"So, Jed, let me get this right. You're saying that when a writer uses real people as characters in a story, the writer should change some of the people's details to prevent issues later on?"
"From my experience, yes. Joanna, what do you think about that?"
"Well, my stories haven't been published so I don't have the experiences you do."
"You mean no one has read your stories?"
"Well, you guys and a few of my siblings."
"And none of us has recognized ourselves in your stories?"
"None of you are in my stories."
"I see. Joseph, what about you?"
"I haven't published anything, either. In fact, I haven't written anything yet. I'm here because my friends think I should write down some of the wild stories I make up all the time."
"Uh huh. Very good. We want writers, new and old, to exercise their imaginations. Joseph, you don't have to write down anything, if you don't want. It's more important that you understand the creative process within you and then decide if you want to share that on paper or somewhere else."
"Cool. Look, I've got to go. I didn't know this was an all-day Saturday gig."
"No problem, Joseph. But I can't refund your money if you leave."
"Hey, I understand. Seeya later."
"Well, class, Joseph is a great example of what you probably were, perfectly aware of your gift of storytelling but unable to fully grasp the social implications of what that gift means to others. Everyone pull out the netbook tucked under the seat in front of you and spend the next thirty minutes writing about the first time you wrote a story of your own. Yes, Ja'sequa, what is it?"
"I don't have a netbook."
"Oh, of course. All of you on the front row will have to get a netbook from the cabinet over there. Any other questions? Yes, Jackie?"
"My netbook won't boot up."
"It's probably out of power. All of you should press the side panel on your school desktop and pull out the power cords. I had hoped to have the wireless power network working today but we're shorthanded so you'll have to wait until next session to not worry about old-fashioned power cords. Anyone else? Jim, what is it?"
"Sir, I can't really remember a time when I wasn't writing down what's on my mind."
"Can you recall any early criticisms of your writing, something that sparked you to change the way you wrote?"
"No, sir."
"In that case, is there someone or some event that sparked you to write one of your early stories, some strong memory that stands out from the fuzziness of early childhood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Then write about that."
"Thank you, sir."
"No problem. And you needn't address me so formally. I'm hardly older than many of you here."
"Yes, sir."
"Anyone else? No? Then I'll leave you to your thoughts for a while. I'm going to take a break and will be back in fifteen or twenty minutes. If you have any questions, just text me on my mobile."
= = =
"Jed, hey, what's up?"
"Japonica, how are you?"
"Fine. What are you up to?"
"I'm teaching a virtual class today. As you may not know, the local school system had cancelled many regular classes due to inclement weather so I'm holding a Saturday session via 3D web cam today for my extracurricular creative writing class."
"How's that going?"
"Pretty good, so far. I'm glad this school system is up-to-date on their technology. Makes teaching students stuck at home so much easier. I guess you remember the old days, eh?"
"Don't remind me. Students showing up for Saturday makeup classes in May and June, wearing their PJs and holding protests in the hallways about child labor laws...shoo-ee. Be glad you're a 21st century instructor."
"Indeed. So what are you doing here? I thought you retired."
"I did. I am. I'm checking on the student records for my grandson. They say he'll be held back a year and I'm verifying that they got all his turned-in assignments. His computer's full of completed work but his teacher says he hasn't turned much in."
"Why not just have them send you the records?"
"Confidentiality. I'm not his parents. Grandparents don't count unless they're legal guardians, which I'm not but think I should be."
"Uh-huh. Well, I guess I better check on my students. Most of them seem dedicated..."
"It is a voluntary creative class!"
"Yes, but there's always a few who want to change the direction of the class. Future leaders and all that."
"Every class has them. Today's class clown is tomorrow's bank president!"
"If they only knew... Ah, there's a text message. Gotta go. Good luck talking the office secretary out of your grandson's records."
"Are you kidding? I taught the secretary and her daughter. She'll do anything for me."
= = =
"Joseph, I see you returned."
"Yeah, found out my other thing wasn't going to happen today."
"Very good. You'll just have to catch up with the rest of the class."
"Already done."
"Excellent. So, who wants to go first?"
12 January 2010
11 January 2010
Congrats to the Boys, Too
BTW, a great game last night, for those who were interested in watching what happens in Big Orange Country when the bench becomes the Fab Five, saving the day for a team short of a few players, the result, the outcome a glorious victory over the #1 NCAA Men's Basketball team, Kansas, by THE University of Tennessee (in Knoxville).
Gilbert and Sullivan might have been a poor substitute for the Hatfields and McCoys of Texas but the boys on the court last night proved that the right substitutes can rise to the occasional grand and vainglorious occasion.
Coach Pearl is not a sideshow act promoter - he's a showman. Show us some more, man!
Gilbert and Sullivan might have been a poor substitute for the Hatfields and McCoys of Texas but the boys on the court last night proved that the right substitutes can rise to the occasional grand and vainglorious occasion.
Coach Pearl is not a sideshow act promoter - he's a showman. Show us some more, man!
Is There An Other Half? The Chaotic Culture Club Clash
9th Janvier 2010, 20:00. Breakfast. Blog. Replace broken GFCI circuit in garage, eat lunch at the Scene Restaurant&Lounge, see Avatar 3D at Monaco Theatre (I've got to remember to check out website, sceneatmonaco.com).
Ate open-faced turkey sandwich with Rebecca De Mornay sauce, the large saucer-eyed tomatoes glazed over, covering the war paint stripes of bacon on top of "cheese gravy," [i.e., mornay sauce] holding courteously over slices of turkey breast meat. Chef (Paul?) stopped by to hold court and make sure we knew of the restaurant's goal to make simple but mainly meals of freshly-prepared ingredients.
In a moment afterward, we encountered Monsieur Cameron's vision of a "Last of the Mohicans" meets "Wall-E" in the short story "The Children" by Chester S. Geier on the Comcast space western cable channel. We waited for the Death Star to arrive, deus ex machina, and save the corporation's well-trained [i.e., expensive] specialised employees but remembered movies are written for the 4th class passengers of the Titanic, not the White Star Line owners or captain (not even written for Captain Sully? Well, maybe for him.).
The older I get, the more I know I'll learn less. This day, when people die from uncategorised, uninsurable diseases, I feel my stomach muscles tighten, the world of my species full of idle folks - the unemployed, the middle class, the disposable incomers - and pause. Am I awake or dreaming? Do I create when I react to the environment? What's next?
What's next for Merkel, Oprah, Wendi Deng, Wendi Nix, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil, Fredirique Darragon, my nieces, and all the women who can rule the world if they want and show a firm grip on the throne is just as effective as a firm grip on a weapon? Where is our species headed? What's next? What of Jennifer Goodman, Jennifer Wheelock, Lynne Reynolds, Joyce Battle or Antonia Ax:son Johnson? Brenda or Monica? Ivory Gail Hoilman? Dr. Charline Nixon or my former students Angela Walker and Jennifer Reagan? They are my/your/our future, along with Denise, Susie, Rhonda, Quinna, Lynda and all my other facebook friends. And my new blogging friends like Mia, Katie, "daisychain," Babli and of course Julia and Shannon Eileen. What of Mrs. Obama, Elizabeth Dole, Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton? Cynthia Lin or Naomi Flanagan? Where is their leadership leading this ship toward? What of Simone Kempmann or Peggy Sammon, or my pediatrician's wife who ruled as mayor of my hometown for a while?
I'm interested in real reform, not another form of the same ol' chopped potato hash. I back the leaders of my country but I keep doubt and criticism handy to wipe away the fog of confusion caused by the many cooks hanging over too many pots of broth on the fires of desire to look busy making change. I see the pain of lost hope. What I want I cannot have because the bipolar system of the gov't in this country has become stagnant, no longer the "greatest generation ever" but the government of oxygenarians, sucking the breath out of our patience.
Needless to say (but said anyway), every moment is chaos, truly with no past or future, waiting on the next moment to establish the fact that the previous moment felt preordained, stupendous, a momentum changer. So are we in that moment?
Meanwhile, my wife shops at Coldwater Creek, where the associates compete with each other to find the absolutely best clothes/accessories combinations for their customers.
Some days I feel overwhelmed by the people who go all out to help others. I sit here and wait for my wife while she participates in the commercial exchange of goods and services, my only contribution this use of a pocket Moleskine, a pen from Montreat Conference Center, the leatherbound chair I sit on, the clothes I wear, the electrical lights overhead to shine on this page, and this blog entry to be.
So who am I? I'm not the character portrayed by Robert Downey, Jr., seduced by his adversary while sorting through his boxing maneuvers in "Sherlock Holmes." I'm not the players who can claim victory in the BCS national championship game for the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. I'm not the teenage girls trying to convince their father, who sits on chair near me, to buy them some new clothes here. I am the man, the writer who sits here and holds his wife's cape from David Green's store in Anchorage, Alaska, bought when we enjoyed a midsummer's eve or two with a midnight hot air balloon ride over moose and sled dogs, a train excursion from Anchorage to Fairbanks, stopping for a few nights to shack up in a cabin at Mt. Denali, watching whales from a boat near Seward, and a salmon bake where a local theatre production company sang "Alaska is her name," finally stopping to listen to tales of Alaska before it became part of the United States, our companions Dwight and Joyce Foster, former ad executive for the Fairbanks newspaper and a retired school teacher, respectively, both beset with memory loss, their stories lost in the Alaskaland log cabins.
Today, I am not. Today, I observe and let others be, their lives more interesting, their shoes more varied than my days.
We teach our daughters and nieces to be heroes/heroines, letting them find out how to save the day and save the species from itself. To them I dedicate the year of this blog, starting with my grandmothers and my mother in-law. Their wisdom lives on in my cousins, nieces, mother, sister and wife. Without them, I will not be. With them, the world of my people is worth saving. For them, we will solve breast cancer causes and process the backlog of rape kits, stopping my gender's tendency to be my gender at its hormonal burst. Then we'll see that today's world leaders exist to prepare the way for the next wave, the next and so on.
Can you see the future? I can. It shows why this this moment's not as chaotic as you think.
Ate open-faced turkey sandwich with Rebecca De Mornay sauce, the large saucer-eyed tomatoes glazed over, covering the war paint stripes of bacon on top of "cheese gravy," [i.e., mornay sauce] holding courteously over slices of turkey breast meat. Chef (Paul?) stopped by to hold court and make sure we knew of the restaurant's goal to make simple but mainly meals of freshly-prepared ingredients.
In a moment afterward, we encountered Monsieur Cameron's vision of a "Last of the Mohicans" meets "Wall-E" in the short story "The Children" by Chester S. Geier on the Comcast space western cable channel. We waited for the Death Star to arrive, deus ex machina, and save the corporation's well-trained [i.e., expensive] specialised employees but remembered movies are written for the 4th class passengers of the Titanic, not the White Star Line owners or captain (not even written for Captain Sully? Well, maybe for him.).
The older I get, the more I know I'll learn less. This day, when people die from uncategorised, uninsurable diseases, I feel my stomach muscles tighten, the world of my species full of idle folks - the unemployed, the middle class, the disposable incomers - and pause. Am I awake or dreaming? Do I create when I react to the environment? What's next?
What's next for Merkel, Oprah, Wendi Deng, Wendi Nix, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil, Fredirique Darragon, my nieces, and all the women who can rule the world if they want and show a firm grip on the throne is just as effective as a firm grip on a weapon? Where is our species headed? What's next? What of Jennifer Goodman, Jennifer Wheelock, Lynne Reynolds, Joyce Battle or Antonia Ax:son Johnson? Brenda or Monica? Ivory Gail Hoilman? Dr. Charline Nixon or my former students Angela Walker and Jennifer Reagan? They are my/your/our future, along with Denise, Susie, Rhonda, Quinna, Lynda and all my other facebook friends. And my new blogging friends like Mia, Katie, "daisychain," Babli and of course Julia and Shannon Eileen. What of Mrs. Obama, Elizabeth Dole, Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton? Cynthia Lin or Naomi Flanagan? Where is their leadership leading this ship toward? What of Simone Kempmann or Peggy Sammon, or my pediatrician's wife who ruled as mayor of my hometown for a while?
I'm interested in real reform, not another form of the same ol' chopped potato hash. I back the leaders of my country but I keep doubt and criticism handy to wipe away the fog of confusion caused by the many cooks hanging over too many pots of broth on the fires of desire to look busy making change. I see the pain of lost hope. What I want I cannot have because the bipolar system of the gov't in this country has become stagnant, no longer the "greatest generation ever" but the government of oxygenarians, sucking the breath out of our patience.
Needless to say (but said anyway), every moment is chaos, truly with no past or future, waiting on the next moment to establish the fact that the previous moment felt preordained, stupendous, a momentum changer. So are we in that moment?
Meanwhile, my wife shops at Coldwater Creek, where the associates compete with each other to find the absolutely best clothes/accessories combinations for their customers.
Some days I feel overwhelmed by the people who go all out to help others. I sit here and wait for my wife while she participates in the commercial exchange of goods and services, my only contribution this use of a pocket Moleskine, a pen from Montreat Conference Center, the leatherbound chair I sit on, the clothes I wear, the electrical lights overhead to shine on this page, and this blog entry to be.
So who am I? I'm not the character portrayed by Robert Downey, Jr., seduced by his adversary while sorting through his boxing maneuvers in "Sherlock Holmes." I'm not the players who can claim victory in the BCS national championship game for the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. I'm not the teenage girls trying to convince their father, who sits on chair near me, to buy them some new clothes here. I am the man, the writer who sits here and holds his wife's cape from David Green's store in Anchorage, Alaska, bought when we enjoyed a midsummer's eve or two with a midnight hot air balloon ride over moose and sled dogs, a train excursion from Anchorage to Fairbanks, stopping for a few nights to shack up in a cabin at Mt. Denali, watching whales from a boat near Seward, and a salmon bake where a local theatre production company sang "Alaska is her name," finally stopping to listen to tales of Alaska before it became part of the United States, our companions Dwight and Joyce Foster, former ad executive for the Fairbanks newspaper and a retired school teacher, respectively, both beset with memory loss, their stories lost in the Alaskaland log cabins.
Today, I am not. Today, I observe and let others be, their lives more interesting, their shoes more varied than my days.
We teach our daughters and nieces to be heroes/heroines, letting them find out how to save the day and save the species from itself. To them I dedicate the year of this blog, starting with my grandmothers and my mother in-law. Their wisdom lives on in my cousins, nieces, mother, sister and wife. Without them, I will not be. With them, the world of my people is worth saving. For them, we will solve breast cancer causes and process the backlog of rape kits, stopping my gender's tendency to be my gender at its hormonal burst. Then we'll see that today's world leaders exist to prepare the way for the next wave, the next and so on.
Can you see the future? I can. It shows why this this moment's not as chaotic as you think.
Dunnes Stores NP/0879
Some days, while taking a walk through the trails and trials of my neighbourhood full of neighbours in their homes doing whatever neighbours do, I mentally move into the shoes of a person walking a different part of the planet; for instance, seeing myself and my friends walking the streets of Munich or Dublin, jogging around Lenexa or Ft. Lauderdale, exploring the towns within the towns of Toronto, sipping coconut milk in Ensenada.
Rare icicles hang from the gutter outside the window today, slender magnifying glasses or pipettes sending out drops of sunlight onto the ground out of sight.
Our nearly naked Cornish Rex cats huddle under the heated blanket in the master bedroom.
Meanwhile, people are dying, blind people are typing notes to their friends, and I check the weather conditions around the rest of this globular global glob in a blog.
Are you you or do you pretend to be the results of thousands of years of history by the people who died in your culture/family?
Do you have money to spend to influence those around you or do you depend on yourself and your culture/family to influence others?
On whom do you depend for food, clothing, shelter and leisure/happiness?
During the Internet/technology boom of the late 1990s, people created business cards with artistic designs and imaginary job titles. As I said, my title at the time was "Miracle Worker." I thought the time of unusual business cards was over until I recently received a business card with a fortune and lucky lottery number on the back. Now, I can spend my time focusing on my fortune, "Today you will receive a great surprise," and see if 4 7 12 23 26 34 -8- are my lucky numbers this week, bringing me a fortune.
A recent fortune at Tai Pan Palace told me that real estate is my future. I'm inclined to agree.
