On the flip side, idle idol worship is even an odd game to play.
Not everything has to make sense. Can we teach our children to live successful lives every day without fostering a heavy belief in heroes/heroines?
Another day full of questions. I'm glad I write this to myself in the belief I'm the only one who reads this. I can be me, transparent and free.
Time to step away from this technological portal and watch the world silently, another day of my life spent doing nothing much important, a life no more or less important in the grand scheme of things.
You can figure out for yourselves how to live together with your neighbours and family. It's not easy. It's not hard. It just is.
Talking through my fingertips. Listening to the wind blow through the woods. Walked through the neighbourhood. Smelled fresh-cut pine boards in unfinished house and dead pine limbs piled in the ditch. Late summer. Roadkill squirrel on the road surrounded by flies.
Misplaced modifiers echoing humour of the dry variety.
We participate in our illogical, unexplainable social gatherings, unaware of no purpose whatsoever.
The Internet is the novel that never ends. [Who said that already?]
On whom do you depend to tell you how to best spend your disposable income?
To whom do you turn to provide you guidance in areas of life that are fuzzy and make no sense?
These are not my words. I didn't invent them or reinvent them. I merely show my well-trained youth in how I put these words together, training I received in both formal and informal settings.
And yet I think I continue my education, even though I, like everyone else, it appears, am, barring major damage to my body/psyche, spending my life reaffirming the personality that was formed by the time I was five.
Do I need confirmation that my image of self is surprisingly reflected somewhere in the anonymous masses? Is it not obvious that I am a member of my species?
Blow, wind, blow. Feel the hot air virtually pouring onto this electronic paper.
It doesn't matter who I am. It matters. What is "it"? It is us, you, we, them, her, him, me.
Our species will spin around itself in subcultural swirls in time immemorial. We'll say the same things over and over, climbing over the pile of the bodies of the subcultures we overcame that overcame our subcultures that we'll overcome that will overcome our subcultures again and again.
I can spend my moments here satirising those subcultures. Or...
I can spend my moments everywhere making sure we focus enough of our species' resources to open up channels to the stars upon which waves of our mixed subcultures flow outward.
I'm not a technical wizard. I am not a programming genius. Otherwise, I'd gather with friends in the international community and help build our own launchpads and liveable space habitats, knowing some of us would end up like Bruce Dern and the crew in "Silent Running," at odds with one another over the primary mission, thus requiring multiple launches to ensure one or more crews succeeded in exiting this solar system.
Where would we go? In some ways, it wouldn't matter, as long as we ventured outward, serving as extraterrestrial guinea pigs and shining beacons for our species.
Instead of...
Instead of, like, for sure, spending our time, you know, on, like, more stuff we can buy with, like, our, you know, our, uh... disposable income.
Eventually we'll find a viable extrasolar landing spot ("invading species" ethics aside), having reinvented ourselves many times over on the way there.
Meanwhile, I'm mired in the leftover detritus of our disposable stuff, wondering why I'm here, caught in a satire of a satire of the satirical world I imagined at age five. If the joke's on me, who's laughing?
Being happy and melancholy is my lot in life, joyously so. Writing is my hobby, given to me by my ancestors. Observing the universe, the only way I know how/where to live, is my comic relief.
If anyone happens to come upon this blog and reads it, don't take what I say seriously. I'm uncomfortable with where certain parts of our species are headed and thus use this blog to subvert my discomfort through the use of parody. It is what I do with who I am. I mean no harm. I plan no revolution. You, not I, decide how you want to live your lives.
Remember, history books record massive changes in our species' actions, not the regular, normal activities we create to reproduce and preserve our species and the ecosystems in which we live our daily lives. Regular folks like me don't want to foment revolutions - we just want to find a relatively easy place to settle down and take care of family, our names and faces unknown to friendly nameless and faceless people on the other side of the planet. Peace is about sharing, war is about taking away.
Be wary of people who seek the limelight. On the flip side, idle idol worship is even an odd game to play.
Not everything has to make sense. Can we teach our children to live successful lives every day without fostering a heavy belief in heroes/heroines?
Another day full of questions. I'm glad I write this to myself in the belief I'm the only one who reads this. I can be me, transparent and free.
Time to step away from this technological portal and watch the world silently, another day of my life spent doing nothing much important, a life no more or less important in the grand scheme of things.
You can figure out for yourselves how to live together with your neighbours and family. It's not easy. It's not hard. It just is.
2010-08-17
. .
One of those days when silence (indicative of a lack of action (perhaps even peace)) is sufficient.
