Cover Your Assignments

Before I completely wrap this up, I'll leave a few more observations.

"Wall Street 2" does look like a remake of "Working Girl," doesn't it, main characters being about the same, all of them talking heads on a stick?

What does green really mean? Walking Lahinch or driving an electric car?

It doesn't matter who's in charge, somebody still has to do the work.

If you put on the uniform, you commit to the task the uniform requires, taking the consequences in stride.

It's not always fun to be alive but at least you have a choice of emotions to exercise. I choose to be glad to be alive, pains and aches a temporary diversion.

It takes a lot of support to keep a team undistracted while planning and implementing deep space missions.

Can you manage to maximise discount points in equipment/support purchases and make sure projects complete within narrow constraints without stirring a feather or making your presence felt to those who don't want to know you're there for them?

Can you toot your horn by not making a sound?

Where are negotiations best made - the golf course or the office putting green?

How do you define species preservation - the LHC, the motorway network, crop fertilisation, mass inoculation, or mandatory education?

I focus on clearing a path whereby a future version of ourselves finds many ways to make living spaces across the universe as we know it, learning to "share the road" (appropriate to the situation, of course).

Won't you join me?

Note the leadership changes in places like Brasil, North Korea and the United States. What does the unrest in Ecuador and the EU tell us? Who owns the gold controls seed production, water rights and, thus, food prices.

Look to the future with gladness and a smile on your face. The wealth of difference will astound your friends and family.

Whose Sari Now?

Orange camo outfit on the lower deck and orange sari on the upper.

Native American dress in the streets and dancing on the field.

Never give up. Never surrender.

Some days the defenders win, offensive units not fully united as one.

How much Moore can you catch? How many groups can you thank in one invocation? When the name Reveiz is a better tackler than a kicker (has a Reveiz missed five in a row of anything?), then you Poole your resources, rest your aching muscles, remember you're an academic student as well as an athlete and represent yourself well.

After watching the new faces of the marching band, I rest assured that our planet's future rests comfortably in the hands of the next generation, as competent, inexperienced and young as it is.

We old fogeys had our moment to shine. Our days are tarnished, covered with the dents and dings of protecting ourselves from ourselves. Let us step aside and serve as protective guides.

We will not live forever. Our vanity, our attempts at pretending to extend our youth, what do they accomplish? Can we celebrate the wisdom and looks of old age while sharing the spotlight with the younger we're training to take over the world while they grow old, too?

I am not perfect. I am the example of myself to myself who looks down upon those who use plastic surgery and other superficial tricks to make themselves look younger than they are.

I am not wise. I simply have a bunch of experiences and knowledge at my discretion to reference when I don't understand what I seem to perceive.

While moving aside to help discover the forms/shapes we'll need to take to discover new worlds, I pass the last pages of the Book of the Future [of this world] to those who want to discover it for themselves.

I cannot be sensitive to the needs, wants, desires and demands of seven billion people while crafting a new type of "people" who will populate the solar system and galaxy in the trillions (using 3D printers and beams of energy to replicate quickly, for example (sound familiar?)).

The resources of the local environment are all we have. Wisely learn what they are and you'll use them wisely.

My "children" will make planetary conquests* look like collecting a bag of marbles.

Time to close this blog and open a new window on unfamiliar territory.

= = =
* not a carefully thought-out word. Is there any way to make benign contact with the unknown? Guess we're going to find out!

I Ain't No Saint

Memories: Popeye, Henry, and Katzenhammer Kids.

But then there was Mandy again at Bubba's, along with a North Jackson cheerleader and Auburn fans. And DeRhonda at Hampton. And Chrissy V at Applebees. From Pigeon Forge who can't help but say kite like keight, no thanks to Va boyfriend. And Jenna whose thermostat and fuel pump said, "Whoa!," for $100 (who only took 20 - glad he's family while she's working on nursing degree from Pelississippi State(sp?)). From Wears Valley and boyfriend in Madisonville.

What about the Mr. Digg truck and the folks whose niece plays futbol/soccer for UT?