Reminds me that walking is a time for relaxing, letting my thoughts wander, playing with words and images to create fortunes for myself and others, sometimes coming up with hilarious juxtapositions that would probably not work in the real world, such as combining mandatory public education with prisons so that those students who do not perform well [cannot read] by third grade can be sent to work in the prison system and save our culture from agony and pain while dealing with the poor performers throughout the rest of their lives in public education and afterward. Would lower the cost of public education and prisons, perhaps? Don't take me seriously - just thoughts while slipping and sliding on ice this morning. Sorry, too much influence from reading the fiction of my youth, "Brave New World," "Nineteen Eighty-Four," Kafka, Solzhenitsyn, etc. Suppose I ought to go out to dosomething.org and make up for my non-bleedingheart thoughts (told you I'm not perfectly aligned socially - compassion is a relative value to me, knowing there are others who have loving and caring without end).
Imagine a neighbourhood where all the rooftops are painted with patterns and designs reflecting the personalities of the buildings' occupants, including adverts for those who run their own businesses, free from having to pay revenues to local governments for freedom of speech activities like this blog or a search site like Google.
When do the rights of those who live in self-sufficiency no longer matter to those who need others to depend on? I cannot say. I am not self-sufficient. Instead, I am dependent on a lot of people for me to be me right now. My investments depend on the growth of the economy. Every job I had depended on someone buying a product so that I could make a salary. I've never lived solely on the land and made my own tools, food, clothing and shelter. I am a social creature dependent on you, trusting that we make decisions that take all of us into account, increasing our opportunities to make money when people voluntarily purchase goods and services as opposed to increasing the amount of money we have to take from each other to live.
Which takes me to the next blog entry...
Rare icicles hang from the gutter outside the window today, slender magnifying glasses or pipettes sending out drops of sunlight onto the ground out of sight.
Our nearly naked Cornish Rex cats huddle under the heated blanket in the master bedroom.
Meanwhile, people are dying, blind people are typing notes to their friends, and I check the weather conditions around the rest of this globular global glob in a blog.
Are you you or do you pretend to be the results of thousands of years of history by the people who died in your culture/family?
Do you have money to spend to influence those around you or do you depend on yourself and your culture/family to influence others?
On whom do you depend for food, clothing, shelter and leisure/happiness?
During the Internet/technology boom of the late 1990s, people created business cards with artistic designs and imaginary job titles. As I said, my title at the time was "Miracle Worker." I thought the time of unusual business cards was over until I recently received a business card with a fortune and lucky lottery number on the back. Now, I can spend my time focusing on my fortune, "Today you will receive a great surprise," and see if 4 7 12 23 26 34 -8- are my lucky numbers this week, bringing me a fortune.
A recent fortune at Tai Pan Palace told me that real estate is my future. I'm inclined to agree.
Reminds me that walking is a time for relaxing, letting my thoughts wander, playing with words and images to create fortunes for myself and others, sometimes coming up with hilarious juxtapositions that would probably not work in the real world, such as combining mandatory public education with prisons so that those students who do not perform well [cannot read] by third grade can be sent to work in the prison system and save our culture from agony and pain while dealing with the poor performers throughout the rest of their lives in public education and afterward. Would lower the cost of public education and prisons, perhaps? Don't take me seriously - just thoughts while slipping and sliding on ice this morning. Sorry, too much influence from reading the fiction of my youth, "Brave New World," "Nineteen Eighty-Four," Kafka, Solzhenitsyn, etc. Suppose I ought to go out to dosomething.org and make up for my non-bleedingheart thoughts (told you I'm not perfectly aligned socially - compassion is a relative value to me, knowing there are others who have loving and caring without end).
Imagine a neighbourhood where all the rooftops are painted with patterns and designs reflecting the personalities of the buildings' occupants, including adverts for those who run their own businesses, free from having to pay revenues to local governments for freedom of speech activities like this blog or a search site like Google.
When do the rights of those who live in self-sufficiency no longer matter to those who need others to depend on? I cannot say. I am not self-sufficient. Instead, I am dependent on a lot of people for me to be me right now. My investments depend on the growth of the economy. Every job I had depended on someone buying a product so that I could make a salary. I've never lived solely on the land and made my own tools, food, clothing and shelter. I am a social creature dependent on you, trusting that we make decisions that take all of us into account, increasing our opportunities to make money when people voluntarily purchase goods and services as opposed to increasing the amount of money we have to take from each other to live.
Which takes me to the next blog entry...
09 January 2010
The Border of Boarders
Ever think about what a diplomat or ambassador does when s/he isn't enjoying time with friends and family away from home? I do (guess because a good friend of mine grew up all over the planet traveling with his diplomatic father's career).
Here's one insight into what a good diplomat/ambassador does:
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2010/01/04/201001040038.asp
Thanks to all of those who sent in the usual dictionary definitions of words I used that seemed out of place. I enjoy the way we see word usage differently - helps when my wife and I play with crossword puzzles.
Not much time to think on e-paper today. Offline world calls, including cleaning my 55-gallon (208-liter) aquarium. For some reason today, I miss my long-since dead 19-year old armoured catfish (a/k/a plecostomus (a/k/a Hypostomus plecostomus)), a constant water companion throughout my childhood and adulthood. While I'm tending the embers of old stories, guess I ought to dig out an old aquarium heater and stick it in a bucket of water for the dozens of finches and chickadees in the backyard today.
Hasta mañana! Until then, can think about corporate citizenship and the definition of fairness as it relates to a sense of privacy that a member of our species can expect versus what a corporate citizen can expect and then see how that goes with closed-door negotiations between corporate citizens (or their representatives, at least) and government officials. The future is not guaranteed - we can make positive changes for the future WHEN AND IF we keep our promises. Otherwise, charisma looses its charms, which fall to the ground, and proves there was no magic behind the curtain in the first place. I'll save the rest for tomorrow. I want a great future for our species and won't let me or anyone else get in the way!
Here's one insight into what a good diplomat/ambassador does:
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2010/01/04/201001040038.asp
Thanks to all of those who sent in the usual dictionary definitions of words I used that seemed out of place. I enjoy the way we see word usage differently - helps when my wife and I play with crossword puzzles.
Not much time to think on e-paper today. Offline world calls, including cleaning my 55-gallon (208-liter) aquarium. For some reason today, I miss my long-since dead 19-year old armoured catfish (a/k/a plecostomus (a/k/a Hypostomus plecostomus)), a constant water companion throughout my childhood and adulthood. While I'm tending the embers of old stories, guess I ought to dig out an old aquarium heater and stick it in a bucket of water for the dozens of finches and chickadees in the backyard today.
Hasta mañana! Until then, can think about corporate citizenship and the definition of fairness as it relates to a sense of privacy that a member of our species can expect versus what a corporate citizen can expect and then see how that goes with closed-door negotiations between corporate citizens (or their representatives, at least) and government officials. The future is not guaranteed - we can make positive changes for the future WHEN AND IF we keep our promises. Otherwise, charisma looses its charms, which fall to the ground, and proves there was no magic behind the curtain in the first place. I'll save the rest for tomorrow. I want a great future for our species and won't let me or anyone else get in the way!
08 January 2010
Lebanese Hindu Party Favours
While the thoughts and processes of my species wash over and through my stopped-up vessels, the flutter of feathers catches my attention. No, not a game of badminton on the front lawn. The neighbourhood avian population flies from backyard to backyard for kernels, morsels, seeds, anything nutritious, energy pills on this cold winter day.
The roadways dry, sublimation a situation in situ, people pedal their peddle carts full of leather-wrapped, multipositional seating arrangements for bodies in transit to parts unknown.
Neoclassical on the Internet radio, last.fm, preceded by post-industrial and ambient industrial and avantgarde. En garde!
Frozen water squeezed out of the sky, like gnats, flowing this way and that in the space between frozen tree stalks.
Desert spice fragrance oil bubbling in the glass bowl above a heat lamp.
The heat pump converting gas to liquid and liquid to gas in order to push warm air through subterranean vents.
Most days, a normal person sits here, asking if "why" or "why not" weighs more, tipping the scales, off-balance, off-kilter, on-time, inside or out, contemplating the value of the value of value, brain waves the only toys one has to play with.
Flocks of birds, every one fluffed up, taking off out of the wooded ditch at once. Where do they get fresh water today?
Observations versus imagination. One has the choice. Depression and inaction are not synonymous. Some days are like this, arms and legs caught in the floating mobile of words, tangled in sentence structures, prepositional phrases, dangling modifiers, the space between two musical chords. Trapped but free. Willing and unwilling. Thrilled and bored.
No place to go. No place to need to get away from. No place to be. No being to find. Just watching the birds and the automobiles dance in the snow.
Dishes and clothes to wash. Holiday decorations to take down and put away. Domesticity showing in the roots sprouting from the space rocket engines on one's feet. Physics and chemistry and psychology books showing off their dust-covered dust covers. A child's school creation by a child who's no longer a child fluttering childishly from a string.
Dreaming of Moskva, Flemish bicycle trips, skydiving over Australia, Italian villas, an Ennis inn...
Playing out-of-sync, unharmonious tunes on a portable Yamaha keyboard that one has always played, once played on uprights and baby grands, no sheet music required, disunity the theme, disconnected, free, expressive, extemporaneous, no capital letters, no commas, no periods, no paragraph breaks. Now with over 400 voices and rhythms to choose from! [Aah...technology.]
The birds don't care. They're focused on what's important ==> food. water. shelter from the cold. A bird-sized brain doesn't know self-actualisation or self-fulfillment or meditative stances or musical scores written for piano and laptop computer.
But I do. Happiness is a journey, with stopovers for depression, boredom, sadness, sorrow and introspection along the way. One can have one without the other but why? Why not?
The roadways dry, sublimation a situation in situ, people pedal their peddle carts full of leather-wrapped, multipositional seating arrangements for bodies in transit to parts unknown.
Neoclassical on the Internet radio, last.fm, preceded by post-industrial and ambient industrial and avantgarde. En garde!
Frozen water squeezed out of the sky, like gnats, flowing this way and that in the space between frozen tree stalks.
Desert spice fragrance oil bubbling in the glass bowl above a heat lamp.
The heat pump converting gas to liquid and liquid to gas in order to push warm air through subterranean vents.
Most days, a normal person sits here, asking if "why" or "why not" weighs more, tipping the scales, off-balance, off-kilter, on-time, inside or out, contemplating the value of the value of value, brain waves the only toys one has to play with.
Flocks of birds, every one fluffed up, taking off out of the wooded ditch at once. Where do they get fresh water today?
Observations versus imagination. One has the choice. Depression and inaction are not synonymous. Some days are like this, arms and legs caught in the floating mobile of words, tangled in sentence structures, prepositional phrases, dangling modifiers, the space between two musical chords. Trapped but free. Willing and unwilling. Thrilled and bored.
No place to go. No place to need to get away from. No place to be. No being to find. Just watching the birds and the automobiles dance in the snow.
Dishes and clothes to wash. Holiday decorations to take down and put away. Domesticity showing in the roots sprouting from the space rocket engines on one's feet. Physics and chemistry and psychology books showing off their dust-covered dust covers. A child's school creation by a child who's no longer a child fluttering childishly from a string.
Dreaming of Moskva, Flemish bicycle trips, skydiving over Australia, Italian villas, an Ennis inn...
Playing out-of-sync, unharmonious tunes on a portable Yamaha keyboard that one has always played, once played on uprights and baby grands, no sheet music required, disunity the theme, disconnected, free, expressive, extemporaneous, no capital letters, no commas, no periods, no paragraph breaks. Now with over 400 voices and rhythms to choose from! [Aah...technology.]
The birds don't care. They're focused on what's important ==> food. water. shelter from the cold. A bird-sized brain doesn't know self-actualisation or self-fulfillment or meditative stances or musical scores written for piano and laptop computer.
But I do. Happiness is a journey, with stopovers for depression, boredom, sadness, sorrow and introspection along the way. One can have one without the other but why? Why not?
07 January 2010
Templates and Overlays
Layover. Layaway. Lei. Eeeek. Eel. Cutouts of pop culture floating down from the clouds like little ice crystal patterns, clumps and flakes piling up, wintering the ground, making a plastic-bristled push broom a useless snow shovel in a Day After the Day After Tomorrow scenario. An automobile horn playing a one-note señorita's sonato in dee dead of freezing cold.
2009 - The Year of the Man with African-American heritage.
2010 - The Year of the Woman, gender the lyrics and harmony this stanza.
And in a continental shift, the hesitation as pols (that's right, not polls or Poles) poll the people to see if their attempt at polarising the lens through which they tell the people what they're supposed to want has been polished properly.
Media seek mediums to see the future - another thinktank expert in the field of thinktank expert analysis experts. Throw more wood on the fire - we need to pump up the smoke and bring out the dogs and ponies for the one-way mirror show.
I like carnival sideshows - the bearded lady, the world's largest rodent/snake crossover breed, the boy with no face, the politicians powdering their faces for their self-effacing airtime promoting yet another promising compromise.
Without variety, what would allspice taste like?
If few of us want to take the time to read a 1000-page stack of legalese-at-ease-soldiers, with all the "heretofore when the least amount is deducted from line 47 of page 23 totaled in line 23 of page 47 wherein the previous page was deleted, pushing all page numbers forward 10 because of the addition of 47 pages from which 38 pages were reviewed and 56 pages were therefore deleted; that is, until the review on the 29th of December referencing the planned budgetary meeting on the 5th of January that will recompute all totals and estimates prior to the constraints enacted on the 13th of November, with the following pages to be deleted/ remanded/ added," etc., then what are we to do? When does a political compromise comprise a constituent's idea that all is bribes and the rest lies?
Entertainment. That's all we need to know. The rest is details. Isn't that what I've been trying to tell myself?
If you want the assets of a foreign country for yourself, consult the Book (no, not that one), "The Art of Warfarin." Unclog those arteries! Clear the way for fresh blood to arrive on the scene.
We are one species. We only think our nation's politicians act solely on our behalf. The other half percent of us know that a legislative body is not an island. It may act on its own initiative, taking its turn to lead the way, but it never owns the stage, lights and cameras. Action! Smile for your local online webzine or newsernet. Look serious about the deal you just closed which ensures your comfortable retirement and a few pork barrels parked on the side of the road bearing your name.
The same water particles falling from the sky when someone said what I said above about six thousand years before someone said it forty thousand years ago.
"Ugh. That fruit tree belongs to my family. We found it first."
"Grunt. No it doesn't. I represent a consortium of families tired of waiting for your family to eat first. I am claiming this tree for them and offering you the vast unknown stretches of land to the north where we will not touch any of your trees for...say, the next ten cycles of the moon."
"Ten cycles? Not enough. We will let you have this tree for twenty cycles. And if we do not find any fruit trees in our new land we will come back and take this land, adding it to the new land holdings you granted us."
"Twelve cycles. That's my final offer."
"Fifteen."
"It's yours, if you'll give us your oldest son and daughter."
"Ugh. I will give you only one."
"Then we'll take your son because he's the best fruit sack bearer in your group."
"Good, we'll keep our daughter who is best fruit picker in our group. See you in ten cycles."
"You said fifteen."
"You said twelve."
"Grunt. Twelve it is, then."
"We will be back in ten cycles to make sure you hold up your end of the bargain."
"Twelve."
"Okay, we will come back in just over ten cycles. No fruit and we get our son back."
"Eleven."
"Ten and you keep our son."
"Ten it is, then."
"Ten, and we'll get our son back."
"No, you get fruit sack only."
"Ten and we get son, tree and fruit sack, or we'll come back in five moon cycles."
"Okay, deal is done."
"Ugh. Seven moon cycles, we'll come back and we get your oldest son and daughter."
"Now, wait a minute!"
"You no want deal, we stay here."
"Umm...I come back tomorrow after I explain deal to the people."
"You come back tomorrow with proof of more fruit trees in the north or the deal is off when we return in three moon cycles."
And so it goes. A deal is no deal. It is a reference point for the next round of negotiations. Same for the so-called universal health care coverage legislation winding its way through the deals and no deals winding their way through no deals and deals. But I already know all this. What I'm supposed to tell you is what the Book of the Future from the last billion-dollar book/movie/blog/game deal I negotiated with the publishers says about what happens when the two houses merge their versions.
Welcome to the house divided. While conservatives form their temporary party to make themselves feel warm and fuzzy about voicing their displeasure over the pain they felt in the economic slump which they so easily blamed on anyone not wearing a conservative suit of crusader's armour, the liberals will feel smug that they are getting at least part of what they were promised when they hoisted a flag of unity over the shack of a Hawaiian politico. In the meantime, foreign entities will continue to accumulate debt repayment promises and laugh all the way to the bank, joining arms and singing, "Divide and conquer, divide and conquer, Houston has a problem, the eagle has landed, its feet spread across an unjoinable divide."