2010-08-16
My Review of HP Pavilion p6520f Desktop PC
Originally submitted at Staples
Whether you’re surfing the Web, editing photos, mixing your soundtracks or creating your own home videos, HP Pavilion desktop PC’s offer a variety of ways to make your computing experience richer and more rewarding. As you would expect from the lead er in consumer PC’s, every HP Pavilion PC include...
Quick setup, fast budget PC
By Big Cove from Big Cove, Alabama on 8/16/2010
Pros: Quiet, Versatile, Never Freezes, Easy To Set Up, Powerful
Best Uses: Office, Home, Multimedia
Describe Yourself: Tech Savvy
The PC setup was a breeze. Have used for about a week. The only negative was some red edges on text when using VGA cable - switched to DVI-D cable and the red edges have disappeared. Otherwise, the PC has worked well with MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Haven't tried the 7.1 sound ports, or microphone/earphone connections on the front (is there a need to have door that hides/reveals front panel connections?). Interesting that the desktop PC case's vents are on one side of PC requiring a little bit of space on the right for proper ventilation. Works well with HP S2331 23" LCD monitor and HP LaserJet 1012 printer.
(legalese)
2010-08-15
Bobbing For Apples Amidst Miniature Sharks
I haven't read today's entertainment headlines (i.e., the news) so pardon me if I'm behind the times here. What if the DRK stated the following?: "Upon review of our naval military maneuvers, we have discovered the possibility that one of our offensive weapons inoffensively discharged. As an act of international goodwill, we are compensating the inadvertent victims of an accident at sea in order to show we are a compassionate people who forgive others for their accusatory lies. We are generous, able to share our abundant resources, willing to open fair trade treaties with our inferiour exploitative enemies to the south." If they already released that statement, I am a happy man. If not, I am always a patient man.
2010-08-14
Beknighted Belatedly, Nevermore
Some results of delayed gratification (i.e., birthday gifts from my sister and her family):
Saw a former student of mine from my ITT Tech teaching days last night at a showing of "The Expendables." Glad he's expecting to graduate in the spring, and as he said, I wish I was there to teach the students another class or two. Reality is more than regurgitating facts from a book. Education is more than proving you can absorb material at a high rate of speed and reform it into test results and senior projects. We're social beings, not robots.
A thanks to Roy at Walmart, who's always greeting us at the front door.
A comment to the Yes Men. If you're going to make fun of the WTO, then you shouldn't copyright your film - it turns your satirical parody into pure hypocrisy. But maybe that was your point - can't even take comedy seriously. However, I do - that's why I give mine away (thanks to the generosity of my wife).
- "Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big" by Berkeley Breathed
- "The Bodacious Book of Succulence" by Sark
- Two via B&N gift card: "on evil" by Terry Eagleton, and "10 Books Every Conservative Must Read" by Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D.
- The Scream 3D postcard
- Facsimile of E.A. Poe's handwritten copy of "The Raven"
- Hot sauce and hot chow-chow
Saw a former student of mine from my ITT Tech teaching days last night at a showing of "The Expendables." Glad he's expecting to graduate in the spring, and as he said, I wish I was there to teach the students another class or two. Reality is more than regurgitating facts from a book. Education is more than proving you can absorb material at a high rate of speed and reform it into test results and senior projects. We're social beings, not robots.
A thanks to Roy at Walmart, who's always greeting us at the front door.
A comment to the Yes Men. If you're going to make fun of the WTO, then you shouldn't copyright your film - it turns your satirical parody into pure hypocrisy. But maybe that was your point - can't even take comedy seriously. However, I do - that's why I give mine away (thanks to the generosity of my wife).
2010-08-13
Copper Kettle
Does anyone call an officer of the law a "copper" anymore? What does it take to create your own institute of higher learning and give yourself postsecondary degrees, freely, of course? In other words, how do we break the out-of-proportion business of higher education? By not conforming to historical precedents that confer greatness on CVs stuffed with formal educational accomplishments. Either you are or are not capable of performing roles you take on or are assigned to you. If you are not, you take the initiative to learn new skills. Academic gatekeepers become contractual consultants like everybody else. JIT OJT keeps us primed, plum, happy and optimally functional. Complexity breeds exclusivity breeds jealous happily-ignorant but desperately-starving barbarians putting ever-increasing pressure on the dammed/jammed gates. Seams weaken and fail, contorting, twisting, falling. BURST! BUSTED! And then...? We start all over again.
Are you a new or existing customer?
In this time of relatively high unemployment and edgy predictions about a double-dip recession, folks like me have to watch our monthly bills.
