Brash Brass Bash

While researching some fishing tips online, listening to the Mexicana Music Choice channel on Comcast this morning, a nod to the Latina beauty at Great Clips yesterday who stood nearby while Shirley cut my hair, giving me the early bird $4 off special for arriving before 10 a.m.

Then, a nice, quiet evening with the missus eating Taco Bell drive-thru/takeaway convenience food while sitting on the sofa and watching the picture box.

Domesticity and suburbia have their blissful moments, do they not?

Enjoy your end of the week - if you're reading this, you're alive to think and act on your impulses, actions and plans.

Enough for now.  See you in a few weeks - my associates will have to take care of business without my input on how well the automatic program is working.  They'll let me know if any people/organisations reach the intolerable stage and need my advice on how to manually "persuade" convincingly.

Who Are Your Suppliers?

Exactly where in the supply chain process do you have control?  Innovation occurs at all steps of the process - do you empower your suppliers or dictate your demands to them?:

• Why Apple can't control its Chinese factories

Workplace Rumours

Uninterested in politics, global espionage or other topical news topics, colleagues of mine in the investment community want me to get back on track to help them find the next great thing in monetary growth.

We have often joked that water cooler discussions lead to more water cooler discussions and rarely to riches.

We have also joked about how to make money after an economic downturn - scare up the crowd and start a war - but want something more interesting than military brouhaha to fill the holes in the backyard where we store our peanut butter jars full of pocket change.

Video game producers and movie theatre owners point their investors to the testosterone-filled crowds that buy into the gaming/entertainment sales techniques.

Post-depression/recession responses by the populace tend toward conservative tastes.

Prosperous or poor, people generally view "green" technology with suspicion, too impatient to pay extra to get payoffs later on.

The Internet has shortened our attention spans considerably, turning all of us into city dwellers, operating 24 hours a day.

Information-based economies of scale have proven productive as long as both data mines and rare earth mines continue to open veins and shafts built to last.

Can you make money turning desert into farmland, feeding the starving, clothing the destitute, housing the homeless, making power cheap on or off the grid, and creating limitless amounts of fresh water?  Can you do all that with a smile on your face and a sense of humour during the worst setbacks?

Are you still pining for the easy money days of sub-prime mortgage derivatives?  Keeping out-of-work physicists on staff - modern-day alchemists - to help create magic formulas to pull gold out of thin air?  Scraping by on scrapping the euro, yen and dollar exchange rate in quick succession?

Have you hedged the marijuana crops, looking for any kind of profit to pay your yacht docking fees this year, saving a little loot to fund lobbying efforts for legalisation of one of the world's largest cash crops?

Still not sure about talk of a world currency and where to stash your holdings?

Wondering if global health care coverage is next, assuming governments find a way to resolve profit-sharing with private companies from universal medical coverage for "the people," giving new legal status to the class of global office workers who don't care about national citizenship?

Diversify when times are tough.  Dive into deep waters when tides are high.  Unless risk is your theme - in that case, keep skimming off the top and move on to the next butter churn before anyone misses the missing cream.

Internal Investigation

Can you believe a report that internal investigators are going after government employees who abuse their expense reports and/or charge personal items to their "p-cards"?  Looks like their free ride days are over, too.  A few examples will be set - long prison terms, heavy fines, etc. - so that others can mend their wicked ways and be given a chance to reimburse the government or face similar austerity measures.

Don't say you weren't warned - pay back now or face pay back.  Your coworkers are being encouraged to report your abuse within their departments and get rewarded for their "loyalty," including having your job given to those lower down the line.

Don't believe me?  You don't have to.  We know who you are so we're not sending department-level emails, just quietly talking with those who only cheated a little who can get us the information we need on you, who cheated a lot.  When governments are hurting for money, they'll find ways to make you talk ... and pay ... and squeal.  Look forward to seeing your profile in the news - mug shots are such pretty pictures of you, don't you think?

Some corporations are said to be following their governments' example, so those of you in the private sector better get your faces cleaned up for your 15 minutes of fame, too.  What's the saying?  Hmm ... there's never a second chance to make a first impression on those who first saw your image on the front page above the phrase "alleged embezzlement disguised as travel and office expenses."  Explain that to your family, will you?  Can you?

Planning A Move To India Anytime Soon?

Job prospects are good in AsiaPac, especially India this year:

India to lead salary hikes in Asia-Pacific

Volumes and Reams

I had listened to many proposals to resolve the stalemate.  Some of them included references to recent pop culture - movies like "The Net," "Hackers," "Antitrust," and "Live Free or Die Hard."

So I dug deeper.

I pulled out scrolls given to me by an old couple down the street, both who meditated on the enormity of every task at hand, telling me that this moment in which we live is it, so treat it with grace, honour, dignity, seriousness, humour and patience.

I consulted with wise sages by reading their texts in dogeared books.

I smelled the wind.

I picked up fallen leaves and compared them to the naked, twisted sculptures standing tall above me.

I listened to those who had no solutions to offer.

Here, in this moment, is what I found.  The seriousness of this moment is a laughing matter.  We need not raise angry voices to sway lost leaders.  So, I call on those of you physically able to do so to give thanks for all we have.  Let us proclaim this "Hunger Strike Week" and demonstrate our solidarity in wanting to creatively get us out of the way of fatcats and others who desire to enrich themselves by taking all our money.

In this part of the world, it is Black History Month, which is a way of celebrating the diversity within our general culture.

Diverse ways of thinking.  Martin Luther King, Jr.  Gandhi.  Benjamin Franklin.  Sacagawea.

I live only in this moment.  In this moment, I choose to drink water.  Let this moment live for a while until I see that leaders put us first.  If they, active or retired, show they are using their re-election funds for personal use, then I will continue to find similarly quiet, dietary ways to encourage them to think otherwise.  I will not act rashly.

Breaking News!

In a surprise maneuver, the secret coalition of the UN-1 (United Nations Minus China) made a unanimous decision.  But the solidarity was only part of the surprise.  More importantly, all nations of Earth (minus China) decided to devalue their currencies to zero, making the Chinese renminbi yuan currency too expensive to deal with anymore and therefore declared null and void.  Following the example set after Kuwait was freed from Iraq, all debts, public and private, have been cleared.

Politicians, pundits and news analysts not let in on hints about the meeting nor informed of the existence of UN-1 have been shouting over each other to be heard, making accusations about the New World Order Conspiracy and other noise no one's paying attention to since most media broadcast companies have temporarily suspended operations due to lack of funding.

The world populace, if one can make such a broad sweep across diverse cultures, is stunned.  With no money to spend and no debts to repay, people don't know what to do.  Those who've used barter all their lives are continuing their normal business practices.  The street value of lemons, limes and other fruit have skyrocketed.  Gold standard hawks are said to be circling overhead.

In other news, Harvard has announced a temporary suspension of all PhD programs and put all faculty and staff on administrative leave while Interpol investigates the backgrounds of anyone associated with Harvard.  Interpol has stated that all Ivy League schools are subject to search and seizure without notice or just cause.  Security firms associated with employee background checks have been shut down worldwide.  The World Court of Justice has opened up a forum seeking input on whether juvenile records should or should not be deleted after a juvenile delinquent with a criminal record has reached the age of 18 - in the meantime, the court has encouraged all "accidental" deaths to be re-investigated, with an extra emphasis on arrests AND convictions in ALL cases.

In sartorial news, the sales of Doc Martens boots and heavy brass finger rings have increased dramatically.  Tattoo parlors are seeing a brisk increase in the number and size of body art, with many tattoo artists accepting food, weapons and other survival gear in trade.

Meanwhile, the World League of Justice is trying to create a new identity for itself.  Superheroes used to protect people from crimes related to commerce - handbag theft, bank vault breakins, etc. - but now that commerce no longer exists in the old way, the superheroes have lost their lustre and superheroism.  The new heroes are those who've formed street markets, trade unions and other means of simplifying the barter system.  With no credit cards or money to steal, thieves, thugs and mafioso bosses are moving to more lucrative means to make a living such as hijacking caravans of oranges and watermelons in order to force a huge swing in fruit value on the open barter exchange.

This is your roving reporter bringing you the latest and greatest news too unreal to be true and too untrue to be real!  Until next time...

Are We Really Upside-Down?

Have you ever used a divining stick?  If not, have you seen one demonstrated?

Back in the hollers of where I grew up, diviners would be called in to help sniff out a good location to dig a water well.  Most of 'em used a forked tree limb that looked something like a petrified stethoscope.  Others'd use their common sense, walking the ground, sighting the hills and valleys and sorting out just where a good, full aquifer hid beneath your feet not too far from your house but plenty distance from your "outdoor plumbing" (what we called an outhouse).