In a moment like this, I want to hear Will Rogers and Ashleigh Brilliant hold a tea party debate over whether John Cena or Arnold Schwarzenegger would make a better reporter for Fox News' coverage of eliminating the threat of malaria in Africa while recovering all the money stolen by the Iranian theocrat who's buried billions of dollars in "friendly" countries. And you wonder why my long-term bets are placed in overseas accounts in China and Israel, lined up with the way things are going in Mexico's drug trade with the United States.
I'm just this guy who loves my seven billion fellows so much that I'm willing to let them sort out how they want to live with each other. If you want to fight, fight. If you want to feed the poor, feed the poor. Any one of us can do anything s/he wants. At the end of the day, some of you will be with me and see we need to get our species out of this chicken egg basket. The rest of you I leave to your own devices, no matter what they are and what you want to do with them. However, your future is my future so I'm going to keep watching what you're doing - even if I don't do anything about your actions right away, I'm paying attention to when your actions may be useful to me later on. I don't care about who you are, where you came from or what you call your family background - you are a person, with immense value that you aren't aware of. Experiment with your life and one day we may meet when you've figured out what you're really worth to yourself. Look at Julia or Shannon Eileen or anyone else who's put self (not selfishness) first. Value yourself in the moment and the moment is yours. The moment is mine. The moment is ours. The moment is all.
2009 - The Year of the Man with African-American heritage.
2010 - The Year of the Woman, gender the lyrics and harmony this stanza.
And in a continental shift, the hesitation as pols (that's right, not polls or Poles) poll the people to see if their attempt at polarising the lens through which they tell the people what they're supposed to want has been polished properly.
Media seek mediums to see the future - another thinktank expert in the field of thinktank expert analysis experts. Throw more wood on the fire - we need to pump up the smoke and bring out the dogs and ponies for the one-way mirror show.
I like carnival sideshows - the bearded lady, the world's largest rodent/snake crossover breed, the boy with no face, the politicians powdering their faces for their self-effacing airtime promoting yet another promising compromise.
Without variety, what would allspice taste like?
If few of us want to take the time to read a 1000-page stack of legalese-at-ease-soldiers, with all the "heretofore when the least amount is deducted from line 47 of page 23 totaled in line 23 of page 47 wherein the previous page was deleted, pushing all page numbers forward 10 because of the addition of 47 pages from which 38 pages were reviewed and 56 pages were therefore deleted; that is, until the review on the 29th of December referencing the planned budgetary meeting on the 5th of January that will recompute all totals and estimates prior to the constraints enacted on the 13th of November, with the following pages to be deleted/ remanded/ added," etc., then what are we to do? When does a political compromise comprise a constituent's idea that all is bribes and the rest lies?
Entertainment. That's all we need to know. The rest is details. Isn't that what I've been trying to tell myself?
If you want the assets of a foreign country for yourself, consult the Book (no, not that one), "The Art of Warfarin." Unclog those arteries! Clear the way for fresh blood to arrive on the scene.
We are one species. We only think our nation's politicians act solely on our behalf. The other half percent of us know that a legislative body is not an island. It may act on its own initiative, taking its turn to lead the way, but it never owns the stage, lights and cameras. Action! Smile for your local online webzine or newsernet. Look serious about the deal you just closed which ensures your comfortable retirement and a few pork barrels parked on the side of the road bearing your name.
The same water particles falling from the sky when someone said what I said above about six thousand years before someone said it forty thousand years ago.
"Ugh. That fruit tree belongs to my family. We found it first."
"Grunt. No it doesn't. I represent a consortium of families tired of waiting for your family to eat first. I am claiming this tree for them and offering you the vast unknown stretches of land to the north where we will not touch any of your trees for...say, the next ten cycles of the moon."
"Ten cycles? Not enough. We will let you have this tree for twenty cycles. And if we do not find any fruit trees in our new land we will come back and take this land, adding it to the new land holdings you granted us."
"Twelve cycles. That's my final offer."
"Fifteen."
"It's yours, if you'll give us your oldest son and daughter."
"Ugh. I will give you only one."
"Then we'll take your son because he's the best fruit sack bearer in your group."
"Good, we'll keep our daughter who is best fruit picker in our group. See you in ten cycles."
"You said fifteen."
"You said twelve."
"Grunt. Twelve it is, then."
"We will be back in ten cycles to make sure you hold up your end of the bargain."
"Twelve."
"Okay, we will come back in just over ten cycles. No fruit and we get our son back."
"Eleven."
"Ten and you keep our son."
"Ten it is, then."
"Ten, and we'll get our son back."
"No, you get fruit sack only."
"Ten and we get son, tree and fruit sack, or we'll come back in five moon cycles."
"Okay, deal is done."
"Ugh. Seven moon cycles, we'll come back and we get your oldest son and daughter."
"Now, wait a minute!"
"You no want deal, we stay here."
"Umm...I come back tomorrow after I explain deal to the people."
"You come back tomorrow with proof of more fruit trees in the north or the deal is off when we return in three moon cycles."
And so it goes. A deal is no deal. It is a reference point for the next round of negotiations. Same for the so-called universal health care coverage legislation winding its way through the deals and no deals winding their way through no deals and deals. But I already know all this. What I'm supposed to tell you is what the Book of the Future from the last billion-dollar book/movie/blog/game deal I negotiated with the publishers says about what happens when the two houses merge their versions.
Welcome to the house divided. While conservatives form their temporary party to make themselves feel warm and fuzzy about voicing their displeasure over the pain they felt in the economic slump which they so easily blamed on anyone not wearing a conservative suit of crusader's armour, the liberals will feel smug that they are getting at least part of what they were promised when they hoisted a flag of unity over the shack of a Hawaiian politico. In the meantime, foreign entities will continue to accumulate debt repayment promises and laugh all the way to the bank, joining arms and singing, "Divide and conquer, divide and conquer, Houston has a problem, the eagle has landed, its feet spread across an unjoinable divide."
In a moment like this, I want to hear Will Rogers and Ashleigh Brilliant hold a tea party debate over whether John Cena or Arnold Schwarzenegger would make a better reporter for Fox News' coverage of eliminating the threat of malaria in Africa while recovering all the money stolen by the Iranian theocrat who's buried billions of dollars in "friendly" countries. And you wonder why my long-term bets are placed in overseas accounts in China and Israel, lined up with the way things are going in Mexico's drug trade with the United States.
I'm just this guy who loves my seven billion fellows so much that I'm willing to let them sort out how they want to live with each other. If you want to fight, fight. If you want to feed the poor, feed the poor. Any one of us can do anything s/he wants. At the end of the day, some of you will be with me and see we need to get our species out of this chicken egg basket. The rest of you I leave to your own devices, no matter what they are and what you want to do with them. However, your future is my future so I'm going to keep watching what you're doing - even if I don't do anything about your actions right away, I'm paying attention to when your actions may be useful to me later on. I don't care about who you are, where you came from or what you call your family background - you are a person, with immense value that you aren't aware of. Experiment with your life and one day we may meet when you've figured out what you're really worth to yourself. Look at Julia or Shannon Eileen or anyone else who's put self (not selfishness) first. Value yourself in the moment and the moment is yours. The moment is mine. The moment is ours. The moment is all.
06 January 2010
When Noise Is Information
Have you ever devised a letter-for-letter swap (c=a, e=b, etc.), creating a secret code with your friends? Have you ever listened to the wind passing between two rocks, creating a pulsating whistling sound? Have you ever looked at a colour-coded representation of sound waves bouncing back and forth in a room?
Have you ever listened to Kaija Saariaho, industrial music or experimental avant-garde anything? Have you ever looked at a loom and watched the weaving of coloured/textured threads, thinking about punch cards and Pareto charts? The last time you passed by a big bridge in the city, did you notice the same group of people standing along one side of the bridge and appearing in different positions once a day (say, around lunch time), sending semaphore messages to a person standing with a video-recording mobile phone at an elevated subway train platform?
Have you entered a room of a house, its contents looking haphazardly stacked, noting with great attention to detail the exact placement of every item, returning every day to note changes in the items' positions, and then going back to your computer to decipher the three-dimensional message being recorded by a friend for you? What if the person who lived in the flat across the alleyway from you opened her blinds for a few minutes each day for just such a purpose? Would you be willing to spend the rest of your life writing down the once-daily scripted text, just to discover at the end of your life that the message was part 1 of a three-part message meant for someone two generations after yours?
Do you believe what you see with your eyes? Do you know all the scents your body gives off? Can a robot's skin blush? Some people have dry skin. Some people have oily skin. Some people have a combination of dry, scaly and oily skin. Which one should an artificially-skinned android emulate? What should s/he smell like? One overall scent? A variety of scents? Scents that change with temperature, time and social situations?
Have you ever listened to white or pink noise? Would you recognize and differentiate random serial tones from ones which require a special filter to hear patterned sound or music?
Would you recognize a spaceship if you were born on it thousands of your species' generations after the spaceship was created, the details and nuances of the spaceship's creators' language/culture forgotten in the dust and noise of living daily on the new vessel?
If you know what you're doing, you can do whatever you want in plain sight of those who do not know what you're doing and who do not want you to do what you do. The idea is to blend seamlessly into their world while you carry your world with you.
One person's annoyance at the sound of a loud leaf blower is another person's saxophone/horn sending out beautiful avant-garde music to those who see that a leaf blower operator is a gift from the gods, sent to test your understanding of the desire of one person to magically/artfully move leaves, dirt, cigarette butts and tree seeds without touching them. We all are artists using our bodies as paint brushes and the universe as our canvas, our movements like musical notes written in an invisible score on stage and in the arena with ballet dancers and ball players.
This is my world, my canvas, completely full of every one of you, my art creations, perfection personified. I am excited to know you, to see you, to not see you, to sense you when you're not here, to know you're the face of one of the dice I've just rattled in the cup of a game of Yahtzee.
You are my friend Joey, who, when as young teenagers about the same age (12 or 13), introduced me to the book, "The Search for Joseph Tully," and taught me that who we think we are is not what others think or act upon. You are my friend David N. who made me envious when you got a greenhouse when we were in secondary school and whose work in the chemistry field still makes me envious of your genius.
You are my coworkers Ron, Frank, Henry and Tommy who taught me that it takes a team of dedicated designers to create a masterpiece. We never know what we had until it's gone and in the hands of marketers and technically-savvy hackers who turn a simple high-speed data transmission device into a portable server/client system. We learn that our customers are often better at extracting a product's worth than what our BOMs and profit margins say, that it makes more sense to get a product out the door with obvious flaws that we ask our customers to help us fix/improve than it is to imagine what perfection is supposed to be.
Without my friends, I am no one. I am noise without a filter, post-industrial music with no appreciative listener. It's not about who I am - you is the only it that matters. Settling into a subdivision/housing estate in Latvia is only important if Latvia's where it's at for you, know what I mean? Otherwise, if/when "They" decide to cut off your natural gas supply in winter, then it's not where you want to be at, is it? Makes me wonder what's going on in Minsk or other Belarus ruses. Just when you thought Chechnya is under control, you have to pay attention to the chilies in Chile, do you not? See why I pay attention to the music? All messages are not hidden in the noise of JPG photos. Some noise is in plain sight, just like me and my three-dimensional towers of powerful "tunes." Encrypted computer hard drives are for weenies to decode. Low-tech is still worthy of consideration. Sigh...why do I tell you what you should already know? I guess because I know that the espionage folks have made their thoughts into a business/industry, perpetuating and expanding bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, eating each other's tails for breakfast and regrowing them in the afternoon, never knowing they're consuming the same thing the next day and the next day and the next... Remember, never be a member of a club that you don't agree with or understand - otherwise, you'll find yourself justifying your membership to your friends who know better and wonder when you started believing your own lies. "Look, Mommy, there's an airplane up in the sky." [Quick! Pick their pockets while everyone's looking up!]
Distraction. That's the key to understanding what these words are all about. Maybe we can pick up this lesson another day when you're ignoring the superficial message of these words and listening to the sound waves they produce. YAWN! Time for my afternoon nap and then I'll look at the data I collected to see the interference patterns caused by my microwave oven while I'm sending data across my WiFi link - then maybe I can figure out the effect of microwave radiation on the radishes growing next to the radicchio to see why they're turning into pomme de terres of another sort.
Have you ever listened to Kaija Saariaho, industrial music or experimental avant-garde anything? Have you ever looked at a loom and watched the weaving of coloured/textured threads, thinking about punch cards and Pareto charts? The last time you passed by a big bridge in the city, did you notice the same group of people standing along one side of the bridge and appearing in different positions once a day (say, around lunch time), sending semaphore messages to a person standing with a video-recording mobile phone at an elevated subway train platform?
Have you entered a room of a house, its contents looking haphazardly stacked, noting with great attention to detail the exact placement of every item, returning every day to note changes in the items' positions, and then going back to your computer to decipher the three-dimensional message being recorded by a friend for you? What if the person who lived in the flat across the alleyway from you opened her blinds for a few minutes each day for just such a purpose? Would you be willing to spend the rest of your life writing down the once-daily scripted text, just to discover at the end of your life that the message was part 1 of a three-part message meant for someone two generations after yours?
Do you believe what you see with your eyes? Do you know all the scents your body gives off? Can a robot's skin blush? Some people have dry skin. Some people have oily skin. Some people have a combination of dry, scaly and oily skin. Which one should an artificially-skinned android emulate? What should s/he smell like? One overall scent? A variety of scents? Scents that change with temperature, time and social situations?
Have you ever listened to white or pink noise? Would you recognize and differentiate random serial tones from ones which require a special filter to hear patterned sound or music?
Would you recognize a spaceship if you were born on it thousands of your species' generations after the spaceship was created, the details and nuances of the spaceship's creators' language/culture forgotten in the dust and noise of living daily on the new vessel?
If you know what you're doing, you can do whatever you want in plain sight of those who do not know what you're doing and who do not want you to do what you do. The idea is to blend seamlessly into their world while you carry your world with you.
One person's annoyance at the sound of a loud leaf blower is another person's saxophone/horn sending out beautiful avant-garde music to those who see that a leaf blower operator is a gift from the gods, sent to test your understanding of the desire of one person to magically/artfully move leaves, dirt, cigarette butts and tree seeds without touching them. We all are artists using our bodies as paint brushes and the universe as our canvas, our movements like musical notes written in an invisible score on stage and in the arena with ballet dancers and ball players.
This is my world, my canvas, completely full of every one of you, my art creations, perfection personified. I am excited to know you, to see you, to not see you, to sense you when you're not here, to know you're the face of one of the dice I've just rattled in the cup of a game of Yahtzee.
You are my friend Joey, who, when as young teenagers about the same age (12 or 13), introduced me to the book, "The Search for Joseph Tully," and taught me that who we think we are is not what others think or act upon. You are my friend David N. who made me envious when you got a greenhouse when we were in secondary school and whose work in the chemistry field still makes me envious of your genius.
You are my coworkers Ron, Frank, Henry and Tommy who taught me that it takes a team of dedicated designers to create a masterpiece. We never know what we had until it's gone and in the hands of marketers and technically-savvy hackers who turn a simple high-speed data transmission device into a portable server/client system. We learn that our customers are often better at extracting a product's worth than what our BOMs and profit margins say, that it makes more sense to get a product out the door with obvious flaws that we ask our customers to help us fix/improve than it is to imagine what perfection is supposed to be.
Without my friends, I am no one. I am noise without a filter, post-industrial music with no appreciative listener. It's not about who I am - you is the only it that matters. Settling into a subdivision/housing estate in Latvia is only important if Latvia's where it's at for you, know what I mean? Otherwise, if/when "They" decide to cut off your natural gas supply in winter, then it's not where you want to be at, is it? Makes me wonder what's going on in Minsk or other Belarus ruses. Just when you thought Chechnya is under control, you have to pay attention to the chilies in Chile, do you not? See why I pay attention to the music? All messages are not hidden in the noise of JPG photos. Some noise is in plain sight, just like me and my three-dimensional towers of powerful "tunes." Encrypted computer hard drives are for weenies to decode. Low-tech is still worthy of consideration. Sigh...why do I tell you what you should already know? I guess because I know that the espionage folks have made their thoughts into a business/industry, perpetuating and expanding bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, eating each other's tails for breakfast and regrowing them in the afternoon, never knowing they're consuming the same thing the next day and the next day and the next... Remember, never be a member of a club that you don't agree with or understand - otherwise, you'll find yourself justifying your membership to your friends who know better and wonder when you started believing your own lies. "Look, Mommy, there's an airplane up in the sky." [Quick! Pick their pockets while everyone's looking up!]