For instance, as a loyal customer of AT&T, I have stuck with ADSL high-speed Internet service, despite competitive pricing (and higher throughput) offers from cable television companies.
However, loyalty doesn't pay the bills. Thus, while I currently pay about $38/month for 3Mbps max. download speed (384kbps upload) from AT&T, I could switch to Comcast cable, pay $19.99/month for 6 months and then switch back to AT&T for $19.95/month for 12 months at 6Mbps, if available, or $14.95/month for the same 3Mbps I had before.
Otherwise, because I am a loyal customer I get stuck with a higher monthly bill (just verified through a phone call to an AT&T web sales representative (friendly but not very helpful, in this case)).
How's that for rewarding your customers?!
It just doesn't pay to be an existing customer, it seems.
I miss the "wild west" free Internet days of the 20th century. Don't you? Of course, the Internet/dotcom bust meant lots of great telco CO equipment at fire sale prices - ahh, the opportunity costs abound!
Life in the safe 'burbs is hardly worth calling rough. Let's see... how many suburban people die from road smashups, lightning strikes, home electrocution/accidents, food poisoning, and medical mistakes versus those who die from starvation, war, persecution, untreated diseases and urban crime?
Guess a high ADSL bill is not the worst that can happen. Even so, AT&T, your loyalty program deserves a closer look.
A nod to Andy Rooney, if he's still alive.
This blog entry was written to the sounds of "Acoustic Arabia" by Putumayo Presents. Maybe some binaural beats for an afternoon nap later on.
Thanks goes to Naomi and Joanna at Publix and the kind people at the HH EKG lab. Time to move the water sprinkler and forget about perennial complaints.
For instance, as a loyal customer of AT&T, I have stuck with ADSL high-speed Internet service, despite competitive pricing (and higher throughput) offers from cable television companies.
However, loyalty doesn't pay the bills. Thus, while I currently pay about $38/month for 3Mbps max. download speed (384kbps upload) from AT&T, I could switch to Comcast cable, pay $19.99/month for 6 months and then switch back to AT&T for $19.95/month for 12 months at 6Mbps, if available, or $14.95/month for the same 3Mbps I had before.
Otherwise, because I am a loyal customer I get stuck with a higher monthly bill (just verified through a phone call to an AT&T web sales representative (friendly but not very helpful, in this case)).
How's that for rewarding your customers?!
It just doesn't pay to be an existing customer, it seems.
I miss the "wild west" free Internet days of the 20th century. Don't you? Of course, the Internet/dotcom bust meant lots of great telco CO equipment at fire sale prices - ahh, the opportunity costs abound!
Life in the safe 'burbs is hardly worth calling rough. Let's see... how many suburban people die from road smashups, lightning strikes, home electrocution/accidents, food poisoning, and medical mistakes versus those who die from starvation, war, persecution, untreated diseases and urban crime?
Guess a high ADSL bill is not the worst that can happen. Even so, AT&T, your loyalty program deserves a closer look.
A nod to Andy Rooney, if he's still alive.
This blog entry was written to the sounds of "Acoustic Arabia" by Putumayo Presents. Maybe some binaural beats for an afternoon nap later on.
Thanks goes to Naomi and Joanna at Publix and the kind people at the HH EKG lab. Time to move the water sprinkler and forget about perennial complaints.
Is That A Supercomputer Floating In Your Drink?
Cold scientific facts to the rescue:
"High-temperature" fractals
2010-08-12
[The/An] Experiment
When you raise science to the level of religion, the predictions/projections become faith-based desires leading to people seeking self-esteem through belief that science has confirmed their active part in creating the future, even if only in their thoughts and prayers, regardless of whether the expected future is dire or great. After all, randomnss* IS God's will, is it not? In other words, we do not practice religions in which we don't believe. We act on what we believe, not on what we don't know we don't know how to do. In the end, a fact is still a fact (but with endless beliefs and nonbeliefs).
*[sic]
*[sic]
Minimal Energy In The Visible Light Range
So, while our forces are gathering, with volunteers appearing out of nowhere - poor, broke, hungry, disillusioned, no longer affiliating with one political party or another, desiring no government support whatsoever - tactical attacks are tacked on wall plans.
All levels have been infiltrated - that much has been told to both enemy and friend.
Defensive and offensive systems have been tested repeatedly, clearly delineating the incumbent leaders' expected responses when the crises are initiated and chaos unfolds.
More volunteers will step forward when the mass moves.
No one is safe, including me who did not exist in the first place.
We are game pieces played by faceless patrons.
The ancient tribal leaders met last night and decided now is the time to put the next phase into action.
