Tag Archives: business

Organisational Skill Assessment

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Before I compose a hand-drawn animation sequence with the Bamboo Capture graphics tablet and fill my future with out-of-date electronic debris, I finish sorting through the piles of debris that constitute the bulk of written material which emanated from this set of states of energy called me.

Watched a commencement speech by Laurie Anderson [I thought, for a public performance multimedia artist, her acting was rather stilted], which has prompted me to click my way to a website and order a copy of the book, “How to be idle,” which in turn opened my eyes to the reams of office paperwork stacked in boxes around me.

Here’s one from 03/24/98:

Kiersey Temperament Sorter Results

Your Temperament is Idealist: NF
Your variant temperament is Healer: INFP

Any Personality Test, including the Sorter is just a rough indicator of temperament.
You might want to look at different temperament descriptions to verify the results and learn about other types of people for comparison.

I+6 N+16 F+12 P+14

David M. Keirsey
keirsey@mail.orci.com

At that time in my life, the department manager was all about fitting us into jobs that matched our personalities.

What she didn’t account for was a chameleon like me, a people pleaser who assesses the wants and desires of the people around him and blends in, hiding his personality behind layers and layers of masks, revealing himself to a select few.

I told the manager I’m not who she thinks I am and she responded that was a normal reaction to the test results from an INFP like me.

Later, I learned that she gave the same response to everyone who questioned the test results.

I wasn’t questioning the test results.  I just wanted her to know that the test results indicated my exteriour in relation to giving her the test results I thought she wanted to see.

For instance, let’s say I find out my college History professor is a dopehead and adherent to the philosophy of Timothy Leary… I make sure my term paper for the class, a review of a book about socialist utopias, contains plenty of illicit drug references and hippy religious conversations.

My goals are not your goals.  My goals are outside of the time and place in which we encounter one another, so it doesn’t matter to me about the profit targets you want to reach or the edifices you want to build in your names.

Ideas and images associated with temporal moral and ethical practices are imaginary, as far as I’m concerned.

We either reproduce our genetic material or we don’t.

Everything else is fiction about how we decide to protect our reproductive organs until we’ve produced progeny that need our protection.

Me, I have only these works of art — the sketches and writings that were birthed by me with your influence, a part of the universe, upon me.

I have no genetically-related or adopted children.  The closest I got were the nieces and nephews who [might have] looked up to me as an adult member of their clan/tribe.

They are adults now.  My influence upon them diminishes as they decide how to protect their reproductive organs until they’ve produced progeny that need their protection.

One of my hidden goals was to live long enough to be a great-uncle.

I held up my step-niece’s little one-month young girl in my arms, making me the great-uncle I wanted to be ever since I was a little boy and looked up to my childless great-uncle and great-aunt who seemed to have extra spending money my parents never had, despite the great-relatives’ middle-class wages as a postman and office secretary, respectively.

I have grown tireder as I’ve aged, exercised less and eaten minimally-nutritious chemically-treated foodstuff.  I no longer want to be a model for others or someone to look up to.

It’s time to slow down and concentrate on the dreams and desires of the personality behind all the masks…

The boy who saw macabre nightmares come to life when his favourite politician of all time, Richard Nixon, resigned.

The boy who looked down at his plate of spaghetti and thought he was eating a dish full of bleached worms covered with red sauce to hide their little heads screaming for mercy.

The boy who heard the grass talk to him.

The boy who sailed the universe at night when no one was looking.

The boy who knew that stone gargoyles and cast-iron mailboxes were like three-dimensional photographs of a reality hidden inside other people’s heads, finding an outlet, me wondering where they came from before they appeared in people’s thoughts.

The boy who earned his Eagle Scout badge and went on into Explorer Scouts, later to become a Unit Commissioner, an adult role in Scouting, because he never thought he had gained his father’s love and trust, constantly seeking, seeking, seeking approval up until he reached his adult age of 18 where he received a full college scholarship via the U.S. Navy ROTC program, accepted at both Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech, but realising he no longer had to seek his father’s approval and flunked out on purpose.

I had become the man I never thought I’d be able to grow up to be.

I never was my father and never will be.

I am me.

My hidden visions, the alternate reality that I carry in my thoughts as I interact with people who seem to like to embrace the inconsistent reality of [sub/ex]urban lifestyles and belief systems, are crawling out of me and into the world in which we meet and greet one another cordially.

They are not perfect.