These days, them diviners use the Internet, GIS maps and other modern technology to make sure your backhoe or other drilling equipment hits the sweet spot every time.

Now, there are still those who swear by the divining rod.  If it worked for their pappy and momma, it'll work just fine for them.

What it shows is that it's all about what you know, what you do with what you know and what you believe when you act on what you know.  Not to mention a good sense of humour, a bit of blarney in ya and an excellent sense of timing.

That's why I'm here writing for myself, recording the lives of people all over the world who believe in their ability to use the local version of the divining rod to work magic in the lives of others.  We can spend all day talking about the truth, arguing about what's really real and what's not and all that rot but the truth is only what you believe the truth to be.  We can agree about laws of the universe only because we haven't found something to dispute the current agreed-to set of universal laws (keeping in mind all the previous laws of the universe that have been disputed and refuted).

I'm just a grown-up kid from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  I think I know a lot but I don't.  I simply believe in the ability of others to carry facts in their hands or have available to them to share with me.  I know who I am and I'm glad to be who I am.

I want us, our species, to seek the higher ground of trust instead of knocking the knees out from one another because of fear and insecurity (often using cleverness as a disguise).  I expect politicians of all nations to act in the best interests of us all, both the majority and the minorities.  I know we aren't perfectly-programmed robots which act on only one principle.  We are more complex than we like to admit to ourselves so we're going to make mistakes in our actions, going against what we think we believe and what we say we believe, contradicting ourselves when we think we aren't.  We act this way as leaders and as followers at the same time.

Most of all, I know we aren't going to change who we are.  We are social beings who adapt quickly or slowly to ensure our survival.  We will thrive as individuals even when our subculture is dying.  We will fall into depressions at the peak of our game.  We are born with afflictions we can do little about.  We are born with afflictions we can do much about but don't.

When it appears the world is falling apart around you, what will you do?  Can you survive almost a month buried under rubble, hanging onto hope by the thinnest of threads?  Could you survive in a detention facility for years with almost no hope for freedom (or knowing you will never be released)?

Right now, the global enterprise named Toyota is facing a quality faux pas.  I remember when my wife and I bought a Toyota Camry years ago.  We were given an initial quality survey to fill out.  We had noticed a few defects with the car and were going to note them on the survey.  The sales manager told us that he really wanted us to check off all perfect/excellent scores on the survey and we told him we couldn't.  He asked if instead of us filling out the survey, would we be willing to give him the survey for a swap of a free carwash and oil change.  We accepted his offer.  From then on, I assumed that most automobile companies pulled the same trick and the ones who were best able to get their customers to mark all perfect scores on the survey or to hand the survey over to the salespersons were the ones getting the best scores bragged about on their adverts with initial quality awards from J.D. Power and others.  Therefore, it is no surprise to me that Toyota has fallen off the quality ladder as reality slowly separated from the false sense of security of happy, #1 survey reports, like a person who unknowingly leans too far over while painting the side of a house.  When you trust your divining rod, make sure you have the data to back it up.

Reminds me of another story.  Stop me if I've told you this one.  A friend of mine...in fact, the one I've previously mentioned whose father was in the U.S. diplomatic corps...his family lived in India for a while.  One of his older half-sisters was going to have some of her friends over for lunch.  Well, my friend told me, in India at that time, it was a matter of immense pride for a certain type of Indian gentleman to get a job as a manservant for diplomatic households (see also "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro for similar thoughts in other cultures).  In fact, a manservant expected himself to perfectly meet the demands of the household, with shame coming upon his family should he fail in his task.  Anyway, the half-sister gave instructions to the manservant about what she wanted for her get-together with her friends.  Included in her instructions was a request for six peanut butter and tuna sandwiches.  As you probably already surmised, the manservant made six, not twelve sandwiches.  Of course, the girls couldn't eat any of the sandwiches - even I, who like to mix foods from the pantry, have not tried a sandwich with both peanut butter and tuna on it.

Simply a matter of semantics, perhaps?  No matter, because the manservant was horrified that he had misinterpreted what the young woman had requested.  He ignored the request of my friend's family to keep managing the household and left because he had shamed his family.  Another divining rod unreality.  We think we have all the data we need to get our job done and fall short when we draw the wrong conclusions from the plotted points.

Same for me now.  Most days, I sit here for several hours, reading books, surveying the world, or writing.  As many of you know, I watch the vehicles that go one way or the other on the road.  In my thoughts, I make up stories why some cars come and go what seem like dozens of times a day, trying to change my thoughtup stories for a variety of humourous images.  Sexual trysts between rich cougars and amateur gigolos in this down economy.  Drug redistribution networking.  Mixing exotic fuels at home and trying them out on the road.  Hypochondriacs running from one doctor to another.  Attending college courses at more than one facility, frantically running from one campus to another.  Operating a home private investigation service and spying on people in nearby neighbourhoods.  Early signs of senility/dementia.  Robots whose programs have gotten caught in a repeating loop.  Bored housewives visiting one another's homes for late breakfast, pre-lunch, lunch, post-lunch, early afternoon tea, afternoon tea, late afternoon tea, and pre-dinner.  A mixture of some of the above (bored hypochondriac cougars delivering illegal drugs while driving vehicles souped up with exotic fuels, private investigators disguised as gigolos visiting senile senior citizens whose robots are taking college courses, etc.).  I imagine the lives of the people who fit into this mixedup stories.  One person may have a facial twitch or partial facial paralysis like Bell's palsy that appeals to another person who is turned off by facial symmetry.  Another person has no preconceived negative notions or taboos about one's body and is helping another person get over frigidity.  Another neighbour is a retired scientist who's madly, frantically working on the next best thing to a perpetual motion machine that has gotten out of control and insists on taking random drives around the country all day (and yes, that refers to both the scientist and the machine (both and either/or)).  Some days, all I can see in my thoughts are other people's creative processes at work, meaning I think of books and movies about neighbourhoods like mine.

In other words, my thoughts settle into a comfort zone of a kind of zeitgeist, feeling at one with the times.  Can I divine anything out of that?  What if I step back a few trillion miles and look at our planetary system?  Which way is north?  Should we be walking on our feet, our hands or our heads?  Why do we think north is up and south is down?  What if east is up?  What if there is no such thing as up or down, just arbitrarily located spheres with gravitational attraction?  What if we found a planetary body that repelled everything, instead?

I'm a kid at heart.  I'm curious about the universe we live in, not caring about people's rules and regulations because there's so much more than us here to get to know.  Since I'm the only one who reads and writes this, I think it's time to step away from this blog and play a while.  Let the people keep being themselves, pretending to have the skills to work a divining rod.  If they need me, they'll call.  Otherwise, I assume they're perfectly happy being themselves without me, their having more knowledge and skills than me for the most part, anyway.

One last thing before I go.  Last night, before I fell asleep, I thought about a situation in this area and I wondered about the effect of mentioning a single name, a name that represents a group of people, and the ripple effect of that name and recent events tied to that name that others would give more significant meaning to, creating imaginary trends, looking at their own groups and wanting to exaggerate the divine rights of their groups over the group associated with that single name and the significant event.  I am a person responsible to all my people, all my groups, every one of us.  I could mention a name but I won't because we don't want to light dry tinder - it's a fire that will (or could) get quickly out of control, especially with so many idle minds out of work and looking for something, paid or unpaid, to occupy them.  No group is divine.  All groups could be charged with and convicted of many heinous crimes throughout history.  Remember that before you start placing sticks on the bonfire of blame.  All is rarely what it seems to be.

That's all for now, folks.  Ain't got time to check this here blog entry for spilling errors or antiquarian grammarian mistakes.  Instead, it's time to pick my teeth and whittle me a divining rod.  There's a well to be dug!

Knowing Which Bookmarks To Keep

When writing a series of books that parallels the activities of us on our planet in our universe, tweaking just a little so that it resembles the real parallel universe interlaced with ours without giving away too much, I forget to write chapters that I'd invented or were given to me by others to put down.  Such is the misfortune of living a spectral way of thinking, where everything is integrated together and one's thoughts look like one's activities and vice versa.

Thus, I cannot remember which is true.  Did I just read that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will give a total of $10 billion to solve a subset of world problems or did I imagine they would follow in the philanthropic footsteps of others like the Rockefellers to write a chapter of history for themselves in a positive light?  Either way, $10 billion seems like a big number to me, even after suffering the numbing effect of all the trillions of dollars that have been spent to prop up financial institutions to save the world economy from collapsing.  Thanks, Bill and Melinda!