Worried looks will show on crowded streets. Uncertainty will rule the airwaves.
The forward wave will move in like invisible ninjas carrying out orders, unwritten in thoughts and thus unable to be drawn out through coercion, when some will be unavoidably captured, tortured and killed.
There is no escape from planet Earth while the interplanetary coalition takes temporary control.
Don't call it war or revolution. Call it transition.
Either you are a cooperative member of the family or you're an unnecessary obstacle to progress. Either you contribute your all to family or you are selfish waste of valuable resources.
Social media participation has given us the indisputable evidence of how you live your lives, every last one of you.
Those who gave up trusted public leadership positions to seek personal gain, those who give/take kickbacks, and those who show corrupt tendencies of any kind have been tagged and will be accounted for in the second wave.
Only a few will be selected to explore. The rest will be left to fight over diminishing resources, hoping their family lines survive the widely varying environmental conditions that will take over.
Why do we recruit the hungry? Because they're willing to do for the cause what they would never ask of themselves. They will go to great lengths to receive the tiniest reward for their efforts to keep up their self-respect. Many will achieve more than their combined states of energy imply is possible.
How far are you willing to go to break the imaginary chains that bind you? Would you sacrifice your family for the sake of the species?
These are the types of situations and questions we will soon face. We live in the moment and moments like these make or break whole generations.
I'm just this guy, a part-time writer, who smells the air whenever he gets out of bed. I'm not the leader you're looking for. The leaders are somewhere you are not looking, with resources available to them to make possible the dreamed-up scenarios I've detailed above, based on their input and observations of their test plans in action. During their trial runs, I've learned to stay out of their way when they get angry, which occurred more frequently as the deadline for this first wave approached.
It's up to you to read this as fantasy or reality. It's up to you to see if that look of familiarity passing across the faces of two strangers in a store is actually a signal between members of a local chapter of the interplanetary planning commission. It's up to you to decide if you accept an invitation to join a group you never heard of, sometimes disguised as an opportunity to taste a free morsel at your grocer's market or a friendly driver letting you pull out of a side street ahead of him/her.
After all, what is family? Who do you trust in a city full of people when the power goes out at night? Open your door to someone you've never met - it could mean the difference between life and death when the first wave is over and the second wave is fully under way.
As the Year of the Woman winds down and we near the start of the Year of the Interplanetary Citizen, you will be held to account for your previous actions. The youngest generation will be given the authority to decide what to do with you.
Are you ready to be treated like just another free life in a video game, easily expendable and replaced by another? Would you think that being unfriended means being completely eliminated and recycled to get the precious water you carry in you?
Be prepared. I am. Are you?
All levels have been infiltrated - that much has been told to both enemy and friend.
Defensive and offensive systems have been tested repeatedly, clearly delineating the incumbent leaders' expected responses when the crises are initiated and chaos unfolds.
More volunteers will step forward when the mass moves.
No one is safe, including me who did not exist in the first place.
We are game pieces played by faceless patrons.
The ancient tribal leaders met last night and decided now is the time to put the next phase into action.
Worried looks will show on crowded streets. Uncertainty will rule the airwaves.
The forward wave will move in like invisible ninjas carrying out orders, unwritten in thoughts and thus unable to be drawn out through coercion, when some will be unavoidably captured, tortured and killed.
There is no escape from planet Earth while the interplanetary coalition takes temporary control.
Don't call it war or revolution. Call it transition.
Either you are a cooperative member of the family or you're an unnecessary obstacle to progress. Either you contribute your all to family or you are selfish waste of valuable resources.
Social media participation has given us the indisputable evidence of how you live your lives, every last one of you.
Those who gave up trusted public leadership positions to seek personal gain, those who give/take kickbacks, and those who show corrupt tendencies of any kind have been tagged and will be accounted for in the second wave.
Only a few will be selected to explore. The rest will be left to fight over diminishing resources, hoping their family lines survive the widely varying environmental conditions that will take over.
Why do we recruit the hungry? Because they're willing to do for the cause what they would never ask of themselves. They will go to great lengths to receive the tiniest reward for their efforts to keep up their self-respect. Many will achieve more than their combined states of energy imply is possible.
How far are you willing to go to break the imaginary chains that bind you? Would you sacrifice your family for the sake of the species?
These are the types of situations and questions we will soon face. We live in the moment and moments like these make or break whole generations.
I'm just this guy, a part-time writer, who smells the air whenever he gets out of bed. I'm not the leader you're looking for. The leaders are somewhere you are not looking, with resources available to them to make possible the dreamed-up scenarios I've detailed above, based on their input and observations of their test plans in action. During their trial runs, I've learned to stay out of their way when they get angry, which occurred more frequently as the deadline for this first wave approached.