What of Sonic, RFCU, car wash, Chris Berman losing weight, Vanna looking younger everyday (like Vivian of DOOL), Beckham's salaried grassy kicks, pleasing the people in Persia, healthcare hijinks, butchered English (the language, not the people), butchered Iranian (the people, not the language) Samuel Adams brewing, Jaegermeister, Goldschlager, Maker's Maker and top shelf Long Island teas?

Why does digitised music seem to skip a beat? What has the IBEW local done for you lately? Where are the smiles? Why do penguins taste like headless delights to foxes? Why does a bear bear zucchini/cougrette, regardless of Punctuation Day?

Putin, you da man for seeing Arctic solution where walruses fear to tread water. Obama and Wen weigh serious issues heavy, like, man. Merkel needs to rein in a presidential presentation getting out of hand. Netanyahu, what the hell are you thinking? Where's Menachim Begin (atrocious spelling aside) when you need him?

I am a very patient man when I need to be, jovially clownish most of the time. BUT if you ... well... if you decide that you're somehow outside the social system, then I have no choice but to rely on colleagues to bring you back to reality with no mercy.

See, I know the bare facts. It makes me grumpy when I lack adequate sleep, and when I'm grumpy, I'm sleepy, and like the rest of the out-of-work seven dwarves, I ain't pleasant when the sheep dip hits the phantasmagoric.

Play the fool and they don't know realism from Cathy Pellum or Aimee from her sheared off fingertip at Cuts By Us.

I am a happy man, well aware of what we'll do next in the name of advancing our species off this planet despite diversions that distract our discourses on new discoveries detailing data dotting lines ducking responsibilities unnecessarily necessitated disgustingly - like Alaskan marriage prospects, the odds are good but the goods are odd but so what?

Experts can also provide you with timely advice but where is an expert when the shots hit the fan?

Create content before you consume. Like having sexual relations with your loved one instead of pleasuring yourself in solo tones (NSFW: Or in other words, put masturbation last because it decreaseases your enrgy ahead of time [sic: re: whole phrase].)

Intermission

While the carpets are rolled up and floors swept, clearing the studio for the next production, let's look at what just happened.

Pink Floyd completed their moneylosing tour of "The Wall." David Lynch passed off "Eraserhead" as abstract art.

Laurie Anderson hit the charts with pop music.

Trees branched.

The Soviet Union met Ronald Reagan.

Chlorophyll shrank from view and leaves fell.

Afghanistan resisted another heartless, goalless invasion.

Japan enjoyed a lost decade.

Pinochet made his point.

More people lived and died than ever before.

The space shuttle, Mir, and Spacelab passed by.

Looks like the cleaning crew wants to turn off the lights. Time for me to stop recording thanks on this planet for an unspecified time and reconnect with my associates who have an offworld future to decide.

Events on this planet are back under automated control.

Will you recognise your children after their transformation to space-ready travelers? The first to volunteer will receive a heroic reception - the rest will step in line and follow orders well.

Time to suit up!

Felt Pads, Wires, and Fjords of the Lies

What do Wynton Marsalis and Chet Atkins have in common?  What about the new menu at Beauregard's and the regard for New Woman political candidates?

Or the movies "God Forgives, I Don't," "Bullets, Blood and a Fistful," and "The Point Men"; or the shows "Glee" and "The Choir: Unsung Town"?

Who do you like better: Eileen Ivers or Natalie MacMaster?  Claire Lynch or Rhonda Vincent?

Spiders slowly turn our cathedral-ceilinged living room into a crisscrossed, dustcollecting magical piano or harp in the sky.

Should you feed woodpeckers by letting mud-daubing wasps nest on the side of your house?

To be alive in this time (when I, as I am, can be alive in no other) is a question I cannot answer.

Are leaders leaders because of the luck of their birthday?  Are birthdays real?

Do people have a real sense of humour or do they only laugh the way they're socially-programmed to react?

Finding new ways to insightfully poke fun at what we adults call progress in order to make children think for themselves what progress will be called when they're grown up is more difficult than my trainers told me they'd be.