I still remember to ask these questions:

• How do Japanese and Korean auto workers live after retirement?  On what do they depend to support food, housing, medical and other expenditures?
• How do Americans, like the older labourer named Danny I met in Wal-Mart, live after they stop actively working in the marketplace?  If there is no viable social safety net, how do we find sustainable employment or other means of economic support for workers like Danny as they get older?  Do we start sharing our underused homes with people who have no homes?  What did we learn from the experiences of homeowners who opened up their houses to people displaced by Hurricane Katrina?
• So far, Obama has shown he is an eloquent speaker who likes to drum up positive support from his grassroots organization that helped get him elected.  His wife and kids are playing the near-perfect support role of First Lady and First Daughters.  With Obama's three years as U.S. President left in this term of office, what can Americans do to get their thoughts about industry and government moving in a more positive direction so that we put aside our differences and solve world problems even if we don't have $10 billion in our bank accounts?
• Isn't it time we all reread the Universal Declaration of People's [Human] Rights?
• One day, we will see the most dynamic leader from the universally-recognized most persecuted group on Earth (with the least emotional baggage of/with other groups) as our world leader.  Some have seen Obama holding that role but he seems like a placeholder for someone more experienced politically and better connected (i.e., more real power) to come later.  In my studies, including reviews of the indigenous peoples of this continent and examples of their influence such as the YMCA Indian Guides wooden box (made by my father) that contains a headdress, moccasins and paperwork from the late 1960s, I wonder if there is someone from a native tribe on this continent who will emerge in that role.  Some would want the 14th Dalai Lama to fill that position but he has too much negative emotional baggage with the leaders of China.  In years past, the United States promoted people of Scots-Irish descent into world leadership positions because they represented an oppressed/repressed and persecuted people who only mildly offended the British.  Marx, Lenin and Mao have represented the oppressed proletariat in times past until they came to represent a new form of oppression.  The name Gandhi stills maintains a positive image for much of the world (he also demonstrates the crossover of a popular person's world status and a near-religious godlike figure, reminding me to say that I am not including historic religious figures such as Mohammed, Buddha, or Jesus in this discussion).  Who will rise from the lower socioeconomic class and be welcomed by the middle and upper classes as their spokesperson to lead us into the middle and later periods of this century?  Who will have lived a simple but well-connected life and continue to shun the trappings of materialism while rising to power?  Who will have recall of all the major philosophies of our people and be able to converse easily in other languages with no pretense of mental superiourity while talking with the least educated among us?  Who will gather a group of leaders that desires to maintain a healthy balance between commercial enterprises and noncommercial interests, between local/national fervor and equal rights for all, between warmongers and peacemakers, between the haves and the have-nots, between the educated and the ignorant and between what we know is right and what we only guess is somewhat right for the moment?  All this without becoming a cult figure who insists on leading us for a lifetime; instead, this person willingly "retires" to private life after passing the torch to those who may be as effective but not as dynamic.  A leader/mentor/coach, not a bureaucrat.  A person who has not had to make public political compromises along the way.  A person who embraces all people, without making fun of those who disagree (because we know there is no such thing as 100% agreement with what we all individually believe).  Does/can such a person exist who offends very few people?
• How do I reconcile my belief in social progress with my dislike of socialism as a political, bureaucratic institution because of the knowledge that socialism - really, any form of government with established bureaucracies (including large portions of Western democratic governments) - leads to more and more inefficiencies and ineffective economies of scale?  Free market, laissez-faire "decisionmaking" versus centralised market planning is not the argument here, I don't believe, because we still walk blindly into the future no matter how well we think we planned for contingencies in the next moment.  Do we just keep moving forward with our regional governments that run their own social experiments within the realm of changing tastes in the marketplace and cooperate with one another to prevent major wars and economic fallouts, letting social trends swing back and forth on small pendulums (countries, NGOs, cooperatives/communes, corporations, etc.) hanging off the end of one big imaginary/invisible pendulum so that we never really ever swing too far in any one direction globally?  How much inefficiency is inherent in a large people-based system (or set of systems), making "social progress" (continually maximising our society's shape toward reaching the most, best-possible, 100% completely-satisfying socioeconomic freedom per person) a moot point?

Pick A Dilly Of A Dalliance, Mrs. Dalloway

Let the dead die intravenously.  Let them soak in their solace alone.  Let the lives of those who wander the planet with nothing in the way of commercially-viable victual-earning credits worry about weather or whether the ether will either let them live or weather their bones to nothing.

More books on the loan shelf:

• In Praise of Idleness and other essays by Bertrand Russell
• The Way: An Anthology of American Indian Literature, edited by Witt & Steiner
• British Women Writing Fiction, edited by Abby H. P. Werlock
• Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
• History as a System and other essays toward a philosophy of history by José Ortega y Gasset
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

 We whittle our blocks of wood, we crochet our coils of yarns, we carve our symbols onto stone, and yet...

Yet, where are we going?  What's it all about?

A CD:

• Cikada String Quartet, in due tempi

More books:

• "And Another Thing... Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Part Six of Three" by Eoin Colfer
• "A History of Pi" by Petr Beckmann
• "Eats, Shites and Leaves, Crap English and How to Use It" by A. Parody
• "Bathroom Reader [22nd Edition]"

Piles of pylons piling up in the writings of Ernie Pyle.  Studying humour across the hummus-eating bodies of our species.  Reading much but little into what we write.  Seeing even less in who wins or loses a match, much less a match for the ages.  Getting just as much meaning out of the temperamental changes in our cyclical weather changes as what the plants in my yard say about what's going to happen next summer, knowing they really only reflect what happened in previous seasons past but recording their forecasts for fun's sake along with a small bottle of saké.

The movements are not mine to make or take away.  The movements to observe are yours to own and make anew.

So England beats Wales and Ireland wins while the Colts falter in the land of Little Cuba and the Saints go marching back to a perfect storm of a tickertape Mardi Gras parade that leads to Lent and then St. Valentine's Day.  What of cricket for India, Pakistan, and Australia this year?  What of the worldwide gathering of futbol players in South Africa?  Is there still a good chocolate shop in Vancouver to recover one's wishes for health and happiness after a poor showing in the mountainous Olympic mismatches nearby?  What day is it, again?

Why did Avocent accept a ~$25/share bid by Emerson and APC let itself go by the wayside for Schneider Electric?  Why was I not able to exercise options above $35?  Lack of vision.  Lack of clarity.  Leadership wanting someone else to lead for a while.  Forgotten deals and forgotten feelings.  Does anyone remember the cost of the Boer Wars?  Does anyone have an accurate count of the bodies thrown aside to create the empires of Russia, India, China and the United States.  Is anyone keeping count of the back-and-forth slaughter on the African continent?  Why is there no one left to speak for the people of Machu Pikchu?

Did I tell you about the time I worked for General Electric in their Aerospace Division where we designed test equipment (acronym: CASS) for the Navy?  Do you know why I have a jaded sense of trust of government contracts in general?  Because of the way the CASS contract was [wink-wink] agreed to, with the government paying GE for writing so many lines of code per deliverable, no matter whether the code worked reliably, made sense or not, guaranteeing that GE would get follow-on contracts to fix the bad code its employees wrote.

Would you buy a product you knew wasn't going to work right the first time?  The government did, for a while, until it got wise to the schedule slips and cost overruns.  Sounds familiar to you, doesn't it?  It happens every day, somewhere, between one government and one private enterprise all the time.  It happens with the commercial software you use, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on your relationship with the software manufacturer.  Part of it is built into our genes, because we aren't perfect and can't anticipate all the causes and effects of software algorithms and GUIs.  Part of it is intentionally messy.

That's where your smarts come into play.  If the deal smells too rotten or too sweet, then you know you're on one side or the other of a product design that's probably not going to look good in the light of day.  Either take your money and run or make sure the blame rolls uphill/downhill past your doorstop.  Or be like me and never put your money where your work is.  I call it freedom.  You call it whatever you like as long as I pocket the profit and can choose how to spend my untaxed earnings.

Time for a dry/wry philosophical story and let love linger in your thoughts for a more detailed tale of descriptive, contemplative, offscreen rendezvous later in your/our future...

The Fifth of February Fisticuffs

Okay, you see, I'm not here.  Got that said so let's go on to the rest of the story, about you, me and the me who's not me who's not here.  Then we'll make it complicated later on.

I had just poured myself a shot of Bushmills white label Irish whiskey, the kind John recommended when my wife and I visited he and his wife in their cottage above Lough Derg a few years ago (good to see you again at the airport today, John - hard to believe your boy is 14 years young and taller than a stalk of wild ribbon grass).  Sure, I could've had some Lynchburg mash or Kentucky fermented charcoal juice but I had the bottle in front of me, a dead writer to mourn, and what I tought was a quiet evening at home with the cats.