It's up to you to read this as fantasy or reality. It's up to you to see if that look of familiarity passing across the faces of two strangers in a store is actually a signal between members of a local chapter of the interplanetary planning commission. It's up to you to decide if you accept an invitation to join a group you never heard of, sometimes disguised as an opportunity to taste a free morsel at your grocer's market or a friendly driver letting you pull out of a side street ahead of him/her.
After all, what is family? Who do you trust in a city full of people when the power goes out at night? Open your door to someone you've never met - it could mean the difference between life and death when the first wave is over and the second wave is fully under way.
As the Year of the Woman winds down and we near the start of the Year of the Interplanetary Citizen, you will be held to account for your previous actions. The youngest generation will be given the authority to decide what to do with you.
Are you ready to be treated like just another free life in a video game, easily expendable and replaced by another? Would you think that being unfriended means being completely eliminated and recycled to get the precious water you carry in you?
Be prepared. I am. Are you?
Watering The Vinca
Cat asleep on my lap, my left shirt sleeve wet from moving the water hose/sprinkler to a place conducive to plant/birdlife...
Online headlines no different than 19th century newspapers...
Wish my brain and willpower more flexible to fill with technical design capability [or management thereof]...
Running out of energy... no desire to live for myself... sick of trying...
"Ol' Man River" winding its way through my thoughts... tired of livin'...
Tribal jealousies/rivalries don't go away easily... and skeered of dyin'...
Wordplay lost in the malaise maze... but ol' man river...
The seesaw has cantilevered over the tipping point... he jes' keeps rollin' along...
If the youngest generation does not see what's going to happen, where will we find reasonable people to make the tough[er/est] decisions?
"And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today
To take you to his mansion in the sky?"
Online headlines no different than 19th century newspapers...
Wish my brain and willpower more flexible to fill with technical design capability [or management thereof]...
Running out of energy... no desire to live for myself... sick of trying...
"Ol' Man River" winding its way through my thoughts... tired of livin'...
Tribal jealousies/rivalries don't go away easily... and skeered of dyin'...
Wordplay lost in the malaise maze... but ol' man river...
The seesaw has cantilevered over the tipping point... he jes' keeps rollin' along...
If the youngest generation does not see what's going to happen, where will we find reasonable people to make the tough[er/est] decisions?
"And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today
To take you to his mansion in the sky?"
2010-08-11
Moving Day
Writing a tragicomedian's view of life circulates circumnavigational ideas about spherical bodies. Does it bode well for you? Only if you ignore the concept of self and forget about people's names. What seems tragic illuminates through the "opposite routine" a style of humour one will or will not find curiously funny. Throw away the magnifying lens and the telescope. Concentrate on the absence of explanation for the illusion of cause and effect. None of us exists but we shy away from such simple explanations. Hopeless is hopeful in the mirror, is it not? We should all exceed, succeed, and progress out of the moment in which our previous selves existed, no longer recognisable, shedding static friendships.
Goulash in the Gulag
Government versus Corporation. An endless debate, involving words. Are there not more important issues to discuss?
Perhaps he knows:
Readin', writin', and 'rithmetic - what else can we ask of our kids?
Perhaps he knows:
Neither a martyr nor an enemy of the state, says heLet's get back to the country life, where we can watch the crops grow and discuss science and math on a casual, cool basis.
Readin', writin', and 'rithmetic - what else can we ask of our kids?
Airmail
Forming a shadow government in exile while waiting for social changes to take effect is not as exciting as it might seem.
Some days we sit around and write future press releases to practice propaganda promotion.
Most days, we write tomorrow's headlines based on input from our panel of experts - you know, the computer programmers, politicians and scientists we have ongolden handcuffs retainer.
It's easier to know what's going to happen when you make it happen rather than "predict" the future.
That's why our staff of unemployed misdisuninformation employees get paid the most right now.
For instance, the leaders who will form the core of the Interplanetary Alignment Coalition, the precursor to the committee that will coordinate the popular people's opinions about whom to nominate as the official candidates for the first interplanetary government, decided to announce that the Interplanetary Consortium has officially disbanded the United Nations because it only recognises the authority of the One Earth government which abolished national governments in its proclamation of existence in exile the week before.