Distraction. That's the key to understanding what these words are all about. Maybe we can pick up this lesson another day when you're ignoring the superficial message of these words and listening to the sound waves they produce. YAWN! Time for my afternoon nap and then I'll look at the data I collected to see the interference patterns caused by my microwave oven while I'm sending data across my WiFi link - then maybe I can figure out the effect of microwave radiation on the radishes growing next to the radicchio to see why they're turning into pomme de terres of another sort.
While I'm At It...
Having spent the past year pondering the stereoscopic view of the world from the tip of my nose, I suddenly find I am with you in the western calendrical world of 2010. But I am also in 4707 in the Chinese calendar system, 5770 in the Jewish calendar system and in the Aztec calendar system, today is 11 - Tochtli (rabbit) 1 - Tecpatl (flint knife) 3 - Xochitl (flower).
Numerical day-counting systems aside, today, the moment somewhere between waking up after sunrise and going to sleep after sunset, I note the local scalar system which indicates my gravitational pull onto this planetary body. A metal contraption containing a spring and a dial told me today's lucky number is 235, five digits less than the number 240 which appeared three days ago.
I don't know the magic number I'm trying to hit but I do know the effect I want to cause as the days disappear behind me. Having jogged/walked and completed a marathon in 2004, a little over five years ago, when my specific gravitational equilibrium read 195 (seven pounds heavier than what my general practitioner (i.e., family doctor) called my "ideal" weight to body type ratio (medium build, 6'1" height, good health in my early 40s)), I believe it's time to put exercise practices back into practice.
Walking 30 minutes a day, using the in-home rowing machine, and memorising Tai Chi movements will occupy parts of my days this year. A balanced diet of protein, fiber and other tasty treats will accompany my eating routines.
I'll post updates on what I've accomplished by adding general fitness routines to my daily habits.
I have no goals other than to vary my habits from one set of seasonal changes to another. Of course, I have a long-term goal - to float around the dark side of the moon on an outer space cruise/spa ship - where every pound/stone has a high price in fuel. Now's as good a time as any to reduce my future fuel use while I see what the rest of the seven billion members of my species is up to.
Until later...
Numerical day-counting systems aside, today, the moment somewhere between waking up after sunrise and going to sleep after sunset, I note the local scalar system which indicates my gravitational pull onto this planetary body. A metal contraption containing a spring and a dial told me today's lucky number is 235, five digits less than the number 240 which appeared three days ago.
I don't know the magic number I'm trying to hit but I do know the effect I want to cause as the days disappear behind me. Having jogged/walked and completed a marathon in 2004, a little over five years ago, when my specific gravitational equilibrium read 195 (seven pounds heavier than what my general practitioner (i.e., family doctor) called my "ideal" weight to body type ratio (medium build, 6'1" height, good health in my early 40s)), I believe it's time to put exercise practices back into practice.
Walking 30 minutes a day, using the in-home rowing machine, and memorising Tai Chi movements will occupy parts of my days this year. A balanced diet of protein, fiber and other tasty treats will accompany my eating routines.
I'll post updates on what I've accomplished by adding general fitness routines to my daily habits.
I have no goals other than to vary my habits from one set of seasonal changes to another. Of course, I have a long-term goal - to float around the dark side of the moon on an outer space cruise/spa ship - where every pound/stone has a high price in fuel. Now's as good a time as any to reduce my future fuel use while I see what the rest of the seven billion members of my species is up to.
Until later...
05 January 2010
Mum Mummy Mummer
While watching the Mummers Parade, a New Year's celebratory march of outlandishly costumed street performers (imagine Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans meeting Rio's Carnival in downtown Philadelphia, PA), I flipped through some books I'd bought at the annual used reading material sale from our local library. As many of you know, libraries toss tonnes of texts into the garbage every year but some libraries try to make a little profit selling books, magazines and other physical goods in decent shape. These days, you can buy ex-library or remainder books online through resellers hanging their shingles on websites like amazon.co.uk or daedalusbooks.com.
But I'm not here to talk about books, purchased or otherwise (such as the free one I got from David Bach via email yesterday, "Start Over, Finish Rich," a reminder that you/us, the average investor, should not let short-term setbacks move you off the track of long-term financial success, a down economy means an up opportunity for you (e.g., find out more about your neighbours who need to move a house/condo quickly because of dire financial straits and scoop up a cheap rental property in the process), etc.). But maybe I am [reminder to self: write blog entry about when my newly-married, one income parents used their discretionary funds for housekeeping/au pair type services which, as empty-nesters, they now use to pay for high-speed Internet, mobile phone and cable television services - you don't need two incomes to survive in today's economy, you need wiser spending habits; teach your offspring and yourselves the value of opportunity costs].
You see, I found an interesting book. Old. Dusty. Ragged edges. The type of book that the H.P. Lovecrafts and Dan Browns of the world love to whisper about finding in sepulchral out-of-the-way digs. In other words, a book published in 2008 which never made it to the bestseller lists, ending up on piles in places like Mike's Merchandise or the local library sale.
No ISBN. No reference numbers of any kind. Presumably self-published. Donated to the library? Purchased by the library for a curious reader? I don't know.
"Dissidence and Dissonance" by Presonia La Fontaine. No picture of the author. No self-inflating biographical sketch of a home in the Hamptons and a Paris apartment where the author lives with a spouse, three children and two dogs when not traversing the planet spreading joy and happiness to others.
A slim volume. Less than 100 pages. Full of facts I haven't doublechecked and verified against what I always hope are reliable sources. Interesting reading, though, even if the facts aren't real.
You see, Presonia (guy or gal?) proposed that the world's great musical composers were or are members of a secret society dedicated to spreading the voice of freedom, seeking victories not in direct clashes with governmental authorities but through the subversive use of music to tell stories that contradict the official party lines told by their political leaders and teach others to interpret the text hidden in the musical notes.
The author ended the book with the question about whether other communication methods like spread spectrum technology are also subversive means of conversation for intelligentsia.
And now you know why I've become interested in writing musical compositions of my own. Presonia presented what s/he considered actual textual interpretations of classic music from sources all over the world, including tribal music from the Amazon, North America, Africa and Australia. Presonia also proposed that the music of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics in China were specifically written to thwart government censorship there, following in the footsteps of great Russian composers before the fall of the Soviet Union, encouraging revolt not in physical attacks on the government but in dissident thinking. Presonia showed why the prepared piano was created and musical scores of John Cage were written for dissidents within the United States.
Presonia then wrote several chapters analysing the dissonance of modern music, from jazz and bebop to hip hop and rap, showing that the same symbols or "letters of the alphabet" can be found in all music, once one understands how one frequency can be both the stroke of the letter (in a chord) and a letter, too, and how rhythm has multiple purposes, like combining musical symbols onto a set of three-dimensional dice, where one has to know not only the symbol on the face of a die but also the symbols on the die's faces that you can't see and the supersymbol (or alphabetic letter) formed by the specific placement of dice in a song.
In the chapter where Presonia presented what s/he determined was the ultimate goal of music, to allow anarchy to disrupt the evil plans of world governments, I lost interest. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't see or care if there are ulterior motives of the people around me. I have no hidden agenda to achieve. My goals are announced for the world of people to see. Either you're with me or you're not with me. My purpose of seeing if Presonia's theories are true are to improve my means of communicating with those around me. If I can use music to achieve a richer, deeper sense of understanding what others are saying, then my current view of life is worth living in this moment. Otherwise, I'll find another view.
And while I investigate music as a sound-based hieroglyphic symbolic text-writing machine, I'll dig into the use of other seemingly arbitrary combinations of waveforms as more complex means of talking and thinking. I spent too much time in my youth seeing analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog chips as the only way to convert one energy state to another that I never gave much thought about analog-to-analog or digital-to-digital as the message-sending means. What if ultra-wideband is the medium and the message?
Makes me ponder the old saying, "Only the blind can truly see." I've spent and continue to spend too much time trying to believe what my eyes tell me that I forget we think and communicate using multiple methods already - voice, body language, touch, low-power "brain waves," hormones, etc.
Look at a map of the universe's gamma ray energy sources from Earth's point of view and you see why a single planet or solar system is a poor, low-resolution viewpoint of the universe around us. Like asking a jungle pygmy to describe the purpose of a nuclear power plant - the pygmy may be able to create a curative salve with the leaf of a rare orchid but could not, by looking at the nuclear plant, know how to compute the decay rate of radioactive material.
All these years I spent studying written languages, worrying myself about grammar and sentence structure, watching as linguists try to assemble the set of "original" words spoken by our species... and here in front of me has been the primary or aboriginal language all along: the sound waves themselves. For those who are already in the know, I ask your patience as I come up to speed. For those of you already using multiple waveforms to communicate, I commend you. For those of you who know the extrauniversal conversation tools, I look forward to meeting with you soon.
To know I am here only because you are / exist and I am not here because I do not exist, all while I discover ways of being me I never thought possible is really what my life is all about. And only a few days ago I thought these words were all I had! Instead, I see (blindly and lately) that how I talk to you, my friends, is just as important as what I say.
Have a great day!
But I'm not here to talk about books, purchased or otherwise (such as the free one I got from David Bach via email yesterday, "Start Over, Finish Rich," a reminder that you/us, the average investor, should not let short-term setbacks move you off the track of long-term financial success, a down economy means an up opportunity for you (e.g., find out more about your neighbours who need to move a house/condo quickly because of dire financial straits and scoop up a cheap rental property in the process), etc.). But maybe I am [reminder to self: write blog entry about when my newly-married, one income parents used their discretionary funds for housekeeping/au pair type services which, as empty-nesters, they now use to pay for high-speed Internet, mobile phone and cable television services - you don't need two incomes to survive in today's economy, you need wiser spending habits; teach your offspring and yourselves the value of opportunity costs].
You see, I found an interesting book. Old. Dusty. Ragged edges. The type of book that the H.P. Lovecrafts and Dan Browns of the world love to whisper about finding in sepulchral out-of-the-way digs. In other words, a book published in 2008 which never made it to the bestseller lists, ending up on piles in places like Mike's Merchandise or the local library sale.
No ISBN. No reference numbers of any kind. Presumably self-published. Donated to the library? Purchased by the library for a curious reader? I don't know.
"Dissidence and Dissonance" by Presonia La Fontaine. No picture of the author. No self-inflating biographical sketch of a home in the Hamptons and a Paris apartment where the author lives with a spouse, three children and two dogs when not traversing the planet spreading joy and happiness to others.
A slim volume. Less than 100 pages. Full of facts I haven't doublechecked and verified against what I always hope are reliable sources. Interesting reading, though, even if the facts aren't real.
You see, Presonia (guy or gal?) proposed that the world's great musical composers were or are members of a secret society dedicated to spreading the voice of freedom, seeking victories not in direct clashes with governmental authorities but through the subversive use of music to tell stories that contradict the official party lines told by their political leaders and teach others to interpret the text hidden in the musical notes.
The author ended the book with the question about whether other communication methods like spread spectrum technology are also subversive means of conversation for intelligentsia.
And now you know why I've become interested in writing musical compositions of my own. Presonia presented what s/he considered actual textual interpretations of classic music from sources all over the world, including tribal music from the Amazon, North America, Africa and Australia. Presonia also proposed that the music of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics in China were specifically written to thwart government censorship there, following in the footsteps of great Russian composers before the fall of the Soviet Union, encouraging revolt not in physical attacks on the government but in dissident thinking. Presonia showed why the prepared piano was created and musical scores of John Cage were written for dissidents within the United States.
Presonia then wrote several chapters analysing the dissonance of modern music, from jazz and bebop to hip hop and rap, showing that the same symbols or "letters of the alphabet" can be found in all music, once one understands how one frequency can be both the stroke of the letter (in a chord) and a letter, too, and how rhythm has multiple purposes, like combining musical symbols onto a set of three-dimensional dice, where one has to know not only the symbol on the face of a die but also the symbols on the die's faces that you can't see and the supersymbol (or alphabetic letter) formed by the specific placement of dice in a song.
In the chapter where Presonia presented what s/he determined was the ultimate goal of music, to allow anarchy to disrupt the evil plans of world governments, I lost interest. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't see or care if there are ulterior motives of the people around me. I have no hidden agenda to achieve. My goals are announced for the world of people to see. Either you're with me or you're not with me. My purpose of seeing if Presonia's theories are true are to improve my means of communicating with those around me. If I can use music to achieve a richer, deeper sense of understanding what others are saying, then my current view of life is worth living in this moment. Otherwise, I'll find another view.
And while I investigate music as a sound-based hieroglyphic symbolic text-writing machine, I'll dig into the use of other seemingly arbitrary combinations of waveforms as more complex means of talking and thinking. I spent too much time in my youth seeing analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog chips as the only way to convert one energy state to another that I never gave much thought about analog-to-analog or digital-to-digital as the message-sending means. What if ultra-wideband is the medium and the message?
Makes me ponder the old saying, "Only the blind can truly see." I've spent and continue to spend too much time trying to believe what my eyes tell me that I forget we think and communicate using multiple methods already - voice, body language, touch, low-power "brain waves," hormones, etc.
Look at a map of the universe's gamma ray energy sources from Earth's point of view and you see why a single planet or solar system is a poor, low-resolution viewpoint of the universe around us. Like asking a jungle pygmy to describe the purpose of a nuclear power plant - the pygmy may be able to create a curative salve with the leaf of a rare orchid but could not, by looking at the nuclear plant, know how to compute the decay rate of radioactive material.
All these years I spent studying written languages, worrying myself about grammar and sentence structure, watching as linguists try to assemble the set of "original" words spoken by our species... and here in front of me has been the primary or aboriginal language all along: the sound waves themselves. For those who are already in the know, I ask your patience as I come up to speed. For those of you already using multiple waveforms to communicate, I commend you. For those of you who know the extrauniversal conversation tools, I look forward to meeting with you soon.
To know I am here only because you are / exist and I am not here because I do not exist, all while I discover ways of being me I never thought possible is really what my life is all about. And only a few days ago I thought these words were all I had! Instead, I see (blindly and lately) that how I talk to you, my friends, is just as important as what I say.
Have a great day!
04 January 2010
My Creative Friend
On this part of the planet, a colder-than-normal chill passes through the air. The baby, El Niño, and the cooling/warming Arctic, have combined to make winter cold again.
And winter brings people indoors, where we share new ideas and show off new home furnishings, new tools in the garage or new computer games.
I am not an inventive person. Instead, I hang out with my friends who have the skills and fortitude to design new inventions of their own.
For instance, a good, close friend of mine (who wishes to remain nameless) uses his house as a giant experimental breadboard / laboratory.
Back during the Thanksgiving holiday, I told him about my desire to keep the door to the entertainment room open but at the same time keeping the noise of the 7.1 surround sound system restricted to the home theatre so that my wife and her mother could entertain friends in the nearby kitchen and living room while I cranked up the sound of the football games.
So, between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, my friend went to work on an invisible soundproofing wall.
Have you ever walked into a building and noticed the "wall" of heat you walk through just inside the doorway? Or have you ever paid attention to the way cold air is circulated in those open bins / coolers in the grocer's market that hold vats of butter, crates of eggs and cases of beer?
Well, that describes my friend's new device.
He invited me over to his house last night for a demonstration. On one side of a doorway, he had set a 12" subwoofer enclosure, some speaker boxes configured with a variety of tweeters and midrange noisebangers, and a guitar amplifier. He had me stand a few inches from the doorway. He walked over to the stereo system and turned it on, or so it appeared. I heard nothing but I did see some odd flexing images, as if I was staring into the room across a hot carpark or desert, a mirage of my friend and his gear in front of me.
He then walked over to the doorway and flipped a switch on the wall. My ears felt like they had burst when the blaring of a Jimi Hendrix tune blasted out of the room. My friend flipped the switch again and I was left with ringing ears and the same wavering mirage.
He walked back to the surround sound system and turned it off. The mirage effect lessened. My friend flipped the switch on the wall and I heard him in mid-sentence say, "'...t do you think?"