They are not commercialised, plastic products for mass production and insane profit margins.

I don’t even care if others steal, borrow or marginalise my work.

My work is not me but my work came from me so I associate myself with my work but I do not tie my self-worth to what I’ve written, drawn, danced, sang or sewn.

This is the only moment in which I live and I claim this moment as mine, declaring myself absolutely insane in comparison to the insanity of boxed stuff that we only call food because the pretty picture on the outside tells me it is.

Unlike Madison Avenue marketers, I don’t have to make money from my creative redefinition of ordinary life.

I can, have been and will be me, willing to use the excess capacity of our species’ social structure that produces a buffer zone outside of basic survival to express myself here and elsewhere, on paper, in blogs and wherever I feel I want to breathe what always has to be my last breath because the next one is not guaranteed.

On to the graphics tablet, building upon my first animation!!!

As an independent filmmaker said,

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.” ”
—Jim Jarmusch, The Golden Rules of Filming[

Legislative Act No. 34e5-1c

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Let it be known throughout the land that on this day, the 20th day of our month of the longest day in which we bless the harvest that will receive the most highest sunlight for lo, these many days, that our latest legislative act, No. 34e5-1c, has been sent out for our citizens’ enlightened reading and understanding.

Let this legislative act bring onto our people the deepest meaning in their lives as the details of this act are more fully appreciated when the days of their lives are filled with more and more acts like this one that conflicts with both older and newer acts, confusing our citizens and making them less efficient but also less likely to figure out that the body of the legislative electorate is just as confused and conflicted and thus not a good reason for the citizens to cause an uprising and take over the crafting of crafty legislation like this, No. 34e5-1c.

Let this legislative act forever after to be known as the Greening of Our Land.

Let this act be carried with the following rules set in place and enforced by our glorious protectors, the Serve-and-Protect Police Brigade and Lawyer Guild.

Therefore, upon giving these rules unto you, our citizens, the denizens of peaceful obeyance but not yet abeyance (not for a while, at least), you shall agree to abide by them until such time as enough conflict and confusion makes it difficult for all of us to comprehend how this ties in to our regular daily lives, let alone the thoughts expressed in written opinions by our Founding Fathers  Cohabitating Fertile Birth Partners.

Here are the rules:

  1. Now, and forever more, shall the delivery of household pesticides, herbicides and other means to control the spread of unlegislated life unto the domiciles of our citizens not be made by land-based individual pest control or lawn maintenance service vehicles.
  2. Now, and forever more, shall the purchase of household pesticides, herbicides and other means to control the spread of unlegislated life unto the domiciles of our citizens not be made by citizens or their representatives at retail, wholesale or other outlets.
  3. From this point forward shall the delivery of household pesticides, herbicides and other means to control the spread of unlegislated life unto the domiciles of our citizens be made by aircraft authorized to spray or otherwise drop from the sky household pesticides, herbicides and other means to control the spread of unlegislated life unto the domiciles of our citizens.
  4. For the sake of these rules, the word “domiciles” refers to places of habitation by our citizens, which may include, but not inclusively, houses, huts, recreational vehicles (a/k/a caravans), offices, warehouses, shopping centres, tents, and other places that members of the Serve-and-Protect Police Brigade and Lawyer Guild deem necessary to prevent the intrusion of unlegislated life into the productive, efficient lives of our esteemed citizens.
  5. For the sake of these rules, the word “citizens” is currently undefined, having fallen out of favour, much like the phrases “global warming” and “scented air fresheners,” replaced, as needed, with words that serve a happier purpose, like “corporation virtual person,” “replaceable cost of production,” “cyberspace inhabitant,” or other terms joyfully associated with the legislative body that spent long, arduous hours crafting these rules after many nights away from family while drunkenly carousing in local pubs, avoiding sunshine laws, where serious drafting of these rules took place out of view of citizens’ galleries above legislative debate chambers.
  6. Any protests against the release of these rules shall be deemed treasonous.  All protestors are subject to summary judgement by the Serve-and-Protect Police Brigade and Lawyer Guild and shot on sight as needed to preserve the peace.
  7. Any derogatory or inflammatory statements in relation to this Act shall be censored from Internet search results.
  8. Any Internet searches for negative responses to this Act shall be deemed anticitizenry behaviour and the deviants sent to retraining camps immediately.
  9. All happy, positive reinforcing behaviour associated with this act shall be rewarded with extracitizen rights and privileges.  See Act No. 87-2w for details about extracitizen rights and privileges for which you may be eligible (note: the Act is not now currently available for general citizenry review; only those already having extracitizen rights and privileges may see how they can obtain extracitizen rights and privileges in the first place).
  10. Thus concludes the current set of rules assigned to this Act.