Other than that, we're at a standstill while premeeting subcommittees propose rough preliminary final initial drafts documenting diverging politiconomic pathways toward either complete economic ruin from whose ashes the Interplanetary Consortium shall rise or a select group of nonelitist elites that will volunteer to take the current state of the global economy private and create a One Earth corporation, eliminating the political class at once, giving the people equal corporate ownership to start with (and a small number of stock options for preferred shares issued to the elites for their sacrifice and dedication to furthering the travails and dispersal of our species/ecosystems into the stars).
Military and space leaders across the globe, both active and retired, from the upper echelons to the trenches, chosen for their stealth and loyalty to the cause, are ready to implement the coalition's plan.
You might ask what the plan is, I suppose. Depends on which economic and environmental disasters we decide to implement next. In other words, you'll have to wait to find out.
As you know, "we" is you, all seven billion of us and the non/living states of energy around us.
This week's word of the day (i.e., password) is fealty. Pass it on.
REMINDER: Prepare yourselves now - any infidelity and economic hoarding on your part will be dealt with according to the people's desires (and you can imagine how we'll sway them to decide what to do with you).
Some days we sit around and write future press releases to practice propaganda promotion.
Most days, we write tomorrow's headlines based on input from our panel of experts - you know, the computer programmers, politicians and scientists we have on
It's easier to know what's going to happen when you make it happen rather than "predict" the future.
That's why our staff of unemployed misdisuninformation employees get paid the most right now.
For instance, the leaders who will form the core of the Interplanetary Alignment Coalition, the precursor to the committee that will coordinate the popular people's opinions about whom to nominate as the official candidates for the first interplanetary government, decided to announce that the Interplanetary Consortium has officially disbanded the United Nations because it only recognises the authority of the One Earth government which abolished national governments in its proclamation of existence in exile the week before.
Other than that, we're at a standstill while premeeting subcommittees propose rough preliminary final initial drafts documenting diverging politiconomic pathways toward either complete economic ruin from whose ashes the Interplanetary Consortium shall rise or a select group of nonelitist elites that will volunteer to take the current state of the global economy private and create a One Earth corporation, eliminating the political class at once, giving the people equal corporate ownership to start with (and a small number of stock options for preferred shares issued to the elites for their sacrifice and dedication to furthering the travails and dispersal of our species/ecosystems into the stars).
Military and space leaders across the globe, both active and retired, from the upper echelons to the trenches, chosen for their stealth and loyalty to the cause, are ready to implement the coalition's plan.
You might ask what the plan is, I suppose. Depends on which economic and environmental disasters we decide to implement next. In other words, you'll have to wait to find out.
As you know, "we" is you, all seven billion of us and the non/living states of energy around us.
This week's word of the day (i.e., password) is fealty. Pass it on.
REMINDER: Prepare yourselves now - any infidelity and economic hoarding on your part will be dealt with according to the people's desires (and you can imagine how we'll sway them to decide what to do with you).
Modular Emotion System
Pardon my delay in responding to some of your inquiries - recent airplane travel required the removal of my brain implant. Reinstallation took longer than usual to reacquire normative parameter settings.
Question: if a commander does not support his senior enlisted staff, should he re-educate himself or receive reprimands? Surely, he is not insuperordinate? Don't make me call out lack of respect in the chain of command.
If a worker is credited for work she did not perform, should her superiours' superiours receive detailed reports suggesting appropriate action to save a critical project from imploding due to low morale and high stress amongst her coworkers?
In my father's youth, he was told that the horse owned by his Granddad (Frank E.) had race horse blood (i.e., bloodline). He would not let another horse-drawn vehicle pass him. He would speed up on his own to prevent that. That must have been the "hot-rodding" of the day. My father's grandmother (Mamaw) was known as a fast driver of the "horse and buggy" and the Model T Ford that succeeded the horse, so fast driving must be in our blood as well! Horse and Model T were gone before my father's birth. In the post-Depression and WWII days, they walked!
If you could eat regolith to feed your metallic liquid "blood" system based on redesigned DNA, would you? If you no longer had to breathe, what would your sense of time feel like?
More as it develops... but then again, who's using camera film these days? You are if you don't want electronic records.
Question: if a commander does not support his senior enlisted staff, should he re-educate himself or receive reprimands? Surely, he is not insuperordinate? Don't make me call out lack of respect in the chain of command.
If a worker is credited for work she did not perform, should her superiours' superiours receive detailed reports suggesting appropriate action to save a critical project from imploding due to low morale and high stress amongst her coworkers?