Amazingly we have, for the most part, the ability to take our time and consider the repercussions of our actions and the locaglobal effect on the future of this moment but we rarely do.  We enjoy being ourselves too much in the moment to consider others in moments we may or may not spend with them.

I ought to know.  I cheer for the hare more often than for the tortoise.

Therefore, let us consider the species as a momentary occurrence.

We will not live as long as a star.  We can harvest starpower but not the star's power.

What am I doing today for which I want to remember myself tomorrow?

What is happening in this moment that does not include an identity known as me to which I gladly contribute anonymously?

Can the United States become a national multiparty political system?  Can we have a permanent Comedy Party headed by the likes of the Paulsens/Colberts of the humour scene, a permanent Independent Party headed by the Palins of the nontraditional scene, and the usual extreme right/left parties trying to splinter the middle class - every one of them pulling a significant number of votes during locanational elections?

If we can't be nonpartisan, can we be a real plurality, requiring real cooperation to accomplish national goals?

Oh, wait, in this parallel universe blog, nations and corporations do not exist, being merely labels for temporary states of existence.

Be concerned that you can poke fun at your former rival/enemy without repercussion because it means the new rival/enemy taking the old one's place may be worse, less easy to convince, more willing to act unilaterally and/or more subtle in its dominance/manipulation of you.

This is such a small planet, a tiny fraction of the active universe.  To rule it was a goal for our species the previous xxxx thousand years and now that it's no longer a limiting factor, ruling it feels like being a big fish in a small pond.

Even so, we live nowhere else (yet).  However, I [(have thought/acted)(will think/act)] as if we already populate a wider expanse in our galaxy than one or two rocks stuck circulating around a star.

I have pointed my microtelescope at this planet for too many months now.  Time to look back out at the stars and ponder a future greater than what we've lived so far.

Does string theory have a place in a future outside the spider webs of my house?  Hmm...

Unpaid Gratitude

A thanks to those who gave up much of their personal time in order to fix what they had not broken (but may have participated in its decline).

In three years or so, with the world financial stability shifting and with its shift, drifting, we may have forgotten that wealth redistribution is the game's engine.

Like the frog said, it's never easy being green and so we say goodbye to the last of the greenbacks and hello to the smorgasbord of currency controls.

Economic recovery is a thankless job but those who know tip their hats, nod their heads and raise a hurrah to the people who dedicated themselves to plugging leaks in the sinking ship of the global economy, even if the rudder was unattended, leaving us to drift to new shores and ready for new ventures.

Thanks to Keith at Brix (formerly Luciano), Becky at Marshall's who remembers the old McClellan's and Montgomery Ward stores downtown.

Final note: Be careful letting ethnic hatred get out of hand - good to relieve some of the valve pressure but you don't want to cause an Oriental explosion, do you?  Nuclear trigger fingers get itchy for all the wrong reasons.

Sassafras and Deer Heads

In what way is your body a temple?  Do your tattoos tell a whole story?

A group of scientifically-minded friends of mine gave up on their antigravity machine.  Instead, they are taking recent data collected from a very expensive instrument to attempt to build an antimass machine.

They had successfully gotten their antigravity machine to work but it kept pushing away Earth and attracting the Moon, messing with tides and centripetal storm forces, rather than allowing my friends to float freely wherever they wished to go.

To know I do not exist is not an easy task to maintain, pretending as I do to participate in the mass hypnosis we call our culture of subcultures.  However, I cannot get to where being nonexistent is without giving up the fun of the hypnosis.

In any case, 'tis fun to have fun with the truth in plain view of those who do not know the truth and wouldn't know how to handle the truth so let them keep pretending and I'll play along 'cause I'm well-trained and easy to get along with in these conditions.

Meanwhile, the seduction of our youth in the game of who gets to claim the greatest influence of them moves forward.

Cycles within cycles neverending.