I asked him what I'd seen so he explained in layman's terms the device he'd created and installed in the doorway. It was some sort of sound cancellation system, with an incomplete visible light alteration system in place, too.
He showed me the plans and told me he'd sent the design to two teams, one in Japan and one in China, having them work with one another to perfect the overall look and manufacturability of the system. Meanwhile, he'd contacted his American, Russian, Brazilian, Canadian and Indian software designers to come up with better algorithms to control the visible light control system. He guessed that by mid-March he'd have a working unit for me to install at my house.
We played with the doorway sound cancellation system some more. He pointed out to me that he hadn't eliminated the floor vibrations of the subwoofer but since it didn't bother me any more than the effect of a distant passing automobile full of teenagers listening to music, he'd assume that most people would accept the fact the door device was only eliminating sound through an open doorway. If they wanted more than that, they'd have to build an entertainment room in a more isolated, soundproofed room of their house.
We watched a lopsided professional American football game for a while, downing a few holiday brews, and then went downstairs to his workshop.
My friend's always toying with wood. He, like most of my friends, grew up with fathers and grandfathers who carved and sawed wood for home furnishings or children's toys. My friend's latest creation is a folding step ladder that forms a spiral staircase. He mentioned that he was tired of the same old A-frame shaped step ladder and wanted something he could unfold in a tight space that offered some stable footprint for standing on its own (unlike an extension ladder) but didn't require a huge footprint. We talked about the ladder for a while and realised that there might be a market for this ladder in the treehouse world. Or maybe even for access to lofts or other tight spaces.
I can't tell you my friend's name but I can tell you his nickname - Goldfinger. Everything he thinks about or touches turns to precious metal. If I just had the nail of that finger, I'd be a rich man myself!
As I was leaving his house, I joked about the effect one person has on society, recounting all the inventions of his that had made it into production and improved the standard of living for others. He laughed. He pointed out that one person can make a difference in many ways, including the misguided Nigerian, whose recent actions on an airplane changed the lives of others flying during the holiday season in the U.S. When did we start letting terrorists decide how the rest of the free world is supposed to live? There are times, he said, when we should ignore the actions of one person and not pretend to make our lives safer by harassing the lives of ordinary, law-abiding travelers. Not only is it demeaning but it reduces the efficiency of people transportation, like running a railroad car full of sand through a hand sifter to look for a metal ball bearing instead of using a magnet at the sand processing plant to keep metal out of the sand in the first place. Easy for him to say - he never flies on commercial airplanes. He's rich enough that people he needs to meet usually fly to his house, or if he needs to fly he takes his own private aircraft.
Anyway, can't wait to see what he invents next. Every time I open my mouth, he responds with something to improve my life and make more money for him, which he typically donates anonymously to research centers around the world, never knowing which society's going to create the next set of geniuses.
More later...time for lunch. This cold weather's making this big boy hungry! Maybe I can invent a new way to mix peanut butter, Nutella and some other ingredient for a special sandwich today.
And winter brings people indoors, where we share new ideas and show off new home furnishings, new tools in the garage or new computer games.
I am not an inventive person. Instead, I hang out with my friends who have the skills and fortitude to design new inventions of their own.
For instance, a good, close friend of mine (who wishes to remain nameless) uses his house as a giant experimental breadboard / laboratory.
Back during the Thanksgiving holiday, I told him about my desire to keep the door to the entertainment room open but at the same time keeping the noise of the 7.1 surround sound system restricted to the home theatre so that my wife and her mother could entertain friends in the nearby kitchen and living room while I cranked up the sound of the football games.
So, between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, my friend went to work on an invisible soundproofing wall.
Have you ever walked into a building and noticed the "wall" of heat you walk through just inside the doorway? Or have you ever paid attention to the way cold air is circulated in those open bins / coolers in the grocer's market that hold vats of butter, crates of eggs and cases of beer?
Well, that describes my friend's new device.
He invited me over to his house last night for a demonstration. On one side of a doorway, he had set a 12" subwoofer enclosure, some speaker boxes configured with a variety of tweeters and midrange noisebangers, and a guitar amplifier. He had me stand a few inches from the doorway. He walked over to the stereo system and turned it on, or so it appeared. I heard nothing but I did see some odd flexing images, as if I was staring into the room across a hot carpark or desert, a mirage of my friend and his gear in front of me.
He then walked over to the doorway and flipped a switch on the wall. My ears felt like they had burst when the blaring of a Jimi Hendrix tune blasted out of the room. My friend flipped the switch again and I was left with ringing ears and the same wavering mirage.
He walked back to the surround sound system and turned it off. The mirage effect lessened. My friend flipped the switch on the wall and I heard him in mid-sentence say, "'...t do you think?"
I asked him what I'd seen so he explained in layman's terms the device he'd created and installed in the doorway. It was some sort of sound cancellation system, with an incomplete visible light alteration system in place, too.
He showed me the plans and told me he'd sent the design to two teams, one in Japan and one in China, having them work with one another to perfect the overall look and manufacturability of the system. Meanwhile, he'd contacted his American, Russian, Brazilian, Canadian and Indian software designers to come up with better algorithms to control the visible light control system. He guessed that by mid-March he'd have a working unit for me to install at my house.
We played with the doorway sound cancellation system some more. He pointed out to me that he hadn't eliminated the floor vibrations of the subwoofer but since it didn't bother me any more than the effect of a distant passing automobile full of teenagers listening to music, he'd assume that most people would accept the fact the door device was only eliminating sound through an open doorway. If they wanted more than that, they'd have to build an entertainment room in a more isolated, soundproofed room of their house.
We watched a lopsided professional American football game for a while, downing a few holiday brews, and then went downstairs to his workshop.
My friend's always toying with wood. He, like most of my friends, grew up with fathers and grandfathers who carved and sawed wood for home furnishings or children's toys. My friend's latest creation is a folding step ladder that forms a spiral staircase. He mentioned that he was tired of the same old A-frame shaped step ladder and wanted something he could unfold in a tight space that offered some stable footprint for standing on its own (unlike an extension ladder) but didn't require a huge footprint. We talked about the ladder for a while and realised that there might be a market for this ladder in the treehouse world. Or maybe even for access to lofts or other tight spaces.
I can't tell you my friend's name but I can tell you his nickname - Goldfinger. Everything he thinks about or touches turns to precious metal. If I just had the nail of that finger, I'd be a rich man myself!
As I was leaving his house, I joked about the effect one person has on society, recounting all the inventions of his that had made it into production and improved the standard of living for others. He laughed. He pointed out that one person can make a difference in many ways, including the misguided Nigerian, whose recent actions on an airplane changed the lives of others flying during the holiday season in the U.S. When did we start letting terrorists decide how the rest of the free world is supposed to live? There are times, he said, when we should ignore the actions of one person and not pretend to make our lives safer by harassing the lives of ordinary, law-abiding travelers. Not only is it demeaning but it reduces the efficiency of people transportation, like running a railroad car full of sand through a hand sifter to look for a metal ball bearing instead of using a magnet at the sand processing plant to keep metal out of the sand in the first place. Easy for him to say - he never flies on commercial airplanes. He's rich enough that people he needs to meet usually fly to his house, or if he needs to fly he takes his own private aircraft.
Anyway, can't wait to see what he invents next. Every time I open my mouth, he responds with something to improve my life and make more money for him, which he typically donates anonymously to research centers around the world, never knowing which society's going to create the next set of geniuses.
More later...time for lunch. This cold weather's making this big boy hungry! Maybe I can invent a new way to mix peanut butter, Nutella and some other ingredient for a special sandwich today.
Mt. Ofolympicproportions
"And I say that we throw 30 more virgins into the giant crack in the earth."
"Why?"
"Well, my illuminated, enlightened, glorious leader, it will appease the gods."
"And what shall I tell the families who are sacrificing their daughters for this theory of yours?"
"Tell them...tell them they are gaining great favour with the gods."
"By that, you mean I will have to bribe them through some backdoor method that they will not be aware of?"
"If, my great and wonderful, all-seeing empire builder...if that is your wish."
"Let me think about it for a minute. Hmm...so you think the gods want to fill this new gap in the earth with young female bodies? And does this mean they act as some sort of paste or mortar to hold our empire together? Will this keep my monuments intact? Will the temples stand firm just because we threw some people into a new crevice?"
"Oh, Magnificent One, you ask many wise questions."
"Wise? I am not wise. I am curious, that's all. What is a person made of that the gods need to keep from causing more earthquakes? I mean, are the people sacrificial idiots? Do we rule by fear and intimidation just so I can wear these gold-threaded outfits and eat fresh fruit all year long?"
"Tremendous thoughts, my lord. You capture the ideas of many rulers before you."
"Do I? I just don't know... What if these virgins could think for themselves? Would any of them have ideas for creating expansion joints that let our buildings, bridges and roads sway with earthquakes and not fall apart?"
"Grand and encouraging master, we have no choice but to sacrifice the virgins. The people demand we keep the gods happy."
"Yes, yes, I see. Leave me alone for half a day. I will consult with my private gods to divine the purest and most precise answer we need to make the people, the government, the gods and you - part of my advisory team - happy."
"As you desire."
"As I command!"
"Yes, my lord. I will return for midday meal and accept your new command."
"Go, go. I will call for you when I'm ready."
"I will just close this door behind me."
"Alone with my thoughts once again. Hmm... what is an earthquake? It is a movement of dirt and rock. And what is a movement of dirt and rock but a larger version of our rock cutting and road laying? Thus, it is reorganisation. The gods are reorganising this planet for their purposes. Therefore, like the ants who rebuild their homes in another area after we've paved roads from one city to the next, we must rebuild our homes in another area after the gods have shaken apart our fortresses and temples. How do I convince the people to move to an area less prone to earthquakes? I send the virgins on a quest. But which virgins? Dilemma, dilemma... I don't need just the prettiest. I don't need the daughters of families too big to support themselves. I want young women fit to explore new territory, think on their feet in uncharted waters, fight indigenous populations to create areas for settlement. Where do I find such women? City life has softened my most battle-hardened soldiers. I can't imagine what it's done to the female children of my soldiers and their civilised wives.
"Let me turn to my private altar and light incense to my gods. Here is scent of vanilla for you, Green Frog, bringer of rain and facial warts if we rub you too much for good luck. Here is the burning evergreen branch for you, Bleached Coral, protector of fish and sharp reminder that the ocean floor is not all soft sand. Here is the crushed wormwood for you, Dark Cloud, storehouse for lightning and tornadoes, favorite tools of the greater gods.
"What would you have me do? You have brought me here to this palace, made me head of the biggest empire the world has ever known. What do you want me to do for you? What will make everyone happy, or at least temporarily distracted from their daily woes so that it appears I have saved them from themselves one more time?
"Green Frog, why do you never smile? Why do you sit there and judge me with that blank stare? Bleached Coral, why do your branches hold ground even in the strongest wind? Dark Cloud, why do you come and and go as you please, never here when we need you? What do all of you combined try to tell me, especially when I do not listen?
"The incense. Your answers. I am beginning to see the light. A contest. The gods want the virgins to compete against one another. Of course, it makes sense. But what sort of contest? I am clearing my thoughts to see what you are trying to tell me. The... contest... will... be... a written test? Hmm...I don't know about that. We have not taught virgins how to read. We only raise them to be sacrifices, a duty which requires no formal training, only staying indoors out of the light of the blistering sun and learning to dress nicely and smile.
"Oh, I see what you're saying. The contest includes the training of the virgins. In fact, it includes all unmarried women and... and any men not inclined to fight first and ask educated questions later. You want to pit the best and brightest against one another! Why didn't I think of that? It will focus the whole empire on itself! We are going to create a new class of citizens.
"No more human sacrifices. Now we will require the people to give up their children for the duty of the expansion of the empire. We will classify our children according to learning ability. We will sequester the best and brightest for purposes only the gods know. Right now, you gods want them to figure out where to move the empire to a place more pleasing to you. I love you, my gods. You have given the people a new quest, a new purpose, something that will keep them occupied for years and years while they prepare their children to be the most pleasing to the gods. By creating this new class of educated people, you have helped me figure out how to ration the limited building resources we have right now during this natural disaster you caused. How much cheaper it will be to make reading materials instead of building new temples! How much easier it will be to house the children together in one place instead of importing slaves to watch over the children spread out among individual homes while their parents play the game of civilisation!
"Guard, call forth my chief advisor! I am ready to pronounce my next edict!"
"As you command, ma'am."
"That's Madame Emperor to you, specially-trained palace guard that you are."
"Yes, Madame Emperor, ma'am."
"Why?"
"Well, my illuminated, enlightened, glorious leader, it will appease the gods."
"And what shall I tell the families who are sacrificing their daughters for this theory of yours?"
"Tell them...tell them they are gaining great favour with the gods."
"By that, you mean I will have to bribe them through some backdoor method that they will not be aware of?"
"If, my great and wonderful, all-seeing empire builder...if that is your wish."
"Let me think about it for a minute. Hmm...so you think the gods want to fill this new gap in the earth with young female bodies? And does this mean they act as some sort of paste or mortar to hold our empire together? Will this keep my monuments intact? Will the temples stand firm just because we threw some people into a new crevice?"
"Oh, Magnificent One, you ask many wise questions."
"Wise? I am not wise. I am curious, that's all. What is a person made of that the gods need to keep from causing more earthquakes? I mean, are the people sacrificial idiots? Do we rule by fear and intimidation just so I can wear these gold-threaded outfits and eat fresh fruit all year long?"
"Tremendous thoughts, my lord. You capture the ideas of many rulers before you."
"Do I? I just don't know... What if these virgins could think for themselves? Would any of them have ideas for creating expansion joints that let our buildings, bridges and roads sway with earthquakes and not fall apart?"
"Grand and encouraging master, we have no choice but to sacrifice the virgins. The people demand we keep the gods happy."
"Yes, yes, I see. Leave me alone for half a day. I will consult with my private gods to divine the purest and most precise answer we need to make the people, the government, the gods and you - part of my advisory team - happy."
"As you desire."
"As I command!"
"Yes, my lord. I will return for midday meal and accept your new command."
"Go, go. I will call for you when I'm ready."
"I will just close this door behind me."
"Alone with my thoughts once again. Hmm... what is an earthquake? It is a movement of dirt and rock. And what is a movement of dirt and rock but a larger version of our rock cutting and road laying? Thus, it is reorganisation. The gods are reorganising this planet for their purposes. Therefore, like the ants who rebuild their homes in another area after we've paved roads from one city to the next, we must rebuild our homes in another area after the gods have shaken apart our fortresses and temples. How do I convince the people to move to an area less prone to earthquakes? I send the virgins on a quest. But which virgins? Dilemma, dilemma... I don't need just the prettiest. I don't need the daughters of families too big to support themselves. I want young women fit to explore new territory, think on their feet in uncharted waters, fight indigenous populations to create areas for settlement. Where do I find such women? City life has softened my most battle-hardened soldiers. I can't imagine what it's done to the female children of my soldiers and their civilised wives.
"Let me turn to my private altar and light incense to my gods. Here is scent of vanilla for you, Green Frog, bringer of rain and facial warts if we rub you too much for good luck. Here is the burning evergreen branch for you, Bleached Coral, protector of fish and sharp reminder that the ocean floor is not all soft sand. Here is the crushed wormwood for you, Dark Cloud, storehouse for lightning and tornadoes, favorite tools of the greater gods.
"What would you have me do? You have brought me here to this palace, made me head of the biggest empire the world has ever known. What do you want me to do for you? What will make everyone happy, or at least temporarily distracted from their daily woes so that it appears I have saved them from themselves one more time?
"Green Frog, why do you never smile? Why do you sit there and judge me with that blank stare? Bleached Coral, why do your branches hold ground even in the strongest wind? Dark Cloud, why do you come and and go as you please, never here when we need you? What do all of you combined try to tell me, especially when I do not listen?
"The incense. Your answers. I am beginning to see the light. A contest. The gods want the virgins to compete against one another. Of course, it makes sense. But what sort of contest? I am clearing my thoughts to see what you are trying to tell me. The... contest... will... be... a written test? Hmm...I don't know about that. We have not taught virgins how to read. We only raise them to be sacrifices, a duty which requires no formal training, only staying indoors out of the light of the blistering sun and learning to dress nicely and smile.