In my father's youth, he was told that the horse owned by his Granddad (Frank E.) had race horse blood (i.e., bloodline). He would not let another horse-drawn vehicle pass him. He would speed up on his own to prevent that. That must have been the "hot-rodding" of the day. My father's grandmother (Mamaw) was known as a fast driver of the "horse and buggy" and the Model T Ford that succeeded the horse, so fast driving must be in our blood as well! Horse and Model T were gone before my father's birth. In the post-Depression and WWII days, they walked!
If you could eat regolith to feed your metallic liquid "blood" system based on redesigned DNA, would you? If you no longer had to breathe, what would your sense of time feel like?
More as it develops... but then again, who's using camera film these days? You are if you don't want electronic records.
2010-08-08
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Can you tell me what's going on? After all, I'm the one sitting here writing and not learning more. Perhaps it's time to set an example and get an advanced collegiate degree, technical or not. I think UAHuntsville is a good place to double-dip.
Otherwise, who will believe we have an education crisis if we're all sitting around texting, typing, blogging or diverting resources toward funding prison systems instead of learning centers?
Who?
I don't know.
Ask him:
These are the "hall of fame" moments in our lives. They all are. Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. Don't google it - act on what you believe it means. You'll surprise yourself with the effect your actions make on others.
Otherwise, who will believe we have an education crisis if we're all sitting around texting, typing, blogging or diverting resources toward funding prison systems instead of learning centers?
Who?
I don't know.
Ask him:
Putting Our Brains On HoldNow is the time for all good citizens to go to the aid of their neighbours, especially in the time of crises, when we may feel helpless and unable to contribute to society at large.
These are the "hall of fame" moments in our lives. They all are. Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. Don't google it - act on what you believe it means. You'll surprise yourself with the effect your actions make on others.
Seeds and Asphalt
While road courses dominate the airwaves, crowds dominated the lanes of the watermelon festival in what only the meteorologists would call a cold front. Thanks to Bev Mazursky's homemade ice cream, Ten Thousand Villages' informative volunteers like Sheelagh and Rupa Singh, the band Offering in which my nephew's friend Sanannah plays violin, Plan 9 Music, the World of Mirth and vendering vendors sweating under tent booth roofs selling to the fiery frenzy that is the competitive taps, claps and timbre of street music.
Congrats to Montoya and Dario who had more will power today. Wish I could see Amish country near the Mid-Ohio track again.
Anyone had a hankerin' for an atomic stop at Quaker Lube lately?
Why do I crave a low-slung Lotus right now?
Congrats to Montoya and Dario who had more will power today. Wish I could see Amish country near the Mid-Ohio track again.
Anyone had a hankerin' for an atomic stop at Quaker Lube lately?
Why do I crave a low-slung Lotus right now?
2010-08-07
Concerns of a General Nature
"On my way back to Geor-gia..."
Bravado and black swans shape our moments.
A quick set of nonchronological thanks: Delta agents, Nishia At Hampton Inn, ATL shuttle bus drivers, Adrian at Ruby Tuesday, Adhikari Tulisha at Smoothie King, Elizabeth and staff at VMFA, the shapers of Monument Avenue, Alexandra and servers/cooks at Sergio's (confident the manager wants to hire my wonderful niece), Kathleen and others at G-Force Karts (this old-and-slow driver had fun reliving his youth racing against his brother in-law and niece).
Maybe a watermelon festival next?
What's the worst possible thing my sister can think of? A cat throwing up, peeing and pooping in the car.
Some future moments are unpredictably undesirable crocodile tears. [Madlibs style]
Bravado and black swans shape our moments.
A quick set of nonchronological thanks: Delta agents, Nishia At Hampton Inn, ATL shuttle bus drivers, Adrian at Ruby Tuesday, Adhikari Tulisha at Smoothie King, Elizabeth and staff at VMFA, the shapers of Monument Avenue, Alexandra and servers/cooks at Sergio's (confident the manager wants to hire my wonderful niece), Kathleen and others at G-Force Karts (this old-and-slow driver had fun reliving his youth racing against his brother in-law and niece).
Maybe a watermelon festival next?
What's the worst possible thing my sister can think of? A cat throwing up, peeing and pooping in the car.
Some future moments are unpredictably undesirable crocodile tears. [Madlibs style]
2010-08-05
What is a fact worth?
Bats on the decline..
Bees and bats - are they the canaries in the mine? If so, what is the future for the miners?
Bees and bats - are they the canaries in the mine? If so, what is the future for the miners?
Why did they stop giving out the Fickle Finger of Fate Award?
"So you're the new Australian leader?"
"And you're the old German leader."
"Who are you calling 'old'?"
"It's an expression. I didn't mean..."
"That's all right. We're all sisters here."
"So what do you suggest for my new agenda?"