I carried the whiskey into the study, leaving the cats to soak up the heat from the old Kerosun kerosene heater toasting spider webs in the living room.  'Twas going to be a nice night for writing a few 'thank you' notes to the neighbours for thinking good thoughts and prayers about our eldest neighbours next door to me, the missus having a bit of breathing problems and needing a few nights' rest in the local hospital.

Then there came a rapping on the door.  Three large taps.  Loud, they were.  Like someone was going to reach me no matter if I was ten stories down in my hidden subbasement labora...well, anyway, as if I was unavailable.

Being dressed for the evening in my finest house clothes - a pair of Guinness sleep pants, a work shirt and a pullover/zipup sweater - I hesitated going to the front door.  What if is was them?  You know, "THEM"!!!!  Okay, enough for the melodrama.  I'll be serious for a moment.  Or shall I?  Well, what if it was whoever it is it isn't supposed to be?

It was.  Or it wasn't.  What it was was my neighbour, Baunivonne.  Baunivonne and I share an unsordid past so it's not like I'm going to spill the beans about something sorta sordid.  Instead, it's the future we were to share or the past from this moment looking back that I'm here to tell you about.  But in the past before that she and I shared one experience: we had the same home builder, a young man reluctantly following his father's footsteps in the house construction/repair business, she and he being...  But that's all in the past, isn't it?

Baunivonne stared at me when I answered the door.  Her eyes said one thing clearly, "It's colder than ice melting off the face of the embarrassed scientist who quoted a primary school student's report on the slowly melting career of Paul Michael Glaser and extrapolated the end of the world therefrom."  The thermometer, I imagined from our frosty breaths, would fortune a guess of a temperature in the -3 to -5 deg C range.

"Rick, I was passing by our neighbours' house, seeing if their missus was home.  She wasn't so I tought I'd wander further down the lane to your house and let you know she's not there."

"Thanks."

Her eyes continued to say she expected me to courteously invite her in, both of us stamping our feet on the rotting boards of my front deck to keep warm and test for termites in freezing weather.

"Me-ow.  Me cold," our cat Merlin cried from the open doorway, his thin Cornish Rex fur not exactly mutated for subbacolda weather.

Baunivonne changed the expression on her framed face (what was she framed for?  Nothing serious.  Eyeglasses, mainly.)  "Uh, that your cat?"

"Yep, this one's Merlin and that one in there is Erin."

"In there?"

"Uh-huh."

"Nice and toasty and warm and out of the cold?"

"Indeed."

"With us freezing our butts out here in the cold?"

"Absolutely."

She shivered, her gray, shoulder-length, no-fuss hair shaking like a feather duster.  Her expression hinted at the "There's clueless and then there's Rick" line of thinking.

I nodded and agreed with her almost-thought.  I decided to keep the conversation going.  "So, who you think's gonna win the game on Sunday?"

"The game?  Oh yeah.  Well, I'm a Saints fan going way back but the Colts sure seem to have it together this year.  I bet you're pulling for the Colts.  Or should I say Peyton Manning?"

"Well, sure, he's quarterbacking a good team and all..."

"No, I mean you being a Tennessee fan."

"Of course I'm pulling for Peyton.  He's a good-humoured kid with a well-balanced family.  His wife's doing good work.  What more could I ask for?"

"A Super Bowl win?"

"Yeah, until he wins another one I guess folks will keep comparing him to that three-ring circus clown...what's his name?"

"Tom Brady?"

"No, I mean Emmett Kelly.  Or is it P.T. Barnum they keep comparing him to?"

"You probably mean Brett Favre."

"What is it about those boys from Mississippi whose bodies won't quit?  Look at Archie.  He lasted how long with an average Saints team?"

"A long time.  Hey, you ever wonder why we're the kind of neighbours who don't go to each other's house two or three times a week for a hot cup of coffee?"

"Umm..."

"Or just show up uninvited and get asked in for a steaming cup of tea?"

"Well..."

"Or just call each other up and have a phone conversation for the hell of it?"

"Now that you mention..."

"Or just stand here like now with icy breaths and no clue what's going on?"

"I suppose.  You still rescuing cats?"

"My husband found one abandoned at an apartment complex down in Jacksonville and brought it home for me.  It's part Maine coon.  You think your cats would invite it in and be kind to it for no other reason than to at least be neighbourly, let alone offer it something to drink or eat?  It's not like it's going to offer its firstborn son to them or anything."

"Well, they've been neutered so that won't be a problem."

"[They the only ones who've been neutered?]"

"What did you say?"

"Oh, nothing.  Look, I'll let you know if I hear anything more about the missus next-door.  And thanks again for letting me know about her.  We neighbours should really pay more attention to each other as we get older, you know, with our needs and wants changing with the passing years."

"I know what you mean.  How long have we lived here?"

"I moved here in 1985."

"We moved here in 1987."

"Twenty-five and twenty-three years ago...amazing.  In all that time, I don't ever think I've been in your house."

"And I haven't been in yours."

"Doesn't that seem strange to you?"

"Yeah, I guess it does."

"Doesn't it seem something easy to fix?"

"You're right.  I ought to stop by your house and visit sometime.  Maybe see that new cat of yours."

"Yeah, I guess that's what would fix it, all right.  Not like I could come over to your place and step inside for a few minutes to get warm before I walked back to my place."

"I could see why you wouldn't want to do that, too."

"I wouldn't?"

"Yeah, I mean you intended to visit our neighbours..."

"Who've let me in their house once or twice in 25 years!"

"...And you took a few minutes out of your walk to give me an update.  I know how that is.  It breaks your concentration and changes your focus from your main objective.  I bet you're ready to get back to your place and warm up."

"That's exactly what I'm thinking...warming up right now."

"Well, Baunivonne, give me an update if you find out anything."

"Yeah, I might call you tomorrow from work, if that's okay with you."

"Sure."

"You wouldn't consider that intruding if I called you at home, with you sitting in your warm house?"

"Not at all.  Talk to you then."

"Thanks.  I'll try not to freeze to death before I get back to my house."

"Be careful.  And thanks for stopping by."

= = =

Now, that's the sort of conversation we've all had, one party saying one thing, the other party not hearing anything but the words and missing all the subtle phrasing, intonation, body language and previous history which would've helped put together a picture that even partially resembles what the first party intended.  It's the same everywhere.  I see it all the time, in politics (with China and the U.S. puffing up their chests and blowing out hot air about respect and territory and integrity when what they're really saying is something else entirely that only the cold winds of diplomacy can decipher properly (which is basically that the old deal's no longer any good and the new deal's getting foul-smelling a little too quickly for the next round of negotiations to have any hope of making the next few deals go smoothly)), in business (where a certain global entity has forgotten that distribution economies of scale mean nothing if certain products in the distribution channels have no meaning to the changing buying patterns of their customers/suppliers) and entertainment (where worldwide sports like soccer and rugby have long ago figured out how to put valuable adverts in the game to pay for their fans' viewing habits on the tellie (all but fans in America, that is)).

There's a funny picture I'm seeing, looking at an old map of our world.  Since you can't yet use my eyes and brain to see the world, I'll draw the picture with words for you.  It's this, you see.  Our world is shrinking, collapsing in on itself.  I'm no scientist but I seem to remember a spinning spherical body that gets smaller tends to grow denser and spins faster.  Doesn't that mean its gravitational pull gets stronger (the average pull, that is, with the usual lows and highs of planetary gravitational fields for you to chart out on your personal home world simulation computer)?  No, I'm sure I'm wrong - I bet I got that information from some popsci book or movie like "2010: The Year We Got LASIK and Gave Up Contacts" starring Roy 'I never bled to death from multiple shark bites' Scheider.

Did you see the light shows in Earth's sky recently?  Would you want to see more?  I'm not sure if I would.  Some "asteroids" are incompatible with what I want our species to accomplish in years to come.  I don't want some extraterrestrial runaway train to come crashing down on my party two or three thousand years from now.  I wonder if I could pull in a few more "asteroid" hits?  Of course, I don't control everything.  I just report what I see and what I think I see I know.  Those who tell me what they say they know is what I don't know if I believe is true, being the gullible type I am.  However, when enough of what they pass on to me in their clandestine, cloak-and-dagger game of hide-and-seek so that no one knows who passed these nuggets of information to me turns out to be true, then I keep finding ways to spin little stories around this stuff to keep me hungry for more amour.  You know that, of course.  It's love that keeps us together.  Else, instead of writing this you'd find me breaking a golf club over my knee in frustration of missing another nine 200-yd holes-in-one in a row or snapping my fishing pole in two because I couldn't reel in the last 20-tonne, eight-legged whale ray in the ocean, having to cut the line before I sank the Queen Mary ocean liner I'd borrowed for just such a fishing trip.