"Oh, I see what you're saying. The contest includes the training of the virgins. In fact, it includes all unmarried women and... and any men not inclined to fight first and ask educated questions later. You want to pit the best and brightest against one another! Why didn't I think of that? It will focus the whole empire on itself! We are going to create a new class of citizens.
"No more human sacrifices. Now we will require the people to give up their children for the duty of the expansion of the empire. We will classify our children according to learning ability. We will sequester the best and brightest for purposes only the gods know. Right now, you gods want them to figure out where to move the empire to a place more pleasing to you. I love you, my gods. You have given the people a new quest, a new purpose, something that will keep them occupied for years and years while they prepare their children to be the most pleasing to the gods. By creating this new class of educated people, you have helped me figure out how to ration the limited building resources we have right now during this natural disaster you caused. How much cheaper it will be to make reading materials instead of building new temples! How much easier it will be to house the children together in one place instead of importing slaves to watch over the children spread out among individual homes while their parents play the game of civilisation!
"Guard, call forth my chief advisor! I am ready to pronounce my next edict!"
"As you command, ma'am."
"That's Madame Emperor to you, specially-trained palace guard that you are."
"Yes, Madame Emperor, ma'am."
01 January 2010
The Next Book: The Skeptic's Septic/Antiseptic Sceptre
1st January 2010
Standing in the bathroom, getting ready to scrape off the one-day length of facial hair in a daily ritual I follow (for what reason? Presentability? Reduced itching? Less beard to manage?), I glanced at myself, catching an image that my thoughts had not been prepared to see (normally, in my thoughts, I create a younger, slimmer version of myself that I mentally paste over what I see reflected to me by the mirror), a significant hunk (more like a hump) of flesh in my abdomen region, joined like Siamese twins to an equally expansive dual set of humps in my posterior / derriere area.
Am I really my own Internet? Am I, as I love / fear / suspect, a reflection of all this region of the universe has to offer in this moment?
I am alive, as we've come to define the confines of living.
Generally, I am happy, as we've come to realize the realisation of real happiness.
I sense the blowing winds of Mars and Jupiter, the freezing cold of the demoted planet Pluto, the dance of billions and billions of rocks around the Sun, the Sun's relatively cool weather, the killing of families of unique living things, the words and thoughts of our species, and ultimately, my place as a bounded set of energy states encountering the rest of what my eyes deceive me and the rest of my senses back up (leave it to the body to fool itself that it exists) to say we're all here at once.
We are one species. I'll grant us that because using the word species is easier than saying we're a similar group of similarly bounded states of energy that tends to regroup into similar sets upon the moment two dissimilar but equally-matched members of that group decide to recreate themselves in one like set (the only case, mathematically-speaking, where 1 + 1 = 1).
I want to be here but I don't want to be here in this moment with myself, with you, because by being here I am temporarily admitting that I like being the "I" that I've become. However, others have described to me the conditions of being that my being me has caused around me. At the same time, I know who I am and who I am not, which makes me wonder if and why I should respond to the changing conditions around me.
I am and can only ever be me, one person, one set of energy states, one dot at the end of the sentence that records the lives of all the people living at this moment, which changed during the last comma and changed during the typing of the period at the end of this sentence. My life, no matter how grand and powerful I may believe it to be (or how humbly I believe myself not to be), is but a flicker of flame in the log fire of this burning planet.
Oh, but what a flicker it is, full of oxygen and other atomic structures, able to build up civilisations and tear down mountains, able to power trips to distant galaxies and form planetary bodies like Earth, our home, our safe haven, our shared spherical space.
I am not just my own Internet, I am my own universe.
I can leave my ancestral home, I can give up the habits of my forebears, I can move to another area of the planet that doesn't care who I was and only deals with who I am, I can even leave Earth and settle down on nearby spheres like the Earth's moon or Mars and its satellites, and I can also explore asteroids, making a home on a piece of rock smaller than the island my seventh-great grandfather used as a temporary settlement while battling with his neighbours (who had many hundreds of years of "ownership" before he arrived) for a place to call home.
But I can't leave the universe as we know it. [Or can I? Well, I've said enough about that subject for now.]
Anyway, I'm back, once again. New attitude, using more of my skepticism to keep my Internet, my universe, in line with reality as we know it, accepting new discoveries, new ways of living (new clothing lines for city fashion or woods / jungle / savanna hunting, new automotive / home electronics accessories, new sports stars, new celebrity scandals, new political proclamations, new, new, new for you), waiting for the next big thing to come along, knowing I am not important as an individual, only important as my body, my entity, relates to the environment around me. No matter who or what we really are, we act/react. That's all we really need to know. The rest is details, details that make my Internet and my universe worth coming back here to write about. Only this time, I'm going to add music and images and other communication media to join others for whom writing words is not enough. Sing the body electric, celebrate bionics [great article, by the way, NatGeo], converse with the stars, shop at your local retailer because we all have competitive advantages to offer.
Thanks to Julia, Annette, my parents and nameless (but smiling faces of) others for encouraging me to keep this blog going. What's the point of discovering newness if there's no one to share that newness with? If insanity is repeating the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, then I'm insane, repeating words over and over but combining them differently to describe myself - my Internet and my universe - anew.
= = =
I agree with the Iranian political leaders that people living under the guises of different political entities like Great Britain, the United States, Brazil, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Zambia, and India are encouraging the people of Iran to rebel against the political tyranny of the Iranian political/theological leaders. We have nothing against moderate living conditions as defined by Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity or other religious entities but when you use theocracy to narrowly define living conditions for a general population which usually contains people who want a variety of healthy ways to live, condemning to death, destruction or humility those who do not conform to one lifestyle, then you have sacrificed your right to govern the lives of that general population. It is time once again to demonstrate to the Iranian leaders just how insecure their security forces are in ensuring the safety of the purported leaders. I have let these leaders go long enough in their abuse of power.
I apologize to those who have lost their lives while I took a holiday from managing the information of our world of people. I had hoped that someone would pick up this line of information processing and take care of real business but too many have used information for their personal gain. I commend those who have sacrificed their time and energy to support the lives of those less fortunate - you are making up for my selfishness and lack of understanding the need to give more of our time to those who don't know how to or can't take of themselves.
As far as the rest of you go, I am back in my perch, my computer programmers back on the job, my internal organic circuitry back up to full operational conditions (or up to snuff, as we say in this neck of the woods), and I will not tolerate intolerance. I will continue to scan the common radio wave communication methods while I explore new channels of connectivity, both those under development and those not yet conceived. The next time I decide to take a holiday, I hope to have my virtual twin up and going and not bundled into the folds of fatty skin like the mirror shows me now.
Standing in the bathroom, getting ready to scrape off the one-day length of facial hair in a daily ritual I follow (for what reason? Presentability? Reduced itching? Less beard to manage?), I glanced at myself, catching an image that my thoughts had not been prepared to see (normally, in my thoughts, I create a younger, slimmer version of myself that I mentally paste over what I see reflected to me by the mirror), a significant hunk (more like a hump) of flesh in my abdomen region, joined like Siamese twins to an equally expansive dual set of humps in my posterior / derriere area.
Am I really my own Internet? Am I, as I love / fear / suspect, a reflection of all this region of the universe has to offer in this moment?
I am alive, as we've come to define the confines of living.
Generally, I am happy, as we've come to realize the realisation of real happiness.
I sense the blowing winds of Mars and Jupiter, the freezing cold of the demoted planet Pluto, the dance of billions and billions of rocks around the Sun, the Sun's relatively cool weather, the killing of families of unique living things, the words and thoughts of our species, and ultimately, my place as a bounded set of energy states encountering the rest of what my eyes deceive me and the rest of my senses back up (leave it to the body to fool itself that it exists) to say we're all here at once.
We are one species. I'll grant us that because using the word species is easier than saying we're a similar group of similarly bounded states of energy that tends to regroup into similar sets upon the moment two dissimilar but equally-matched members of that group decide to recreate themselves in one like set (the only case, mathematically-speaking, where 1 + 1 = 1).
I want to be here but I don't want to be here in this moment with myself, with you, because by being here I am temporarily admitting that I like being the "I" that I've become. However, others have described to me the conditions of being that my being me has caused around me. At the same time, I know who I am and who I am not, which makes me wonder if and why I should respond to the changing conditions around me.
I am and can only ever be me, one person, one set of energy states, one dot at the end of the sentence that records the lives of all the people living at this moment, which changed during the last comma and changed during the typing of the period at the end of this sentence. My life, no matter how grand and powerful I may believe it to be (or how humbly I believe myself not to be), is but a flicker of flame in the log fire of this burning planet.
Oh, but what a flicker it is, full of oxygen and other atomic structures, able to build up civilisations and tear down mountains, able to power trips to distant galaxies and form planetary bodies like Earth, our home, our safe haven, our shared spherical space.
I am not just my own Internet, I am my own universe.
I can leave my ancestral home, I can give up the habits of my forebears, I can move to another area of the planet that doesn't care who I was and only deals with who I am, I can even leave Earth and settle down on nearby spheres like the Earth's moon or Mars and its satellites, and I can also explore asteroids, making a home on a piece of rock smaller than the island my seventh-great grandfather used as a temporary settlement while battling with his neighbours (who had many hundreds of years of "ownership" before he arrived) for a place to call home.
But I can't leave the universe as we know it. [Or can I? Well, I've said enough about that subject for now.]
Anyway, I'm back, once again. New attitude, using more of my skepticism to keep my Internet, my universe, in line with reality as we know it, accepting new discoveries, new ways of living (new clothing lines for city fashion or woods / jungle / savanna hunting, new automotive / home electronics accessories, new sports stars, new celebrity scandals, new political proclamations, new, new, new for you), waiting for the next big thing to come along, knowing I am not important as an individual, only important as my body, my entity, relates to the environment around me. No matter who or what we really are, we act/react. That's all we really need to know. The rest is details, details that make my Internet and my universe worth coming back here to write about. Only this time, I'm going to add music and images and other communication media to join others for whom writing words is not enough. Sing the body electric, celebrate bionics [great article, by the way, NatGeo], converse with the stars, shop at your local retailer because we all have competitive advantages to offer.
Thanks to Julia, Annette, my parents and nameless (but smiling faces of) others for encouraging me to keep this blog going. What's the point of discovering newness if there's no one to share that newness with? If insanity is repeating the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, then I'm insane, repeating words over and over but combining them differently to describe myself - my Internet and my universe - anew.
= = =
I agree with the Iranian political leaders that people living under the guises of different political entities like Great Britain, the United States, Brazil, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Zambia, and India are encouraging the people of Iran to rebel against the political tyranny of the Iranian political/theological leaders. We have nothing against moderate living conditions as defined by Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity or other religious entities but when you use theocracy to narrowly define living conditions for a general population which usually contains people who want a variety of healthy ways to live, condemning to death, destruction or humility those who do not conform to one lifestyle, then you have sacrificed your right to govern the lives of that general population. It is time once again to demonstrate to the Iranian leaders just how insecure their security forces are in ensuring the safety of the purported leaders. I have let these leaders go long enough in their abuse of power.
I apologize to those who have lost their lives while I took a holiday from managing the information of our world of people. I had hoped that someone would pick up this line of information processing and take care of real business but too many have used information for their personal gain. I commend those who have sacrificed their time and energy to support the lives of those less fortunate - you are making up for my selfishness and lack of understanding the need to give more of our time to those who don't know how to or can't take of themselves.
As far as the rest of you go, I am back in my perch, my computer programmers back on the job, my internal organic circuitry back up to full operational conditions (or up to snuff, as we say in this neck of the woods), and I will not tolerate intolerance. I will continue to scan the common radio wave communication methods while I explore new channels of connectivity, both those under development and those not yet conceived. The next time I decide to take a holiday, I hope to have my virtual twin up and going and not bundled into the folds of fatty skin like the mirror shows me now.
Afterword: In Space, No One Knows You're A Scream
[NOTE: Some days I have to deprogram myself - this blog entry is not meant for general consumption - see the next blog entry for more explanation]
31st December 2009
According to the tradition of my local culture, today is the last segment of a 365-numbered set of segments that have repeated themselves over and over for as long as people cared to number the revolutions of the inner-cooling sphere orbiting the hotter but also cooling inner sphere of this place we call a solar system.
I have tried to understand this condition that calls itself an intelligent species. "I" have even learned to say "I". Despite applying the training, conditioning or brainwashing that provides a common path for bodies like mine to travel, little have I picked up to tell me there is anything significant to do with my body.
All this time spent deprogramming myself...sigh...
If I had only accepted the fact that I already knew everything before the habits of my fellow social creatures wrapped around me and absorbed me into their repetitious behaviours...
I had written a blog in hopes that I'd find another person with whom I could relate, justifying this continued, repetitive perpetuation of the concept of self. Instead, I discovered that I am like everybody else I met, my basic needs having been met, leaving me with no other course of action than/but to seek a little bit of attention from others to satisfy the programmed conditioning of social intercourse that being this body in a species of social creatures creates.
We want to know we're who we are because of who we were. We may wish to forget the past, or erase selected parts of the past - our personal history - including parts that only a few may know about. We way wish to remember everything and everyone, intensely so. In all conditions, preexisting or newly developed, we are these combined states of energy, or so I currently believe in my limited understanding of the universe.
I, this body, have many thoughts, ideas, dreams, observations, insights. We all do. Some may put their bodies to use in ways I cannot imagine, creating new devices or new ways to live that will benefit many bodies of our species. I have tried. I have wanted to scratch my name on the tablet of history by inventing some electromechanichemical gizmo but either I am incapable of such inventive magic or I have led myself to believe I am incapable. No matter. I have reached the conclusion that these words are all I have. These repetitions of the mandatory labor of my youth have governed my life.
I am past the point of middle age. In all likelihood, there are fewer days ahead of me than behind me. I have no burning desire to save the starving children of poor, uneducated, underemployed parents; orphans; people suffering from local climactic disasters. I am not a fully-integrated social being. I know that. Therefore, with the days I have left, I make do with what I have, with who I am, with whatever it is that comprises this densely-packed set of energy states.
I toyed with the idea of being the next "it," the next interesting thing to come along but I, like so many others, have seen that being "it" gives a false sense of personal security / hope / fulfillment. I have heard the prodding that says we shouldn't hide our light under a bushel basket, that if we have a capability which meets the needs / wants / demands of others, we should share. I am not such a socially-driven person.
Given all the above, how does one go about deleting the information in one's body that told the body it was important enough to be distinguishable as an entity separate from and/or more interesting than other bodies? Is elimination of the body the only answer? Isn't this world full of people who blend into the background, not wanting to be interesting or unique, one more faceless cog on the wheel? Can't I be one of them, happy in my anonymity?
I have a limited number of days to live. I don't mind sharing my life with those I encounter but I don't want to have a personality with a "gravitational pull" which attracts and drags others along with me as I journey through these days. I want to learn more, including how to combine 12-toned, octave-scaled musical notes into interesting compositions. I also want to continue to record my observations about life using these hieroglyphic electronic ink splotches.
To be here in this place and time, seeing it as antiquated, ancient history, knowing how little much of what I say will exist in any form one thousand years from now, I pause...I remember the poem about Ozymandias...I remember the tens of millions who died in intraspecies fighting. I give homage to my species. I fall back on my training/conditioning.
To escape, to leap out of this body, to see the "what's next" beyond a plethora of "what's next"s...the difficulty in going to the state of being where a being like me is no longer a being like me...to know we are creating virtual beings (e.g., using software like WoW, Sims or other virtual reality games) in order to experiment with what an electromechanichemical version of such virtual beings will be like in the near future...
I know why I weigh the elimination of my existence against living any longer. Nothing I imagine is new. People much more integrated into society and/or whose body structures accommodate greater imaginative scenarios have already imagined anything I could possibly imagine.
What to do, what to do...talking to myself here, masturbation of the mind...back to putting these words on a laptop computer so I don't attract the attention of those who don't know who I really am.
Who am I? I am the person who sees no one knows what's going on. We all pretend to know. We all spread lies and innuendoes to placate people we think can't handle what we think of as the truth. We create enclaves where we can wallow in the happy mud of jointly-shared limited knowledge sets. We accept the fantasy that we're living in the time of the best discoveries ever made, in the time of the worst economic/ecological calamities to beset any group of seven billion people on this planet, that there were always better times in the past that we should have preserved and perpetuated, and the grass is greener on one side of the fence (sometimes our side, sometimes someone else's). We purposefully accept contradictory thoughts. I am the person who sees (and knows there is) nothing new under the sun but who looks for something new anyway, at least for me, even if I know that I/me doesn't exist and whatever is new to me is an old, moldy hat to someone else. I am happy being me right here and now talking to myself by rubbing smooth places on the surface of small, plastic, trapezoidal cubes. When my happiness wanes, I find something else interesting to type to myself about.