"First of all, I'm curious. What is this dish you call 'prawns on the barbie'"?
"Prawns? Well, are you familiar with the swimming creature with all the legs?"
"Esther Williams? Stephanie Rice? Or perhaps Ian Thorpe?"
"Very funny. Better than Karen König. No, I refer to a tiny crustacean with large feelers."
"The British prime minister?"
"Yes, I suppose he seems to have a rather thin shell. But no, I'm trying to describe a shrimp."
"You don't mean..."
"Don't say it..."
"But the likeness..."
"Incredible, isn't it?"
"Ja!"
"What is the secret to your strong but tender leadership?"
"Let them think they are dealing with an inexperienced politician while you are positioning your assistants to get the information your opponents do not even realise they have on you...and then, use it against them with a motherly smile on your face."
"Motherly?"
"Not in the way you think. 'Mother' as in motherland or fatherland, a familiar person upon whom you depend, which may also be tough or soft or not even like a parent at all."
"But I am no mother."
"Das ist richtig."
"What, then, do you suggest to pump up the enthusiasm in upcoming Australian elections?"
"Send your cohabitation partner to Spain. It will raise many eyebrows and make your people realise you are no Princess Di."
"That sounds counterproductive."
"But the American president seems to think it works that way."
"He is a man. He does not think like us."
"That's not what some people say."
"True, but he is still a man, all the same. Do you have any better suggestions?"
"You are no Mother Teresa but maybe now is time to embrace saving grace of religion to get our world economy out of the doldrums."
"That would seem hypocritical to the Australian people."
"Not if you said it in way that implies economic recession condition is God's punishment for people's lack of faith in your leadership."
"Hmm...it might work."
"Natürlich!"
"Let me think about it."
"While you think, get your people to speak. Many TV and newspaper stories about people's natural belief in your wonderful leadership and your motherly inspiration will show the opposition is out of touch. We find unregistered, out-of-work, want-to-be actors the best 'average citizen' to put in front of television camera."
"We Australians aren't like that."
"You ask my opinion. I tell you my opinion. Put out or shut up."
"I think you mean, 'put up or shut up'."
"Perhaps. Ve haf many vays to make the people vote!"
"'Mother,' indeed."
"And you're the old German leader."
"Who are you calling 'old'?"
"It's an expression. I didn't mean..."
"That's all right. We're all sisters here."
"So what do you suggest for my new agenda?"
"First of all, I'm curious. What is this dish you call 'prawns on the barbie'"?
"Prawns? Well, are you familiar with the swimming creature with all the legs?"
"Esther Williams? Stephanie Rice? Or perhaps Ian Thorpe?"
"Very funny. Better than Karen König. No, I refer to a tiny crustacean with large feelers."
"The British prime minister?"
"Yes, I suppose he seems to have a rather thin shell. But no, I'm trying to describe a shrimp."
"You don't mean..."
"Don't say it..."
"But the likeness..."
"Incredible, isn't it?"
"Ja!"
"What is the secret to your strong but tender leadership?"
"Let them think they are dealing with an inexperienced politician while you are positioning your assistants to get the information your opponents do not even realise they have on you...and then, use it against them with a motherly smile on your face."
"Motherly?"
"Not in the way you think. 'Mother' as in motherland or fatherland, a familiar person upon whom you depend, which may also be tough or soft or not even like a parent at all."
"But I am no mother."
"Das ist richtig."
"What, then, do you suggest to pump up the enthusiasm in upcoming Australian elections?"
"Send your cohabitation partner to Spain. It will raise many eyebrows and make your people realise you are no Princess Di."
"That sounds counterproductive."
"But the American president seems to think it works that way."
"He is a man. He does not think like us."
"That's not what some people say."
"True, but he is still a man, all the same. Do you have any better suggestions?"
"You are no Mother Teresa but maybe now is time to embrace saving grace of religion to get our world economy out of the doldrums."
"That would seem hypocritical to the Australian people."
"Not if you said it in way that implies economic recession condition is God's punishment for people's lack of faith in your leadership."
"Hmm...it might work."
"Natürlich!"
"Let me think about it."
"While you think, get your people to speak. Many TV and newspaper stories about people's natural belief in your wonderful leadership and your motherly inspiration will show the opposition is out of touch. We find unregistered, out-of-work, want-to-be actors the best 'average citizen' to put in front of television camera."
"We Australians aren't like that."
"You ask my opinion. I tell you my opinion. Put out or shut up."
"I think you mean, 'put up or shut up'."
"Perhaps. Ve haf many vays to make the people vote!"
"'Mother,' indeed."
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