Until next time.  I've got a kitchen to stock up for the big game.  No, not the Super Bowl - I've got a Wal-Mart, Publix, Discount Food Mart and Mary's beer store within walking distance for that Miami smashmouth mosh pit.  Instead, I'm talking about the Ireland rugby team's match to be lit and fired up soon.  If I gave you a ha'penny, would you die for Ireland, little soldiers?  To be in Limerick at South's again, with John, John, and the rest of the gang - that's a sight to be rich for - we'd spend more than a ha'penny on pints, that's for sure.  When the children have no shoes on their feet, we'll still have Munster rugby in Ireland while the NFL players in America go on strike about forgetting why they can't remember who they are after being told to run at each other's heads like battering rams with little to protect them from concussive blows but padding made of modern chemicals instead of the leather of previous generations.  In all cases, use your heads wisely, folks.  You've only got one brain - pickle it with care.

Graphite Dreams

Last night, a dream: Went looking for the coloured pencils that a teacher had given me and couldn't find them. Turned out that all pencils, all mechanical means of writing/drawing, had been thrown away. The government, in an attempt to secure its place in history, confiscated all non-electronic means of recording one's activities, forcing all citizens to use electronic writing/drawing pads, mobile phones, gaming systems, etc., so that the government could automatically track and control the citizens instead of letting corporations use electronic data for free trend analysis and future product trendsetting. Independent thinkers started burning logs and sticks to make charcoal writing tools, scratching out ideas and stories on the insides of hollowed-out doors and chewing gum wrappers. Eventually the government banned firemaking devices such as matches, propane lighters, and flint, as well as stopped the production of body makeup equipment - eyeliner, powdered facial colouring, etc. - anything that dissidents could use to write or draw in the analog world. The last freedom fighter was caught in a desperate attempt to spread a message by plowing words in a field. All non-robotic farm equipment was then melted and turned into computerised implements. Just as I was waking up, corporations were banding together to simultaneously stop making corporate tax payments in order to form private armed security forces of their own to compete against government armed forces and put a stop to runaway government growth, giving the people back their hard-earned money and let them pay for services on a pay-as-you-go basis - toll roads, "pure" research laboratory reports, prepaid medical services credit cards, daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly educator leasing programs and a few other items that seemed interesting in my dreams but quickly disappeared as I woke up to the sound of a lightning strike near my house.

I should not look at coloured pencil artwork for too long or drink a large cup of coffee and eat a strawberry ice cream sundae just before I go to bed. Obviously the combination creates vivid dreams, too close to reality for comfort sometimes it seems on this wonderful rainy day which brightens up the lichen and moss in our yard.

In secondary school concert band class years ago, I intercepted a note being passed from Tammy R to David C. David said something to the effect of "I think Rick's in love with you." Tammy responded, "Rick would fall in love with a piece of shit." Have I told you about this? I feel like I have. For years, I kept the collection of notes passed in classes, mainly from about the 3rd year to the 12th year in school but including a few in my post-secondary education classes. I would reread them to invoke fond memories, especially the one about my falling in love. What people say about you when you aren't supposed to know are usually the most honest and straight-to-the-point comments.

Of course, Tammy was/is right. I was born with the affliction of being in love with the world around me. For years, I fought this tendency to fall in love, trying to hide it because too many people interpreted my looks and actions in sexual terms when either I wasn't interested or I was already bodily committed to some woman at the time.

This is my world. You are my people. I love every one of you unconditionally and dislike seeing you find ways to hate and fight one another over misunderstood illusions and symbolism.

I get drawn into some people's illusions because they seem so promising and then I find out later on there is exclusivity built into the illusions, where people declare their illusions, their visions, are only good for a certain kind of person in a certain frame of mind. I love them despite their illusions but I don't love their illusions in equal measure.

I am not perfect. After all, I am this body that I'm not. I do not meet the definition of social acceptability across all cultures or social conditions. I am not trying to be anyone, not even myself. There is no being to be done. There is only me existing in this moment.

Thus, it is time for my next phase of existence. I do not know what it is even though I know what it will be. I understand that to fill the pages of the Book of the Future I have already seen about myself, I will withdraw from active participation in the cyclical descriptions of what's taking place in the exchange of goods and services between our people. I will spend the next few days and weeks meditating alone, away from electronic means of communications, away from television screens, without active use of mobile phones, and mostly away from people. I will simply be myself in the moment, tending our garden, repairing our dilapidated house, feeding our cats, talking with my wife and stepping out of the FHMS flow. In other words, real freedom, being alone with my thoughts while others carry on the business of the day. I know I will be tempted to see what's going on, to feel like I need to nudge people along the path to get us up and off this planet but I will not. If others do not want to carry on this extraplanetary exploration task without me then the task is not important. It is the burden of being a person who will not exist in history - before I get drawn into feeding my vanity further, it is best that I remove myself from where our societies are headed and let those who know and understand where the Book of the Future is taking us to take us there without me thinking anything I say or do is important. Our destinies are intertwined but they are not the same.

I have fulfilled the terms of the contract I casually made with folks like Fred, Bud, Urmi and Julia by keeping the flow of information going, letting you know about all that's happening around us, including tracking ship locations and satellite paths. There is no more I need to do for you. My job here is done. Time to let our world go on without me typing here. I want to pull up the stakes on my travel trailer, attach the hitch and drive on my wandering wonderer path, perhaps alone in body, perhaps not. The rest of our history is up to you - you know what to do. Perhaps you will run out of words, too, like coming to the end of the charted map and see that unknown territory before you. Do you see it already? Wonderful, isn't it? Get lost. It's fun!

= = =

This ends the short book on skepticism, doubt and criticism. I don't know if I'll write another book. I feel my next adventure is less about writing about us in this heavily-subsidized space and more about simple, frugal living in the moment. Like my previous experiments in online writing - AOL Hometown and geocities, to name two - I know this blog will disappear behind me like sand castles built on low tide shorelines. A mantra is made of many particles, including electronic text. I need a new mantra to hold my attention because putting down these words has become too easy. Can I meditate on changing weather patterns? I think I can. I've already started. It is my goal, the vision or illusion I see in the Book of the Future or the fuzzy image in the crystal ball covered with new dust, to more clearly see the interaction between air, water, land and tectonic plates. To understand our planet's movement through the solar wind inside this solar system cloud that spins in the Milky Way galaxy, subject to gamma ray bursts and other universal influences. Can we "beam" a copy of our planetary system to another part of the galaxy or universe? First, how do we capture the whole state of existence, all the interdependent parts of this cooling rock we're on? Do we have to if this planetary system is constantly changing? See you in the future when I and others get this figured out. However, I may just skip it if I discover all over again that no matter what I do, I'm repeating cycles I can't get out of. However, I may just skip it if I discover all over again that no matter what I do, I'm repeating cycles I can't get out of. However, I may just skip it if I discover all over again that no matter what I do, I'm repeating cycles I can't get out of.

= = = = => THIS BLOG IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED DOWN. <= = = = =

End-around Flanking

Today the truth will be revealed. Somewhere. In a tiny corner of the galaxy in which we live. We buzz around this planet comfortably seated in our exoskeletons and move confidently forward, gravity our best friend and confidante.

I have let myself be fooled into thinking that sitting here is all there is to do because the movements on the cover of this piece of furniture are more stimulating than the static images around me.

We reveal our religious beliefs by the gods which hold our attention.

While I stand here on stage pulling a rabbit out of the hat, you won't notice all the little movements and noise going on behind the curtain, will you? Good. I'm not really standing here. I've paid my body double to take all the exposure shots for me while I do the real work, which is propping up the puppets behind stage to look busy to those who sneak into the back door looking to see what's really going on. I'm glad I already thought of putting wireless controls in the puppets who are actually robots operated from another location which I run from a software package that automatically operates a chain of these networked sites. I'm not really here. It's my thought control double who's doing all the work while I'm on holiday.

Have you ever stood at the edge of the solar system and looked back at all the empty space between our planets, wondering how in the world any one planet can attract so many comets, asteroids and meteors?

Do you really know what's causing our atmosphere to get warmer? Have you taken our advice and bought land in the upper regions of the Northern Hemisphere yet? Of course not. We tend to be happy as a meadowlark eating lemons playing basketball in the park signing autographs for our adoring fans, fooled into believing this moment will last forever.

Don't be fooled. These are just words, static images I created dynamically with my word sorting machine made out of spare pachinko parts.

You're still here? Well, let me give you a hint about the weather. It's going to get colder, wetter, warmer, drier where you are. What do we care about global warming in the middle of a mid-latitude blizzard? Weather is politics, always local. Like saying Arabic is the same as Farsi is the same as Persian is the same as cat fur rugs.