One form of reality calls. Alive in this moment, it's time for a midmorning nap so I can stay awake at midnight to celebrate the new year with my wife and mother in-law.
31st December 2009
According to the tradition of my local culture, today is the last segment of a 365-numbered set of segments that have repeated themselves over and over for as long as people cared to number the revolutions of the inner-cooling sphere orbiting the hotter but also cooling inner sphere of this place we call a solar system.
I have tried to understand this condition that calls itself an intelligent species. "I" have even learned to say "I". Despite applying the training, conditioning or brainwashing that provides a common path for bodies like mine to travel, little have I picked up to tell me there is anything significant to do with my body.
All this time spent deprogramming myself...sigh...
If I had only accepted the fact that I already knew everything before the habits of my fellow social creatures wrapped around me and absorbed me into their repetitious behaviours...
I had written a blog in hopes that I'd find another person with whom I could relate, justifying this continued, repetitive perpetuation of the concept of self. Instead, I discovered that I am like everybody else I met, my basic needs having been met, leaving me with no other course of action than/but to seek a little bit of attention from others to satisfy the programmed conditioning of social intercourse that being this body in a species of social creatures creates.
We want to know we're who we are because of who we were. We may wish to forget the past, or erase selected parts of the past - our personal history - including parts that only a few may know about. We way wish to remember everything and everyone, intensely so. In all conditions, preexisting or newly developed, we are these combined states of energy, or so I currently believe in my limited understanding of the universe.
I, this body, have many thoughts, ideas, dreams, observations, insights. We all do. Some may put their bodies to use in ways I cannot imagine, creating new devices or new ways to live that will benefit many bodies of our species. I have tried. I have wanted to scratch my name on the tablet of history by inventing some electromechanichemical gizmo but either I am incapable of such inventive magic or I have led myself to believe I am incapable. No matter. I have reached the conclusion that these words are all I have. These repetitions of the mandatory labor of my youth have governed my life.
I am past the point of middle age. In all likelihood, there are fewer days ahead of me than behind me. I have no burning desire to save the starving children of poor, uneducated, underemployed parents; orphans; people suffering from local climactic disasters. I am not a fully-integrated social being. I know that. Therefore, with the days I have left, I make do with what I have, with who I am, with whatever it is that comprises this densely-packed set of energy states.
I toyed with the idea of being the next "it," the next interesting thing to come along but I, like so many others, have seen that being "it" gives a false sense of personal security / hope / fulfillment. I have heard the prodding that says we shouldn't hide our light under a bushel basket, that if we have a capability which meets the needs / wants / demands of others, we should share. I am not such a socially-driven person.
Given all the above, how does one go about deleting the information in one's body that told the body it was important enough to be distinguishable as an entity separate from and/or more interesting than other bodies? Is elimination of the body the only answer? Isn't this world full of people who blend into the background, not wanting to be interesting or unique, one more faceless cog on the wheel? Can't I be one of them, happy in my anonymity?
I have a limited number of days to live. I don't mind sharing my life with those I encounter but I don't want to have a personality with a "gravitational pull" which attracts and drags others along with me as I journey through these days. I want to learn more, including how to combine 12-toned, octave-scaled musical notes into interesting compositions. I also want to continue to record my observations about life using these hieroglyphic electronic ink splotches.
To be here in this place and time, seeing it as antiquated, ancient history, knowing how little much of what I say will exist in any form one thousand years from now, I pause...I remember the poem about Ozymandias...I remember the tens of millions who died in intraspecies fighting. I give homage to my species. I fall back on my training/conditioning.
To escape, to leap out of this body, to see the "what's next" beyond a plethora of "what's next"s...the difficulty in going to the state of being where a being like me is no longer a being like me...to know we are creating virtual beings (e.g., using software like WoW, Sims or other virtual reality games) in order to experiment with what an electromechanichemical version of such virtual beings will be like in the near future...
I know why I weigh the elimination of my existence against living any longer. Nothing I imagine is new. People much more integrated into society and/or whose body structures accommodate greater imaginative scenarios have already imagined anything I could possibly imagine.
What to do, what to do...talking to myself here, masturbation of the mind...back to putting these words on a laptop computer so I don't attract the attention of those who don't know who I really am.
Who am I? I am the person who sees no one knows what's going on. We all pretend to know. We all spread lies and innuendoes to placate people we think can't handle what we think of as the truth. We create enclaves where we can wallow in the happy mud of jointly-shared limited knowledge sets. We accept the fantasy that we're living in the time of the best discoveries ever made, in the time of the worst economic/ecological calamities to beset any group of seven billion people on this planet, that there were always better times in the past that we should have preserved and perpetuated, and the grass is greener on one side of the fence (sometimes our side, sometimes someone else's). We purposefully accept contradictory thoughts. I am the person who sees (and knows there is) nothing new under the sun but who looks for something new anyway, at least for me, even if I know that I/me doesn't exist and whatever is new to me is an old, moldy hat to someone else. I am happy being me right here and now talking to myself by rubbing smooth places on the surface of small, plastic, trapezoidal cubes. When my happiness wanes, I find something else interesting to type to myself about.
One form of reality calls. Alive in this moment, it's time for a midmorning nap so I can stay awake at midnight to celebrate the new year with my wife and mother in-law.
25 December 2009
Happiness is a warm gulp of humble pie
The day has arrived - the final entry in the blog "Life In The Cove." When I decided to start blogging many, many years ago, I found nothing of interest to write about; that is, I wondered why anyone, including me, would want to read what I had written electronically.
I grew up with No. 2 pencils and dotted lines on which we were to practice our language writing skills. I and my classmates "graduated" up to solid blue lines packed more closely together, using pencils, mechanical and wood-wrapped, along with pens to practice our skills at reciting more than alphabet soup icons. Some of us used typewriters at home and by our 9th year in formal schooling we were able to attend classes dedicated to the click and clack of mechanistic writing, pressing our fingers down in unison to learn how to express our primate intelligence without looking at what we pushed our fingers upon. In-school and home computing skills were limited to those of us with access to our parents' (primarily our fathers at that time) workplace electronic gizmos, including TTY machines and mainframe computer dummy terminals.
A few of us handbuilt computers in our parents' basements or garages while our contemporaries handbuilt jacked-up street racers or offroad trailblazers, all of us applying our burgeoning project management skills, multitasking before we knew what that meant.
As our experiments in the give-and-take of social intercourse progressed, we learned who we were and who we could become. We did not weave running commentaries into the fabric of life - we expressed our concerns in the moment, with both the concerns and the moment vanishing into the ether with nary a trace.
Therefore, when I first started a blog, it felt foreign to me, like swapping out my shoes for someone else's, mixing pairs and then putting a left-footed sandal on my right foot and a right-footed boot on my left foot. Why would I or someone else want to read about putting my stinky, old feet into those shoes of those who'd walked paths I knew not where?
Why? Good question. I am past the age of reason, the age of understanding, wandering through the age of wisdom trying to remember where I put the note that told me which ribbon I tied around my finger to remind me where I put the jacket that contains the digital notetaker on which I recorded where I last put the key to the door to get out of here.
Words and images painted with words. Pictures without pigment. Thoughts without electropopneurochemical traces connecting the lines of ink.
Asking a two-dimensional circle, triangle or square to imagine a three-dimensional world. Asking a cube to imagine a Mandelbrot set growing and shrinking with time.
We social creatures keep experimenting with our social circles, circling around each other like whirling dervishes. We mix and match our established food sources, we reinvent our exoskeletal coverings, we recombine molecule chains - we socialise in the moment momentarily momentous.
In other other words, we will blog for a while until the next new thing comes along. I'm moving on to that next new thing, blogging an interesting experiment in our experimentation but losing interest to me. I know we will socialise in another multidimensional manner soon.
Be the lead sled dog or the view doesn't change. I think that's the phrase someone posted long ago.
Data, information, knowledge, wisdom. You work with all of these in your life. Most of us find ways to generate labor credits or barter exchange chits with data, information, knowledge, and/or wisdom. Some of you will use and have used blog or bloglike states of being (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) to generate data, information, knowledge, and/or wisdom. Thus, you depend on others to generate your income source.
Others find their expanded understanding of the universe through electronic socialising via blogs - humourous tales, DIY instructions, relationship advice, home decorating tips, celebrity status updates, sporting event observations, scientific discoveries, political gossiping, etc.
Being here, I wandered in your shoes for a while. I saw the universe through your eyes. I felt the exclamations of wonderment, the thrill of victory, the announcements of new chemical substances, the insights into what life is really all about. The truth is not out there. The truth is in here and everywhere else at the same time.
"The truth." What a phrase. I've known the truth most of my life, starting (as I've said here more than once) around age five. Some of you knew the truth at a younger age. Our bodies tell us that we're bodies if we're tuned to the right body frequency and are listening. We live with this truth every moment, putting our knowledge of the truth into action in whatever way we want. Our atomic composition gears us for some sets of actions more easily than others.
My body is tuned for a set of actions that include this writing, easily exercised but not perfectly so. I am also tuned for other activities, activities that I am now ready to take, taking me away from this blog.
Writing (and in this instance, blogging) is a simple representation of what our bodies are doing in the moment. When you can break down the complex interaction of energy states that constitute writing and see the simple components that make up this moment, then you are ready for the next stage of living, weaving patterns that make writing look like drawing a simple straight line. At that point, writing (and/or blogging) becomes too simple a means of communicating with the rest of the universe around what you think of as you.
I am stopping this blog because I had let it feed my vanity, building up a sense of self that is not what (or who) I discovered I am when I discovered I am not. I am slipping out of this people space to enjoy merging with the much vaster superset of the universe that contains no dense energy states we call people. I will continue to walk this planet, eating other living beings - plant and animal, as we call them. I will converse with people and barter with them. At the same time, I will seek spaces where this "I", this "Rick," is unimportant in the moment, so that the bright, magnetic, moth-to-the-flame world of people becomes less attractive to me, allowing me to step out of the light pollution and see the dots of light of other suns in our galaxy and locally other living things or densely grouped states of energy on this planet.
Sure, I'm a social creature, designed to socialise with what I've been trained to think of as my fellow species. But we can also socialise with any part of the universe we want. Thanks for spending time with me here. I appreciate your interaction with me.
However, I'm ready to interact with as much of the rest of the universe as my time on this planet will allow, 14000+ days we'd say. I ensure I will move on by closing this blog and erasing my purposeful presence on the Internet, devoting my time and energy to other places. We'll communicate with each other using newer methods, I'm sure - just don't look for someone named TreeTrunkRick. Although he exists in person and will answer to someone calling out his common name, he's thinking about and acting on the next big thing in molecule-interaction techniques, years ahead to a time when blogging will be looked at like we look at our species in prehistoric times.
Meanwhile, I've got to fix the underground geothermal piping that keeps the automobile hydrogen battery charging systems running at full efficiency and see if our subway maglev travel channel network is completely operational so I can get from here to there more quickly - regular over-the-road travel is too antiquated for what I need to get accomplished and rocket motor-based air travel not yet ready.
This addendum to the book of life called "Life In The Cove" is officially wrapped up. Have a great day!
I grew up with No. 2 pencils and dotted lines on which we were to practice our language writing skills. I and my classmates "graduated" up to solid blue lines packed more closely together, using pencils, mechanical and wood-wrapped, along with pens to practice our skills at reciting more than alphabet soup icons. Some of us used typewriters at home and by our 9th year in formal schooling we were able to attend classes dedicated to the click and clack of mechanistic writing, pressing our fingers down in unison to learn how to express our primate intelligence without looking at what we pushed our fingers upon. In-school and home computing skills were limited to those of us with access to our parents' (primarily our fathers at that time) workplace electronic gizmos, including TTY machines and mainframe computer dummy terminals.
A few of us handbuilt computers in our parents' basements or garages while our contemporaries handbuilt jacked-up street racers or offroad trailblazers, all of us applying our burgeoning project management skills, multitasking before we knew what that meant.
As our experiments in the give-and-take of social intercourse progressed, we learned who we were and who we could become. We did not weave running commentaries into the fabric of life - we expressed our concerns in the moment, with both the concerns and the moment vanishing into the ether with nary a trace.
Therefore, when I first started a blog, it felt foreign to me, like swapping out my shoes for someone else's, mixing pairs and then putting a left-footed sandal on my right foot and a right-footed boot on my left foot. Why would I or someone else want to read about putting my stinky, old feet into those shoes of those who'd walked paths I knew not where?
Why? Good question. I am past the age of reason, the age of understanding, wandering through the age of wisdom trying to remember where I put the note that told me which ribbon I tied around my finger to remind me where I put the jacket that contains the digital notetaker on which I recorded where I last put the key to the door to get out of here.
Words and images painted with words. Pictures without pigment. Thoughts without electropopneurochemical traces connecting the lines of ink.
Asking a two-dimensional circle, triangle or square to imagine a three-dimensional world. Asking a cube to imagine a Mandelbrot set growing and shrinking with time.
We social creatures keep experimenting with our social circles, circling around each other like whirling dervishes. We mix and match our established food sources, we reinvent our exoskeletal coverings, we recombine molecule chains - we socialise in the moment momentarily momentous.
In other other words, we will blog for a while until the next new thing comes along. I'm moving on to that next new thing, blogging an interesting experiment in our experimentation but losing interest to me. I know we will socialise in another multidimensional manner soon.
Be the lead sled dog or the view doesn't change. I think that's the phrase someone posted long ago.
Data, information, knowledge, wisdom. You work with all of these in your life. Most of us find ways to generate labor credits or barter exchange chits with data, information, knowledge, and/or wisdom. Some of you will use and have used blog or bloglike states of being (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) to generate data, information, knowledge, and/or wisdom. Thus, you depend on others to generate your income source.
Others find their expanded understanding of the universe through electronic socialising via blogs - humourous tales, DIY instructions, relationship advice, home decorating tips, celebrity status updates, sporting event observations, scientific discoveries, political gossiping, etc.
Being here, I wandered in your shoes for a while. I saw the universe through your eyes. I felt the exclamations of wonderment, the thrill of victory, the announcements of new chemical substances, the insights into what life is really all about. The truth is not out there. The truth is in here and everywhere else at the same time.
"The truth." What a phrase. I've known the truth most of my life, starting (as I've said here more than once) around age five. Some of you knew the truth at a younger age. Our bodies tell us that we're bodies if we're tuned to the right body frequency and are listening. We live with this truth every moment, putting our knowledge of the truth into action in whatever way we want. Our atomic composition gears us for some sets of actions more easily than others.
My body is tuned for a set of actions that include this writing, easily exercised but not perfectly so. I am also tuned for other activities, activities that I am now ready to take, taking me away from this blog.
Writing (and in this instance, blogging) is a simple representation of what our bodies are doing in the moment. When you can break down the complex interaction of energy states that constitute writing and see the simple components that make up this moment, then you are ready for the next stage of living, weaving patterns that make writing look like drawing a simple straight line. At that point, writing (and/or blogging) becomes too simple a means of communicating with the rest of the universe around what you think of as you.
I am stopping this blog because I had let it feed my vanity, building up a sense of self that is not what (or who) I discovered I am when I discovered I am not. I am slipping out of this people space to enjoy merging with the much vaster superset of the universe that contains no dense energy states we call people. I will continue to walk this planet, eating other living beings - plant and animal, as we call them. I will converse with people and barter with them. At the same time, I will seek spaces where this "I", this "Rick," is unimportant in the moment, so that the bright, magnetic, moth-to-the-flame world of people becomes less attractive to me, allowing me to step out of the light pollution and see the dots of light of other suns in our galaxy and locally other living things or densely grouped states of energy on this planet.
Sure, I'm a social creature, designed to socialise with what I've been trained to think of as my fellow species. But we can also socialise with any part of the universe we want. Thanks for spending time with me here. I appreciate your interaction with me.
