2010-08-31

What if "What if?"?

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!

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*What a difference "u" makes.

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.

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...

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?

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:
  • 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
Swung by Tuesday Morning for cards and such.  Stopped at Staples for office supplies.  Ate afternoon dessert at Dairy Queen and dinner at Outback Restaurant (wondering for the second time in a row why we bother eating at Outback with their inconsistent seating priority process (note: we won't be going back)).
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* 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?:
Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans
I'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?
You might if you listened to what planted microphones are picking up from conversations of those gathered to hear speeches near U.S. national government headquarters this weekend.  Security cameras, body scanners and DNA air sniffers have identified all the weekend's participants in order to catalog culprits to pin false criminal charges (using networks like Fox against themselves) to discredit the leaders of this first wave and get ready for the real leaders to emerge victorious - again, if you believe what others are whispering/texting back and forth conspiratorially.

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 bore chore.  ;)

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:
  • 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.
Other parents I did not get to know, only got to observe their interface with offspring.  You know, handing out money for food and drink, making sure their kids didn't wander too far off, photographing their children on and off the football field, yelling at great/good/fair/poor performances on the field...

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?