Do you know what it's like to live with your thoughts? Do your thoughts know what it's like to live with you? Do you see there is nothing real about the word thoughts (or the word "thoughts")? Can you write a computer program without using brackets or parentheses? [({Why does my brain process the phrase "parent thesis" everytime?})]

I wish I was as smart as I wish as I thought I was smart as I smart as I wish as.

The more a factory makes widgets, the more widgets are available to be used by widget users. But a widget is not always a widget. A teabag is an ear muffler. A bowling ball is an ink roller. A computer does not compute.

Sigh...a paradigm shift. A paradise shaft. A handful of silt. A silk hand grenade. Would we work together to make this a better place if there was no afterlife to dump our problems into? I, too, can have my dreams, despite knowing our atomic makeup depends on manual merging of material missing immensely important atomic connections.

[Free service for my friends. I walk through life and comment about what I've personally encountered, keeping a positive attitude and staying within what I perceive as the bounds of decency to share my thoughts with you. I do not gain personal wealth increases by what I mention because freedom (or my belief in my idea of the idea of personal freedom) means not taking money or any barter exchange equivalents for what I freely say. Thus, here are some words I've encountered that you can see for yourself their positive effect(s) on your lives: Synapse Wireless, Invetex and Hygenall. I am not a paid spokesperson for these companies/products/services but mention them because my friends like them and believe positively enough for me to mention them. Trust is believing what your friends say. I trust they're right.]

Did I just write that last paragraph? I guess I did. Trusting my friends enough to blindly mention their beliefs is a big step for me. I am not the kind of person who goes around with a megaphone hawking wares I haven't tried. Of course, since I believe no one reads this, then it doesn't matter what I say, right? I need a new word here besides paradoxical.

Have you experienced the truth that was revealed while I held your attention? Not yet? Hmm... let's see if this adding machine in the basement is working the way I paid the programmers to make it work... CLUNK! CHING! POW! There, that's better. I forget that the barrels of used motor oil which capture the sun's heat and circulate through the subsubflooring also feed into the betta fish tanks which give detritus to the earthworm and mushroom beds that energize the radon-trapping device. Too bad the local bait shops won't take my glow-in-the-dark worms and the local organic grocer won't let me sell the glow-in-the-dark fungus. Talk about a lost opportunity for a niche market! Reminds me of the time I tried to sell the frogs I captured near the nuclear-processing facility in Oak Ridge - no one was impressed about the frogs' effect on Geiger counters until I showed that eating frog legs cured abdominal cancer and then kazam!, sales skyrocketed faster than a ride on SpaceShipLeDeuxieme.

Okay, here comes the report I was looking for. "In 2012, nothing of significance will happen, unless you count the complete loss of tourists on Mt. Kilimanjaro and the fissure that opens up and swallows the Black Sea monster that migrated from Loch Ness." Wait, that's the wrong report. I wanted data for today, not jokes about cataphlegmatic events. Hang on a second. I'll just poke that guinea pig to run around its cage a little more and...oh, here it comes, the new report!

In today's news, a solar event occurred. While insignificant in comparison to the self-important activities of one species on the third planet from the Sun, Venus reported a particulary nice warm glow on her beautiful skin, indicated by the light, dainty hot air floating around her body. Venus thought (in the way that planets think, totally foreign to our way of thinking) that Earth was coming along nicely in its transformation to a Venus-like look. One day soon they would both be free of meddling by those pesky little creatures crawling in and out of the planets' pores.

That's it for today. I've got to work on the ant farms built into the walls of my house and make sure they're providing enough food for the broad-headed skinks taking residence in my attic who serve as lookouts for me in my search for the ultimate balance between a people-purposed house and a home for all who want to live, eat and breathe here with me.

الإمبراطورية

صخرة. حجر. وهطول الأمطار من الزمن. جدار يصبح الرمل. الكثبان تنمو في الجبال. قوة تنمو من الصبر. الحقيقة يصبح حقيقة واقعة.

Room Odor Eliminator

23^rd November 2009, 12:30

The playful twist twixt tween the scenes inside the words outside the lines. Since I know I'm not anywhere else but here in this body, place and time. Since I know life is not my body, place and time. Since. Because. Although. Often. However. Given that.

The power of not using power. The backwards glance while tripping forward on one's feet. Pinching oneself to assure the moment you're there.

Intelligence a definition not defined intelligently.

Wading into deeper waters to lose touch with the ground, all while taking a stroll with professional sharks.

Innocent as you please.

Discarding a pack of playing cards. Drawing an ace of UAV air battles, instead.

87,650 times 13,579 plus 1@$24. Remainders not bargained for.

Because I am you, you are a diarist, a journalist, a documentarian of dryptic doodling who makes no valid points except in the moment where you didn't exist.

Saving a whale from the attacks of hungry retired greyhounds and abused Rottweilers.

Schooled in sculling schooled fish from a skulking schooner.

Celebratory moments documented by you and completely missed by me, no “us” with which to share the moment.

Is a talent unused a talent wasted?

The pain, confusion and history of getting from here to there. The means and the ends. If you already know the answer to a problem, do you need to work out the details of how to get there? Is there a shortcut from one historical moment to the next?

Do you measure yourself in absolute terms or in comparison to those who know you, or those you think you know and have read/heard about? Yes, that question is cheating. Of course it's rhetorical. Absolutes do not exist. Everything is viewed as measured against something else. Interpositoriallianismishful.

Do you see the nuances that separate a gang of thugs from a group of determined business leaders? Again, the difference seen in the power of not using one's power. Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is a paving medium for pouring the pathway to wisdom. Power is wisdom. A wise leader keeps the scabbard sheathed, the flash of jewels on one's belt sufficient to get the message across.

A thug, on the other sleeve, exercises power with no need for wisdom. The power of the moment outside of time. Another way to meditate on the now, now, now, now, now.

Exercise your time in the moment and play with the height and width. See one dimension or two or three or four or more.

I am you. These words have no meaning. You are me. We are not each other. My goal is getting our species past seeing us as a species by first seeing us as one species so we can get off this planet and on to more important matters. I happen to use one language for the most part with an imperfect combination of words and grammar rules that reflect my upbringing in several overlapping subcultures but I do not promote those subcultures over others intentionally. However, I know I am of my species in place and time. My wisdom – limited, insignificant, unsubstantial but powerful – does not include clear views of future cultural markers or memes. I know what I know without wanting to exercise my power to know more.

Power for the sake of power is petty. Wealth for the sake of wealth is a waste. The future is in your hands. Build the future wisely.

Meanwhile, in world news...

While I've been off pondering my navel oranges, shocking, latebreaking news has been making its way around our ecumenopolis. I'll try to get it straight in this blog entry:

• The Obama administration announced it had brokered the sale of India to China. In addition, China had annexed both Pakistan and Afghanistan to expand its manufacturing base.

• Oprah announced her retirement from her television career so that she and Sarah Palin could form the New Woman Today political party. To counter the early popular surge of the Oprah/Palin ticket in the runup to the 2012 election, Lou Dobbs and Rudolph Giuliani have joined forces and started the Yesterday's Old Guys political party.

• The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom have flooded their streets in an attempt to siphon off some of Venice's tourist trade, trying to take advantage of the negative press surrounding the Vatican's attempt to draw in Anglicans excited about Italy since Berlusconi has turned off a large segment of female tourists to his country.

• Sports referees everywhere have become the new enemies of the state, requiring them to hide in secret caves in the mountains of their countries during periods between games. Security companies are making a fortune protecting the referees and their families from fans who've diverted their hooligan hatred from their rivals and onto the so-called neutral judges of their team's play. Bets are being taken to see how long it will be before Osama bin Laden changes his allegiance and becomes the official spokesperson for referees, umpires and sports judges.

• Japan revealed that its government and business leaders have all been replaced with robots, guaranteeing stability in the hopes that foreign investors will look upon the land of the rising sun as a solid investment in comparison to its east Asian neighbours.

• Australia has declared itself the official permanent headquarters of the Olympic flame, being able to find fire anywhere in the country - outback, housing estates or urban area - anytime of the year; that is, unless red dust storms become the norm. In that case, they'll build a giant tower on Ayers Rock that will hold the Olympic flame high enough for folks in the space station to see.