This Act may be added upon or revoked at any time without prior consent from citizens, their legislative representatives, or members of the Serve-and-Protect Police Brigade and Lawyer Guild.  Further, revocations of or additions to this Act need not be sent to the citizens in any form, now or ever.

Bury the Curmudgeon, not the Man

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In business, as well as real life, we make decisions based on evidential test results.

In real life, we made decisions based on opinions, dreams, imaginations and occasionally facts.

So it is with grieving the loss of my father in the rest of my natural life.

He lives on here — in recorded memories and anecdotes, photos and videos, audio files and books — the cybersphere.

I mentally cried in my thoughts up until yesterday, making it…oh, about two and a half weeks of heart-wrenching solace and mourning.

Now, I live with him as a reminder, a silent, unspeaking totem on an imaginary column standing invisibly behind me.

The good and the bad, the kind-hearted elder and the stern disciplinarian wrapped in fading memories.

In other words, I personify the genetic and nurturing elements of a man toward his son, his eldest child.

My father’s influence upon others started at his birth, with most, if not all, who nurtured him now gone, too.  His best friend of 73 years still lives, his neighbourhood playmate, classroom buddy and adult confidant.  His wife of 55+ years — my mother — is quite much alive, although in mental pain as she reconciles the loss of a dear friend and husband, the father of her children.

I am no longer a child.  Bigger problems than the loss of a parent push in on my thoughts but they are not more important.

How do we tell readers that the situation in Syria is merely a place for the national production of weaponry to turn a tidy profit, loss of lives a necessary component of the process?

There’s always some hotbed of violence we can use to our species’ economic advantage.  More people die from person-to-person combat between people who know each other — gunshots, knife stabbings, choking, burning, poisoning — than all terrorist attacks combined.

After all, “terrorist” is a label we reserve for “them,” not amongst ourselves.

The brother who stabs me is not a terrorist — he’s just a close relative with an anger management issue and a drinking problem — unless he gets the attention of the media ahead of time and becomes notorious, shooting off his mouth about socially-unacceptable concepts and ideals.

But we know all that already.  New crops of journalists, editors and publishers seem not to — they just as easily fall prey to the idea of perpetuating extremist thinking for a profit that also divides the political opinions of the majority of Americans, for instance.

Anyway, I digress.

After a discussion with the Committee, I’ve decided to share with you more of the products coming out of our laboratory and into a grocer’s market near you:

  • DNA tracking devices disguised as cereal flakes and coffee beans/grounds
  • Chemical hypnotic material mixed into charcoal briquets that are released at high temperature, used at backyard BBQ events to turn whole crowds into well-organised mobs when the need arises
  • Bacteria in ice cream and other products in the frozen goods department that activate at body temperature, lodging in people’s bodies at strategic locations; can be turned into cancerous growths with a certain level of mobile phone radio signal strength exposure.

Well, that’s all for now.  The use of comic literary devices is all about timing.  We’ll save the rest of the items for a more perfect moment.

Happy eating!

Oh, I’m back in the saddle again…

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Amazing, what a few days mean in the life of one species.

Part of the annual cycle of life here locally, for instance — the little “sugar” ants have found their way into our kitchen sink like clockwork.

And who says astrology doesn’t work — why, the Earth’s position around the Sun is directly connected to these ants before me.

And the Moon-influenced tides…well, I’m sure if I traced the ecosystem connections I could find the tidal pools in the Gulf of Mexico have an indirect influence on the movement of species in and around this domicile.

Not sure about Venus aligning with Earth’s view of its transit across the face of the Sun, though.

But hey?  I’m just a bigger ant on this planet.  What do I know?

Pop music flows through my thoughts today, from this century and centuries past.

Dreams have flowed through my subconscious thoughts, dreams that center on my dead father and his last two months in a variety of healthcare facilities.  Just another shot.  How about one more day with him?  Have we considered this experimental treatment?  Or that one?  Were there any unkind words I said through the years that weighed down his thoughts in his last days?  Did he feel I neglected him recently?

Part of the healing process, no doubt.