Imagine, for the sake of hypothesis, an extraterrestrial existence (EE) that encounters Earth.  The EE doesn't need our resources, finds our definition of intelligence/enlightenment hardly worth considering any different than the survival techniques developed by the other states of energy we call forms of life and thus puts us down as just another planetary example of how the universe swirls up little eddies of different but uninteresting quanta.

Perhaps you've already imagined or read of others' imaginations to that effect.

Point being we are not the center of our known universe, let alone the center of the sum total of existence of the states of energy as we know them now.

So far this morning, a chipmunk and granddaddy longlegs have darted under my chair and a hummingbird has buzzed my ears, the nearby background filled with trees, insects and chirping birds.  No more sound of private aeroplanes in the sky - a lost sound of independence.

If TV channels give way to Internet apps, what becomes of independent thinkers who want no gated communities of the thought process blocking their meandering wonderment?

And no, capitalism does not cause poverty.  The ways people quench their hunger vary considerably.  Personalities take up space comfortably in a large range of sizes.  Some are satisfied with a piece of bread and some are not satisfied with a whole planet of wheat fields and bakeries.

Labels are easy to apply and not so easy to remove.  Do not confuse capitalism and communism as distinct features of how we live.  We barter our way through life - always have and always will.  How we barter is a matter of changing tastes and survival techniques.  Our skill sets seem to change but don't - we use our bodies and the stuff around us to transform ourselves constantly.

Do you force, coerce and/or encourage those around you to increase their activity, whether "physical" or "mental," in order to increase the means of barter for you and those who you consider your personal friends, colleagues, associates and family?  How do you define the increase?: "improved productivity," "pleasing God in more ways everyday," "serving the people more efficiently," "making me richer in your honour"?

How you wish to present the emperor's new clothes to others is up to you but always, always, always be aware that not everyone is fooled.

These are ancient times.  We still live like barbarians, slaughtering each other to get ahead, cutting off deer heads to claim superiourity, and boiling sassafras roots to cure ills we know little about.

Never assume this is the age to end all ages.  Tens of hundreds of thousands of years will we continue to carve niches to call our own.

As we move into the moment when we discover we are not the center of the universe, let us pause to consider the points of view of extraterrestrial existence that knows us and the EE that doesn't.  When we successfully see those views (and we never completely will, any more than we completely know another person), we'll see ourselves in a brighter light, too.

Is our species prepared to realign its goals to show we are a totally cooperative, non self-centered species rather than a warring, cannibalistic species?

Words are meaningless, ultimately.  Thoughts are fleeting fantasies with no connection to reality.

Are you ready to have everything you know - all the plants, animals, buildings, social networks and history - change in what will feel like an instant but actually taken a longer time than you'll comparatively remember?

I do not exist.  My name and face have no place, being only a placeholder, a mirage, an image representing states of energy.

I do not own the world but this world is mine to give away or save as I please.  I choose to save the world because, although I find so much that is wrong with the way we treat one another and the other forms of life on this planet, there is so much more that is right about us and the way states of energy like us have found to exist.

How will you react when you find we are not alone?  Will you form a defensive posture?  Will you feel guilty?  Will you welcome all the unknowns, including the benign "virus" that could reconfigure all of life as we know it?  Would you accept that "alien" states of energy have flowed through us since the beginning of time, that there was never a moment we were not all part of the same universe-within-a-universe-outside-a-universe-within-...?

And if thinking was not part of what we'll do when we encounter that which we did not consciously know existed before?

What if we find our daily lives change very little by new information?  Will we feel lesser or greater, better or worse, because we aren't the only things wiggling about in space?

We want the familiar.  We want to interact the way we've been taught to interact through our socially-acceptable upbringing (according to local subcultural standards, of course), even if our interaction is considered counter- or antisocial.

These words do not exist and you might be able to see that it is so/not so.

States of energy influencing other states of energy, ad infinitum, with no end in sight.

We want levels of influence to keep increasing in order to provide our children bigger goals than the ones we accomplished in our finite lives.

What if the levels our children seek are so outside our realm of understanding we'll never appreciate what they're trying to accomplish while we're alive?

They already are.