• Fish of the world have banded together and are said to be on the hunt for humans. The sudden increase in volcanic and earthquake activity has some people speculating that fishes' ire has raised the spectres of Poseidon and Varuna who will destroy any one of our species found crossing the seas. Having already anticipated this turn of events, Warren Buffett has merged his train business with Tata Motors to design rail and road systems that can safely and speedily transport goods from one land mass to another without using water. Qantas Airlines is said to be in negotiations to merge with the Batafett company. FedEx and UPS are considering merging, too...well, you already know that one, don't you? [Answer: FedUp]

• In even more latebreaking news, Martha Stewart and Rachael Ray have settled their differences and announced they're getting married. They've asked Heidi Klum to serve as their fashion consultant. To expand their home consulting business, they plan to marry in Cuba, hold their wedding reception in Venezuela and split their honeymoon between Iran and North Korea, donating all profits of the sales of their high-def progressive marriage reality mini-series to feed the poor.

• Peru has banned the export, import and sales of cosmetics until it has solved the issues around the murder-for-fat crime syndicate. The United States plans to investigate weight loss programs in its country to determine if tranquilizers are being used to sedate people and suck out their fat at night. The IRS is reviewing the tax returns of liposuction surgeons to see if they're hiding the profits of the sale of their customer's fat. The FDA and DEA are looking into fast-food companies for any illegal use or trade of human fat for deep vat fryers.

• And last but not least, college students around the world have staged a walkout, protesting the increase in the price of their access to the right to download free music, movies and plagiarised term papers. Jo Lin Ran, Valdim Hrusiki and Debbie Sawertyu quickly took advantage of the situation and have released software that allows students to freely educate themselves as well as receive all the free electronic goodies they want, including recent computer games, bestselling novels, and desktop software, with every download counting toward college credits, creating the first completely open source and free, accredited college degree program. Google, Facebook and Microsoft are already competing in negotiations to buy the company. Analysts expect this to be the first trillion-dollar company to be formed and sold out in one day - online scam companies are chomping at the bit to post their ads in this rich source of disposable income.
  

That's all the news not fit to print but likely to become reality outside of the satirical romp through the unlikely lives of celebrity. Until next time, gullible readers!

Using Social Media Effectively

Guess it's time to dive into the deep end and see if social networking can perform extreme commercial makeover success:

http://mashable.com/2009/10/26/socia-media-entrepreneurs/

More as the frog flies...

Foursome

Of course, you're familiar with the exercise of hitting a round object with a stick so I needn't smack my knee 'gainst your funny bone or tickle your nose hairs 'bout golf. Like asking a blonde/blond if s/he's heard a joke about hair colour or asking a duck in the rain if the sound of a tree falling in a forest rolls off its back.

Four titles: "Henry V," "Falling Down," "Stranded," "Survival Under Atomic Attack"

Can you imagine a group of people perpetually maintaining the illusion of a superiour group that is outside time and not subject to any one subject except that its subjects take turns subjecting subjects to subjective analysis and rule? Yeah, then there's all the parts about them creating enmity for enemies to justify the enemy-fighting forces. Why be Don King when you can be donned king? Or chained to Cheney's LBJ-like rise to master Chen style tai chi chuan, Jack Ryan minus the Hollywood hairstyle.

A mask is still a mask. A Department of the Army pamphlet, No. 20-111, dated February 1951, is still just as informational:

"To be more specific, a modern atomic bomb can do heavy damage to houses and buildings roughly 2 miles away. But doubling its power will extend the range of damage to only about 2-1/2 miles. In the same way, if there were a bomb 100 times as powerful, it would reach out only a little more than 4-1/2, not 100 times as far.

"And remember: All these calculations of your chances of survival assume that you have absolutely no advance warning of the attack.

"Just like fire bombs and ordinary high explosives, atomic weapons cause most of their death and damage by blast and heat. So first let's look at a few things you can do to escape these two dangers."

Some people call golf a good walk spoiled. Well, you can see many a situation that'll spoil a good walk. A person with a personal agenda that's unfriendly. A leader who wants to throw bodies into a bottomless pit of a firefight. A leaking spacesuit on Mars.

When I was a small boy, my parents took me to visit my grandparents down in south Florida. We'd spend part of the time with them going to an amusement park up the road. I remember the amusement park for its packet of tickets with an alphabetic order my parents'd use in conjunction with our good behaviour, rewarding us with E-ticket rides. My favourite ride was the Haunted Mansion. I was fascinated by the special effects and the thoughts of hidden passages and ways to make things that go bump in the night.

We visited the park many times in my youth and we kids'd collect souvenirs during our trips. My alltime favourite souvenir was a secret panel chest with parquet-style inlaid wood. Because of that souvenir, I collect small wooden boxes with sliding drawers visibly hidden by woodgrain cuts. I had lost the WDW chest long ago and guess I've collected the boxes in a way we all try to relive our youth, Rosebud-style.

Outside, the atmospheric turbulence of HRH Ida plays one of my favourite rusted gutter tunes. You've heard me play it once - drip, plop, pour, drop - since I'm not a musician, I won't repeat myself. I trust your imagination for recreating a cool rain, leftover yellow leaves and bare redbud limbs.

I immersed myself in the local culture to see the effect of global-level decisionmaking. I wanted to hold a multicultural plan for the people in one hand and shake the hand of someone I know who's not able to put food on the table with the other. I admit it's a matter of trust. It's the tale of "pass the whisper" at a children's party that teaches me the distrust I hold for being at the top of an ivory tower or inside a warroom and knowing what's going on.

We all come from somewhere. We're all going somewhere. We can't count to seven billion fast enough to capture all the people alive in a single moment. Death and birth crashing onto the sandy shore too fast too see the reshaped sand grain and the shifting sand dunes in one eye.

Despite what we believe, we are an ecumenopolis. We always have been. We always will be here on this planet. We effect one another and affect one another all the time. We'll continue to be who we are because we don't change overnight. Not very easily. We're social creatures who don't always socialise well enough to be socially acceptable or responsible socially.

Fear of the unknown and the thrill of danger make haunted mansions popular and titles like "Henry V," "Falling Down," "Stranded," and "Survival Under Atomic Attack" possible. Every member of our species practices life uniquely although within macrosystem categories.

We want those who can translate one style of life into subcategories without blinking an eye or revealing why. Those who practice their subcategory to perfection do not want or need to know the existence of their subcategory's translation to other lifestyles, unless we want to prevent detrimental behaviours between two subgroups (which can be within the same subcategory, two different subcategories or crossed between major categories, etc., and so on, with more complex-sounding gobbledygook/claptrap here to sound official. [insert smiley face]).

How does one take life seriously and laugh at life at the same time? One laughs at life and takes death seriously at the same time. Comedy and Tragedy. Life and Death. Friend and Enemy. Yin and Yang. Positive and negative. Health and sickness. Opposites with no opposites because opposites attract.

I hold the universe on one flake of skin on the end of my last finger. On the next finger, the Milky Way galaxy. On the next finger, the solar system. On the forefinger, the planet Earth. On my thumb, my thumbprint. I hold my hand up and make the universal sign of nonthreatening peace. I roll my fingers up and make a fist. Power. Strength. The universe connected to my oily thumbprint.

What's the old saying about it's hard to make a fist when you're shaking someone's hand? If Iran wants to try three hikers as spies, then I can find ways to retaliate without bringing the news media into the picture. If you really want to trade the lives of three people for what I have to give you, then I won't stop you. But it's a path I don't want to take. Reality is only seven letters. The truth is whatever we want to write about. I want my easy-to-transport, cheap grapes from Chile available at the local market in winter for those on a limited budget. I don't care about nuclear capabilities in part of Persia because I trust that those I trust will take care of that responsibility well while recognizing the complexities of an ecumenopolis that treats all members of our species as members of our species.

If you teach hate or practice hatred you get what you want on a personal level you never imagined. I won't tolerate your homemade megalomania. I'm not after your family or your colleagues. They have their own chance for species' preservation talk/response. One person suggested we take all those who teach hate, give them lobotomies and put them on display like the old days of empires that put their enemies' head on pikes. I'm not an eye-for-an-eye practitioner. I'm willing to see you change your ways toward getting us to other planets and galaxies as good citizens of the universe.

My goal is not specific to one subculture. My goal is specific to our species. Our species is dependent on this planet. I'll tolerate a lot to see us see the same thing. But I'm not immortal. I'm impatient even though I know my goal is relatively eternal. I trust those who'll live after I'm gone to keep us moving on. I may not reach my goal in my lifetime but my goal is not my goal. It's really yours that I'm taking care of while I'm here.

A nuclear weapon is the result of concentrated juice in the form of engineering and science. We have tested nuclear weaponry and we have put nuclear weaponry to use in times of war. Nuclear power is a diplomatic tool used wisely. How many of us are wise enough to put the power of a nuclear bomb in our thumbprint? Answer: not a single one of us. We ALL own the nuclear weaponry of our species. The responsibility belongs to the person scraping a dry desert for seeds or water. The responsibility belongs to the leader loved by billions all over the world.