A new crossroads in the road in front of me — I can choose “Happiness,” “Depression,” “Anger,” “Denial,” “Remorse,” “Regret,” or the one I plan to take, “Unknown.”

A bit overgrown.  Underused.  Neglected.  Quiet.  Secluded.

In other words, the usual path of mine.

Wandering in and out of the actions of my species.  You, me, us, as usual.

Synching back to my self’s syncopated rhythms, out of step and in tune with our social changes, our connections with the universe at large.

Thinking my thoughts, no matter how strange, weird or normal they may be, sharing a few of them here.

Conforming to (staying within the parameters set by) local laws to preserve my relative freedom from conformity.

Letting subcultures be — live and let live.

Competing in the marketplace of ideas when I feel like going up against adverts of marketing machines blaring deafening sounds and spouting subliminal messages.

So many stories to be told, like the young lady whose [great]grandparents’ home in Hamilton has been transformed for a new generation of nonfamilial owners.  Sound familiar?

Or watching the tiny facial twitches on the President when he gave a[n election season] speech for the unveiling of a previous President’s portrait.  How easy is it for you to be a mind reader then and predict the future?

We learn a lot when we learn alot about Camelot on the backstage lot.

Do kids still learn to type “These are the times that try men’s souls“?

Is there proper thumb-typing body posture or mobile phone use etiquette taught in schools these days?

When technology moves faster than generational education cycles, what is a generational education cycle for, that period of time we stop children from performing manual labour and coerce them into classroom settings between ages 4 and 24, just to watch many of them drop out of the cycle to return to ageless, aging manual labour practices?

In the days when everyone is more equal to everyone else than ever before, is it still safe to refer to the peasant class even where literacy rates are a nonissue and people still want to get their hands on simple, low-paying, physically laborious work, no matter how many memes float through their language-filled thoughts?

How [un]important are the economies of geopolitical zones we call countries like Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland to the global economy at large?  What if we let them deteriorate into complete chaos?  Can we not wait to see the phoenix that rises from the ashes or are we too afraid to risk our investment portfolios to find out?

Why am I sitting here instead of enjoying the pleasant weather outside?

A-ha!  Finally, a question I can answer.  Time to close down this laptop and invite mosquitoes to savour the flavour of the blood-filled organ called my skin.

And remember: a fine, country dinner shared with David and Evelyn in their house overlooking a forested creek; pulling out bushes with David, Melinda, Melinda’s father and John; sorting through family memorabilia with Dan and Fay; Robbie, Aaron, and Christopher at the Rave; Martha at Carson’s Grille; Rogersville Produce Market; Debra, Pat and Veronica at Hales Spring Inn; Pals #13; Oh Henry’s; my blog-connected friends, and more…

A Box of Old Baby Dolls

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In the quick succession of events we call life, when we say one event or another is more memorable than the rest, do we take time to notice our thought processes and how they influence future events?

Have you ever heard a child request a toy, then you saved your hard-earned money to buy the toy and felt more affinity for the toy than the child ever did?

While butterflies chase each other through the woods and a bird tries to catch one of the butterflies in its mouth, I wonder about opportunity costs.

I finally read about the race called the 2012 Indianapolis 500 and the exciting story of dramatic turns of events during the race.

Instead of watching, on the day of the race I helped my wife’s extended family fix up the house and grounds that belonged to my wife’s mother and now belongs jointly to my wife and her brother’s children.  [I would have enjoyed watching the race in memory of my father but chose not to this year, my father having expired mere days before.  There’ll be other races during which I’ll recall motorsports events my father and I shared, shedding a tear or two of happiness AND sadness.  I could have spent time with my mother that day, also, but didn’t.]

My in-laws closely managed their finances, creating a legacy to give their children, including a box of old baby dolls that were purchased for my wife and a house left to my wife and her brother.

The dolls have lost all but their sentimental value, reaching the state where entering the city dump or landfill is their final destination.

The house retains both real and sentimental values, carrying on the legacy that my wife shares with the children of her deceased brother — her niece and nephew.

In the age-old, perennial complaints/comments about the way our children and grandchildren never completely appreciate the sacrifices made to give them the clothes on their backs and the toys in their room, my wife and I virtually face our adult-aged niece and nephew, wondering where they were when we needed them most to help them honour their father’s legacy.

The cycle of life…sigh…

Little time to mourn my mother in-law before my father died.