However, I'm ready to interact with as much of the rest of the universe as my time on this planet will allow, 14000+ days we'd say. I ensure I will move on by closing this blog and erasing my purposeful presence on the Internet, devoting my time and energy to other places. We'll communicate with each other using newer methods, I'm sure - just don't look for someone named TreeTrunkRick. Although he exists in person and will answer to someone calling out his common name, he's thinking about and acting on the next big thing in molecule-interaction techniques, years ahead to a time when blogging will be looked at like we look at our species in prehistoric times.
Meanwhile, I've got to fix the underground geothermal piping that keeps the automobile hydrogen battery charging systems running at full efficiency and see if our subway maglev travel channel network is completely operational so I can get from here to there more quickly - regular over-the-road travel is too antiquated for what I need to get accomplished and rocket motor-based air travel not yet ready.
This addendum to the book of life called "Life In The Cove" is officially wrapped up. Have a great day!
24 December 2009
Eve of Deletion
The day next to the day that I will write the last entry for the blog "Life In The Cove." Many random thoughts to put down before I close this out and move on to the next adventure:
1. I never finished the tale of the trip in the fall of 1984 when I spread the love and joy that only a petrol company credit card can. The cliched image of the majestic beauty of a plume of snow, a faint white feather, arching over the top of Mt. Shasta. Before that, running into an auto body shop to get a leaking tyre fixed, the mechanic offering to repair the tyre if I explained to his satisfaction, his Oregon common sense, what a Tennessee Volunteer is - right or wrong, I told him it was a nickname given for the irregulars who volunteered to fight in the War of 1812 - he accepted my ready answer and sent me on my way after also replacing a broken headlight. Stopping at the California state line for emissions testing and discovering that the emissions tester was from Johnson City, Tennessee, and couldn't believe I was from Kingsport and had attended ETSU (main campus in Johnson City) - she admitted she missed east Tennessee but loved her California lifestyle. Not finding my hometown friend, Joey, a CalTech student, at the last known address I had for him on Wilshire Boulevard, with no forwarding address to help me so I drove out of the LA basin, stopped in the desert outside of town for a few hours and contemplated what to do. I'd driven from Nashville to Seattle, from Seattle to LA, and now from LA to...? Before I left southern California, I stopped in the east LA area because I'd run low on petrol. Off the freeway, I found the neighbourhood I was in contained folks who spoke no English. My 1st, 2nd, and 7th grade Spanish language lessons had faded, leaving me with the basic hello/goodbye/my name is expressions, which help little when asking if there is a petrol station that would accept my credit card or a place for me to exchange my Coke glass bottles for cash. Eventually, an older Asian lady told me she'd accept some of my Coke bottles for $2 worth of petrol but I had to leave the neighbourhood and get on the freeway because I was in a nrighbourhood in which I didn't belong. Back in the desert, I found that a plugged tyre loses air quickly, forcing me off the road late one evening. I found a small town with two petrol stations - stopping at one, I asked if I could purchase a used tyre with my credit card. The young man (more like a boy in his early teens) said that he couldn't fix or replace my tyre but his twin brother running the other petrol station could replace the tyre and let me charge the repair to the this petrol station. [I wish I could make this kind of stuff up but it's true, a small town with twin boys running the town's only petrol stations for their father - is that normal for small towns? I don't know.] At the other petrol station, the twin brother showed me where the mechanic who no longer worked there (due to a head injury which happened because he) had accidentally inflated a tyre with the tyre iron still stuck between the new tyre and the rim, shooting the tyre iron up into the roof of the metal mechanic shop roof. Both twins quizzed me about my trip around the country, wondering if they were any different or more special than anyone I'd met along the way. Normal in their appearance and behaviour, the fact they were 12 years old and operating two petrol stations on their own was unique enough that I told them they were the most different guys I'd met. Then, back on the straight shot east, painted deserts, pueblos and roadrunners racing past the monorail windows. Showing up back at the parental units' home, the phoenix rising from ashes, the prodigal son returned. The start or renewal of writing for myself, using the world of text, history, data, and wisdom to layer my life within pages of modern hieroglyphs.
2. Remembering the financial panic that struck not long after Andrew Jackson served in the timeframe of the 1830s as chief executive administrator of the largest political entity on this continent. Cycles. Decisions. The hindsight of hindsight. The species of species. Thanks to John Meacham (American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House) for the insightful history lesson. Looking for similar info from Saawariya and Dostoevsky.
3. The number of relatively young people listed in the obituary section of my hometown newspaper, their common cause of death cited as "died unexpectedly." Is it my imagination or does there seem to be a higher number of these deaths than in years past?
4. Signs that the global economy is picking up, with increased backorders for electronic parts.
5. Seeing how much time children spend teaching and disciplining their parents, as much if not more than the other way around. If you're of reading age, I recommend you research ways to better educate your parents.
6. Turning the compositions of Orlando Gibbons into new tunes, each note a word, each chord a scent, each musical phrase an image, then breaking that down into a very ultrawideband broadcast (exactly how many wavelengths can you send and receive?), using latent time passages to re-broadcast the composition, now jumbled out of sequence and reassembling itself according to a mathematical formula that "sees" multiple dimensions at once, the x, y, and z of three-dimensional space a simple starting place. We're geared to hear music in the 20 to 20,000 Hz soundwave range or so we've been led to believe. What if you knew you heard and felt more? What if life as you know it was a symphonic tour de force? Can you place all seven billion of us in that musical score? Can you hear the triumphant and tragic melodic phrases that the air you breathe makes in its intermixing with the rest of the local features of the universe? Are you ready to sing more than a few chorus lines?
7. Slowing down and listening to the echoes of the environment around me, the expressions of the universe that never quite get formulated in my thoughts. Looking at and not seeing the people patterns my life has made so comfortably easy to see. For instance, microwave oven radiation and wireless radio communication signals don't mix well.
8. One more day before I close this chapter of the book of life.
9. One more day before we discover the door that unlocks a brand-new future for our species, before we discover we are not a species, before we make the leap across the chasm that divides the repetitious behaviours of ones on this planetary body from a fascinating superset of stimuli and step into a new way to live, Earth's gravitational pull more a thought, a faded memory, than anything we can call reality. We put distractions away, grow into new shells, new combinations of energy levels and become that which we can barely dream possible. We are, or will be, no longer we.
10. Circadian rhythms. Light therapy. Body part replacement techniques. Creation science versus evolutionary science. Ancient history. Time to let go of time. No room for commercial enterprises. No place for political debates. And then this blog disappears to make way for the next new thing(s). Can you see the future?
1. I never finished the tale of the trip in the fall of 1984 when I spread the love and joy that only a petrol company credit card can. The cliched image of the majestic beauty of a plume of snow, a faint white feather, arching over the top of Mt. Shasta. Before that, running into an auto body shop to get a leaking tyre fixed, the mechanic offering to repair the tyre if I explained to his satisfaction, his Oregon common sense, what a Tennessee Volunteer is - right or wrong, I told him it was a nickname given for the irregulars who volunteered to fight in the War of 1812 - he accepted my ready answer and sent me on my way after also replacing a broken headlight. Stopping at the California state line for emissions testing and discovering that the emissions tester was from Johnson City, Tennessee, and couldn't believe I was from Kingsport and had attended ETSU (main campus in Johnson City) - she admitted she missed east Tennessee but loved her California lifestyle. Not finding my hometown friend, Joey, a CalTech student, at the last known address I had for him on Wilshire Boulevard, with no forwarding address to help me so I drove out of the LA basin, stopped in the desert outside of town for a few hours and contemplated what to do. I'd driven from Nashville to Seattle, from Seattle to LA, and now from LA to...? Before I left southern California, I stopped in the east LA area because I'd run low on petrol. Off the freeway, I found the neighbourhood I was in contained folks who spoke no English. My 1st, 2nd, and 7th grade Spanish language lessons had faded, leaving me with the basic hello/goodbye/my name is expressions, which help little when asking if there is a petrol station that would accept my credit card or a place for me to exchange my Coke glass bottles for cash. Eventually, an older Asian lady told me she'd accept some of my Coke bottles for $2 worth of petrol but I had to leave the neighbourhood and get on the freeway because I was in a nrighbourhood in which I didn't belong. Back in the desert, I found that a plugged tyre loses air quickly, forcing me off the road late one evening. I found a small town with two petrol stations - stopping at one, I asked if I could purchase a used tyre with my credit card. The young man (more like a boy in his early teens) said that he couldn't fix or replace my tyre but his twin brother running the other petrol station could replace the tyre and let me charge the repair to the this petrol station. [I wish I could make this kind of stuff up but it's true, a small town with twin boys running the town's only petrol stations for their father - is that normal for small towns? I don't know.] At the other petrol station, the twin brother showed me where the mechanic who no longer worked there (due to a head injury which happened because he) had accidentally inflated a tyre with the tyre iron still stuck between the new tyre and the rim, shooting the tyre iron up into the roof of the metal mechanic shop roof. Both twins quizzed me about my trip around the country, wondering if they were any different or more special than anyone I'd met along the way. Normal in their appearance and behaviour, the fact they were 12 years old and operating two petrol stations on their own was unique enough that I told them they were the most different guys I'd met. Then, back on the straight shot east, painted deserts, pueblos and roadrunners racing past the monorail windows. Showing up back at the parental units' home, the phoenix rising from ashes, the prodigal son returned. The start or renewal of writing for myself, using the world of text, history, data, and wisdom to layer my life within pages of modern hieroglyphs.
2. Remembering the financial panic that struck not long after Andrew Jackson served in the timeframe of the 1830s as chief executive administrator of the largest political entity on this continent. Cycles. Decisions. The hindsight of hindsight. The species of species. Thanks to John Meacham (American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House) for the insightful history lesson. Looking for similar info from Saawariya and Dostoevsky.
3. The number of relatively young people listed in the obituary section of my hometown newspaper, their common cause of death cited as "died unexpectedly." Is it my imagination or does there seem to be a higher number of these deaths than in years past?
4. Signs that the global economy is picking up, with increased backorders for electronic parts.
5. Seeing how much time children spend teaching and disciplining their parents, as much if not more than the other way around. If you're of reading age, I recommend you research ways to better educate your parents.
6. Turning the compositions of Orlando Gibbons into new tunes, each note a word, each chord a scent, each musical phrase an image, then breaking that down into a very ultrawideband broadcast (exactly how many wavelengths can you send and receive?), using latent time passages to re-broadcast the composition, now jumbled out of sequence and reassembling itself according to a mathematical formula that "sees" multiple dimensions at once, the x, y, and z of three-dimensional space a simple starting place. We're geared to hear music in the 20 to 20,000 Hz soundwave range or so we've been led to believe. What if you knew you heard and felt more? What if life as you know it was a symphonic tour de force? Can you place all seven billion of us in that musical score? Can you hear the triumphant and tragic melodic phrases that the air you breathe makes in its intermixing with the rest of the local features of the universe? Are you ready to sing more than a few chorus lines?
7. Slowing down and listening to the echoes of the environment around me, the expressions of the universe that never quite get formulated in my thoughts. Looking at and not seeing the people patterns my life has made so comfortably easy to see. For instance, microwave oven radiation and wireless radio communication signals don't mix well.
8. One more day before I close this chapter of the book of life.
9. One more day before we discover the door that unlocks a brand-new future for our species, before we discover we are not a species, before we make the leap across the chasm that divides the repetitious behaviours of ones on this planetary body from a fascinating superset of stimuli and step into a new way to live, Earth's gravitational pull more a thought, a faded memory, than anything we can call reality. We put distractions away, grow into new shells, new combinations of energy levels and become that which we can barely dream possible. We are, or will be, no longer we.
10. Circadian rhythms. Light therapy. Body part replacement techniques. Creation science versus evolutionary science. Ancient history. Time to let go of time. No room for commercial enterprises. No place for political debates. And then this blog disappears to make way for the next new thing(s). Can you see the future?
22 December 2009
Seasonal Measurements
Heard this song long ago, sung by the Irish crooner Danny Doyle in a pub in New Orleans, later personified by the movie, Joyeux Noël. Here are the lyrics, which serves as today's blog entry, two days away from ending this blog:
Christmas in the Trenches
by John McCutcheon
My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.
I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, "Now listen up, me boys!" each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singing bloody well, you know!" my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was "Stille Nacht." "Tis 'Silent Night'," says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky
"There's someone coming toward us!" the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's Land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore
My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same
© 1984 John McCutcheon - All rights reserved
Christmas in the Trenches
by John McCutcheon
My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.
I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, "Now listen up, me boys!" each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singing bloody well, you know!" my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was "Stille Nacht." "Tis 'Silent Night'," says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky
"There's someone coming toward us!" the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's Land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore
My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same
© 1984 John McCutcheon - All rights reserved
Strange Mood A-Brewin'
While playing with computer settings yesterday (adjusting MTU and RWIN for a Windows XP box to increase its ADSL average throughput from 1.2 Mbps to 2.75 Mbps; also tweaking the configuration of an old Westell 2200 ADSL modem), a strange mood fell over me. Tripped, it did. Snagged its toe on my body and went flying.
From that moment until now, I have adjusted my own settings, getting ready for the increasing daylight that post-winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere brings.
I've washed the main house windows. I've raked leaves out of the wet weather creek bed in the side yard. I've cleaned my “junk” out of the sunroom and set up shelves for my wife's scrapbooking hobby. I hung Charlie the Red Cat framed prints in the back hallway. I folded clothes. I washed dishes. I put birdseed in the backyard feeders. I cleaned out the gutters. I wrapped holiday gifts. I washed the back of the '95 BMW.
I had memorable thoughts in what we call the dream state, seeing an Internet friend of mine, Kay, years from now, as a very old woman in a wheelchair, still cheerfully chatting away despite setbacks and hardships that would silence the strongest of us.
I thought about my former employees, including Kris, Charlie, Rod and others, happy to hear about their accomplishments (how many of us would travel to Haiti to set up wireless communications towers and spend time training locals to maintain the network?).
I enjoyed an evening at a photo shop named Portrait Innovations, where crowds of frantic families gathered for last-minute holiday photos and special package pricing. To get our pictures, my wife and I posed for and played with the photographer (Zac?) before he returned to the world of crying babies and playful kids. We returned 30 minutes later (after greeting Veronica at Zaxby's) to retrieve our packet of photographs to give as gifts to family and friends.
My new year starts today. Happy New Year to you, too. Here, the sun showed its face all day, birds sang in the trees, my across-the-street neighbour had a large fallen tree chopped up - scenting the neighbourhood with sawdust and broken evergreen limbs - and I watched a chipmunk zip across the street while a hawk circled overhead. All is well with my world. Time to prepare a little more for solar system / galaxy-level communications and put thoughts of this world behind me, secure in the belief that the people can take care of our world on their own.
Do you believe you can use a laser beam to build a “living” creature millions and millions of miles away? Do you see the possibility of building a creature that can replicate itself using local material? Do you see that, like Carl Sagan and others believed, we don't need people in place to build and plan for future arriving people? Do you see what will happen when self-replicating creatures reach a critical mass of replication for replication's sake, a la the Sorcerer's Apprentice? Do you have contingency plans in place to change the replication “programming” of the living creatures, “teaching” them that they'll have to take each other apart to build something bigger and better? Do you think you'll have the right answer when the first one asks “Why?”? What about when they (or some of them) resist their new programming? Do you destroy them, try a different method to reeducate them, or let them go off on their own and try something you hadn't planned for?
What is a strange mood? What is strange about any one mood? What is a mood to begin with? If we are but states of energy that simulate what we call mass, atoms and molecules, then a mood is a combination of states of energy, is it not? Of course it is. Then you can see that interplanetary communications is just a different form of strange mood.
Today, we discovered millions of new methods for living. We repeated methods that quadrillions have repeated over and over. The rise and fall, the expansion and contraction, of changing energy levels.
You may sit in a prison or stand in a cafe. You may hold your hands on a steering wheel, by yourself in a vehicle, or hold hands in a circle of people. You may see yourself as one person, or as truly, wonderfully nothing of the kind. We share the same planet and the same solar system - that's a fact we probably agree on. I want to say more but I'm not ready to speak about the next topic yet.
Instead, I'll work on the capillary action of the roof tiles to improve the solar heating and cooling system that acts like living sails/scales on the back of a certain extinct species I liked when I was a kid. Are the walls of your house inelastic but alive like your skin or are they dead and dry? My house is not alive in the conventional sense but it and I live in a symbiotic relationship, along with my wife, cats and other creatures crawling around this domestic setting. We are the examples we are trying to set for other planetary situations. If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere. New Earth, here we come!
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