And then there's those persons or that group with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on nuclear weaponry but no land-based political entity to hold them to responsibility or fear of reprisal. The barrier to market entry is a curious phenomenon. The "too big to fail" organizations want high artificial barriers to protect their turf. We've argued and made fun of the barrier to enter the nuclear arms race.

I'm not worried about weapons of mass destruction. We've had them in one form or another all our lives. Masses of archers and flamethrowers, to name a two. I concern myself with the trigger finger owner(s).

Do you know how to play golf? Do you know anyone who's hit a hole in one? Can you figure out the percentage of hooks and slices you've made versus perfect shots down the middle of the fairway? Can you now imagine every ball you hit was the intended aim of the diplomatic policy of owning a nuclear weapon arsenal? Increasing ground troop numbers because you can't just drop an H-bomb on Afghanistan and call it a day. Sacrificing three people because you don't want to use alleged spies as playing cards in the game of who gets to claim the status of a nuclear weapon class country. Willing to play along with North Korea because China's making more profits in the commercial world.

It's okay to lose sleep playing video games because someone else is losing sleep playing simultaneous games of Life, Monopoly, poker and chess, the special "football" and security codes nearby.

We're a young species only once. We have thousands of generations to go to grow up. Sure, we have one life to live on this planet, but when you look at what we've dug up and built out of the origins of our species and truly understand that your life only matters when your species does, your importance to yourself and others grows in leaps and bounds. I'm just beginning to understand and I'm amazed at the immense difference it's made in my life. My life in one hand, including aches and pains and mistakes and triumphs, the rearrangement of a piece of the universe. The rest of the universe in the other hand, with a universe-wide, nearly-infinite time of history to be seen. I'm glad to say I've been a part of it with you.

Warm Weather Wren

Maple leaves the colour of bananas. A wren a few feet from my head building a nest in the garage. Tree limbs trimmed to a uniform height as if by deer.

Linear thinking. Imagining a product design while walking to the other side of the box, hidden in the box walls' shadows. Feature creep. Perfecting the design.

Sweeping the driveway of dry leaves, fingers of a hurricane not too far away. Not too far? As opposed to what? Compared to whom?

An unknown bird, like a large black swallow, a few trees away from a redheaded woodpecker. My version of twitter much more appealing - titmouse tweets.

Sitting in Big River last night, using a beer coaster to play with their logo - "Rib Giver, Grilling and Brewing Workers Since 1994" - Vanessa and her CV in play. Five years to settle a car smashup lawsuit. Had to repeat her ten-grand vacation (i.e., finishing her college degree in the second round). More of a college veteran than a college alumna. Decided life in the cubicle next to those having heart attacks was not the last view of life she wanted to have. I'm there with you, sister. You've got what it takes to see life outside the box. But more on that later...

Overheard conversations on the weekend:

• A group of folks faking a conversation about who had spent more time in jail
• A young woman deciding to completely change her MySpace page
• A young man who eats Krispy Kreme doughnuts in two big bites
• A homeless man bumming money from bar patrons in order to buy a beer but refused service because of his patron-bugging habits
• A set of Firestones and nice rims in hell instead of hellfire and brimstone - a comic street preacher

I miss the sounds of the train whistle and the rumbling vibrations in the air of boxcars on the railroad tracks in my old neighbourhood, their late-night passages my cure for insomnia. Distant highway vehicle traffic not the same.

Sentences outside of metronomic rhythms. Inside the box. Thinking... nonalliteratively. Iteratively.

We know the politics of dancing. We see the slate of our dance cards. We scan the dance floor for partners even if we don't dance. Chickadees and finches sharing the same trees. Us sharing the same roads.

Creative thinking is not thinking creatively. Discovering fire is not inventing the fireplace.

Leaves falling in bunches like bananas. Leaves the colour of...what? Not red. Not orange. Not peach. Not salmon. Not, not, not! The opposite of not what? Burnt orange? Close. Light rust? Maybe. A colour repeated over and over, fall to fall to fall.

How many times have I been "bitten" by a mosquito, tick or spider and turned into an agar-filled petri dish for bloody parasites?

How many times have I seen the solution to one problem while contemplating a problem somewhere else? Why do people not write poems and odes to poison ivy leaves in fall?

Business consultants should work, at least partly, on commission, their "guaranteed solutions" dependent on their customers' success. Politicians should not be financially rewarded for seeking or achieving election, their income dependent on society's success, success a matter of public whim.

The sound of squirrels chasing each other through the leaves. The click of a mimosa leaf falling apart when it hits the ground. My belly sticking out from typing too much and not exercising enough.

Holding a chunk of agate and seeing the volcanic history of our land. Knowing at once what you see through your eyes as I see what you see with my thoughts. History is not the formation and the reformation of political entities. History is outside our time. Being a millionaire or billionaire (by dollar standards) is nothing. Being a potentate or president is temporary and forgotten in another era. Knowing, in full conscious action, that what you do is all you've got, robber baron, monopoly winner or factory worker.

A chipmunk at my feet, being chased by another. More unknown birds migrating nearby. If you aren't successful right now in this very moment, you're never successful, no matter what you say or what or who you say you own.

Vanessa got my business attention because she sees life with no box. She is alive in the moment. She sells without selling because she gives without receiving and gets back more than she can repay. A provincial life is providential when one moves in deliberate steps unknowingly. Monica taught me that. Ann-Marie is reteaching me. Babli is teaching me anew. Julia and Jennifer use poetry and thankfulness to express the same thought. JJ keeps my moral compass pointed at a right angle because solutions are rarely straight ahead.

What is the wasp digging into the leaves beside me for?

I just gave you the solution to a problem. It's not a riddle. There's no rhyme or reason. You hold it in your hand when you hold out your palm. The squirrel and the chipmunk and the wasp and woodpecker already know what's going on.

We want the housecat to think inside the box within the box. How many of us are housecats thinking we're mustangs? A maverick with a saddle or tethered to a carriage? How many of us are headed to the glue factory before we ever started our lives?

We don't live in a box. We live on the outside of a teetering sphere. Teetotaling and totaling tees. I'm successful because of you. I'm successful in this moment because we can think outside of the realm of influence that ties us down. Providing solutions rather than adding to problems.

Of course, we do whatever we want to do, comfort zone or demilitarised zone. Freedom is what the moment is all about. Freedom to be and free to be with others as we please. I freely choose to spend my free time with you. Wanna be free with me? You already are. You're you. See you when you see me.

Inspiro and Furry Lease

How do you get from hear to they're? Do you synonymise your weigh around? Maybe your antonym, your mother's sister, has an answer, two?

I have used a variety of keyboards to make myself heard. 88 ivory keys. Three-octave plastic keys. Matias half-keyboard. The basic rows of QWERTY chicklets. Do you find yourself drawn to a particular type? Have you fallen in love with your thumbing so much that you bought a thumbing keyboard for your PC or laptop?

I don't think outside the box. I riff on the tissue box called my head. The landscape thinks for me and I write down its rhythms. Spiro Agnew. Wynton Marsalis. Lorca. Mao. Paine. Nancy. Soros. Beethoven. L'il Abner. Little Orphan Annie. Oprah. McNamara. Drew.

The web of life has no filaments, no silk threads. Plants don't see the breeze that spreads their pollen.

What if the Pope and the Dalai Lama toured China together? What if Warren Buffett and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad toured Israel together?

The magnifying glass of these "modern" times focuses a beam of light on a dry leaf. I can't stay on one spot for too long or else the leaf will smolder and burn. The pages of history are tinder to the touch.

Language-specific jokes don't translate well. Thus, I wander in and out of these hieroglyph remnants, posing questions, posing and posturing. Suppose. Support hose.

Denying doesn't stop the past from existing. Recording doesn't stop the past from being distorted. Thus, I wander in and out of time, history no placeholder for this ambulatory book.

In business, I see connections in "Working Girl," WSJ, FT, Pollution Engineering, T. Ferriss, Atatürk, Tata, Slim, Dubai and Shanghai. Rely on devoted hobbyists to tell the true story. Not experts expert in retaining their titles, no matter who confers them.

The web between my thumb and forefinger. The web between my eyes and keyboard. The web blowing in the breeze, building vacuums under the eaves. Invisible. In plain sight.

We connect because we want to connect. We run into each other because we're running.

I don't buy because you sell. I try because I want to see what it does. Is what it does what it is? Is a working stiff stiff from working or dead on its feet? Will Marsalis premiere a piece like John Adams' Chamber Symphony or George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue? Will rail traffic transform because of Buffett's interest or will Buffett's fortunes change because of commercial transportation transformations?

I have a new box of pencils. Time to read more adventures in the Book of the Future!