Now I have a wife and a mother to separately help not only with the grieving process but also the financial/legal hurdles that our society places in front of us to ensure the government gets its [un]fair share of carefully-tended legacies and insurance companies give out as little as they can to protect shareholders more than policy holders.

I was a great-nephew once, living less than 15-minutes drive from a great-aunt who could have used my assistance.  Instead, I was a frivolous college student more interested in having a good time with my friends.  Thankfully, my great-aunt changed her will and essentially cut me out, teaching me that ignoring a family member in need has consequences in the here-and-now, if not the afterlife.

Love has no price, no matter how painful the loss of a monetary inheritance may feel.

If we’re lucky, we innately know to give love unconditionally, buying toys for children who may never know the price we paid in money but more importantly in time sacrificed on the job to put toys on layaway when budgets were tight.

Hopefully, we teach our children that time spent together with family is more precious than objects like toys or houses.

Although toys, houses, and rooms full of antique furniture have their value, too.

I now own a suitcase full of shirts that belonged to my father, including his favourite blue, short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt.  I cherish them but I’d trade them in a heartbeat for another chance to sit with my father or hear him talk German with a stranger on the street.

I have a box of his unfinished balsa wood airplanes on a stack of boxes behind me.  It’s up to me to finish one of the planes and pass it on to his grandson who will never know the love of airplanes my father and I shared for the first 50 years of my life.  I know it’ll just be a toy airplane my nephew will probably think his middle-aged uncle poured a lot of old-fashioned sentiment into, wondering where he’ll put it in case I ask about it ever again.

That’s just the way life goes.

I sure miss my father today…one of his first childhood balsa wood planes sits a few feet away from me, gathering dust, its engine long since clogged with old fuel.  The only thing of his father I have is a U.S. Navy knife and leather holster.  I have nothing of his father’s father, not even memories.  I knew my father’s mother’s father but have nothing of his, either, except a story or two my father told — there are handmade garden tools and kitchen gear of his still around, though.

Otherwise, we pass this way once and are quickly forgotten.

Our business is with the living, our moments together more important than memories of those moments, which will fade soon enough.

At my funeral, will people say “I remember Rick’s blog and how it changed my life” more than “I remember Rick talking to me every day and how important he made me feel when he recalled something I’d told him in person once before?”

I have one foot in and one foot out of social media.  I don’t want to predict 1000 years from now whether our virtual lives will have stronger emotional impact than our physical connections but take me away from this computer and all the social network connections of the world quickly fade from my memory because I never held them in my hand, patted them on the back, smelled their perfume/cologne/body odours or noticed their unique personalities up close.

Will social media be like a box of old baby dolls one day, easily thrown in the trash, its opportunity cost and sacrificial price quickly forgotten?  If you ever used a BBS, you already know the answer.

Junior Achievement

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Without a doubt, melancholy will rule the day in waves, small and large.

The storyline does not wait.

Deadlines take on a new meaning but do not change.

Today is a transition day, where family members act like archaeologists piecing together the specifics of a person’s life preserved in cryptic notes, printed emails, neighbourly comments, and sympathy cards.

Where news of the world fills headlines without fail.

Singular.  Plural.  Pluralities.  Moralities.  Light ties.  Bright skies.

First edition hardback books increasing in value.

Walls covered with family photos.

Satellites spinning overhead.

Solar system settlement plans settling down.

Pop singers buried with melodies and harmonies echoing in solemn chambers.

Time to pick up the flag and carry it on, honouring my father and those who established subplots that crisscross unnoticeably.

We’ll update the signposts.

The Committee will reconvene, because committees have a joie de vivre of their own, wanting to multiply indefinitely.

You might ask, “What is next?”

For instance, how do we jail law offenders in this instant while planting seeds to prevent people from becoming law offenders in the next instant?

Who is looking at the numbers, asking why a person intentionally commits a crime and wondering how to make that person a positive influence on others before becoming an ex-convict for life?

Would mentoring that person at a younger age have prevented criminal tendencies?  Does mass media have a role to play in playing down the glamour and [in]convenience of a life of crime?

Is crime a universal trait of our species just like a fox will steal a chicken from the hen house or a cow will get its head stuck in a barbed-wire fence trying to reach blades of grass just out of reach?  Is a caterpillar’s camouflage a crime against nature?

When are property rights a hindrance, an enabler of criminal activity?  When should laws be broken or rewritten?  What is the definition of a person and thus a person’s “natural” rights?

Old thought patterns give way to new design pathways for us to put in place, setting examples to follow rather than punishments to pass out in the quest for expanding our knowledge and exploration of the universe.

A privately/publicly funded spacecraft approaches the International Space Station, a tiny step in the establishment of our species as extraterrestrial beings.

People perceive that a blind activist is traded for the sale of a movie theatre chain.

It’s time to give you the future in words and actions, not perceptions.

Time to influence youth to set goals that seem impossible today, yet readily achievable tomorrow.

Facts, rather than promises, will fill tomorrow’s headlines.

Once Upon a Time in a Warehouse…

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Ever watched a fire scatter homeless people?

Are there days of the week that homeless people make more money telling their stories and asking people to help them out?

What about the 24-hour period that some call Sunday?

The dilemma of managing a storyline 1000 years into your future is remembering the ambiance, the daily tricks of the trade, the parts of your society not bothered with car bombs, assassinations, sky drone monitoring or global warming.

Your planet seems so small in retrospect.

However, telling you about interplanetary transportation issues or galactic survey crews is like telling the founders of Angkor Wat about the printing press or steam-powered locomotives — you’d understand the concept of progress but not necessarily the technological details.

So it is with a random warehouse fire like this:

Typically, you’d get reports that galactic travel machines were burned to hide the evidence of a time twist, or that mobsters were settling a old score.

No doubt, you’ll hear that homeless military veterans were lighting up a big handrolled tobacco cigar and set trash on fire by accident.

Eyewitness reports will appear that show homeless people WERE in larger numbers in the Tri-Cities on the day of the fire.

However, there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

Look carefully:

Can you tell the difference between that photo and the following two:

No?

Let’s try it again.  Look at this photo and see if you can solve the mystery:

You may have to perform an analysis of the chlorophyll concentration, as well as figure out why a mother would pull her two small children out of a safe vehicle to walk toward a raging fire.

Getting warmer?

I thought so.  In 1000 years, we’ll use the space where the warehouse burned for a massive experiment of species overpopulation in absence of balancing predators.

We’ll demonstrate that the excess capacity of enclosed environments — office space, hotel rooms, concert halls, church school rooms, restaurants and public/private classrooms — was put to use toward housing the homeless and turning them into productive members of the Earth-based space travel preparation programs.

I need all seven billion of us to accomplish upcoming goals.

Every milestone is critical and even the tiniest talent, from designing hospital gowns for the prevention of the spread of Klebsiella pneumoniae, to losing $2 Billion, to begging for money on the street, is important.

We’ll keep you posted.

Thanks to Doug/Deanna at Walmart; Donna, Martha, Ronnie, Debbie and more at MHVAMC; Cootie Brown’s; Oh Henry’s; Pal’s; Col. Hts. Pres. Ch. participants; Valero; Mapco; Demetrice at Cupboard BP; Pete at the Chophouse; Home Depot; Rogersville Produce Market; to be continued…

Are you ready to improve your education?

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Have you considered a career in Slope, Terrain and Elevation Management (STEM)?

In today’s world, there’s always another hill to climb, another mountain to conquer, another variation in topography that’s getting in the way of progress.

In STEM school, we’ll teach you how to navigate inclines on the way to creating a plateau of easy living, where even ground allows you to set the foundation for your future factory.

Don’t hesitate!  Call now!  Lorry drivers are crowding the registration office wanting to get in on this exciting career of mudslinging and offroad fun!

Photo courtesy of Ned Jilton II (njilton@timesnews.net)

How many people have you met in your lifetime?

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I remember when it took months, sometimes years, for the result of litigation concerning an automobile smashup to be announced.

This morning, while I reprogrammed the connections between my synapses and the autonomous transport vehicle carrying my physical presence to another location on our home planet, I caused the vehicle’s guidance system to malfunction, resulting in a smashup on an offramp of the local highway.

I stare at the hole in my labour/investment credit account where I was billed a large sum to be paid off in installments to cover the cost of the smashup as well as medical bills and the usual “fee” for pain and suffering to prevent someone like me from thinking about toying with transportation vehicles en route.

Yes, the news was filled with photos and diagrams of the smashup, claiming a new record — five seconds — was set between the end of the smashup and the guilty verdict given to me, a few nanoseconds before my account was sucked dry.

I’m lucky.  I can remember a time when we had real lawyers and judges who worked out deals in judge’s chambers or argued cases in newspaper headlines in order to sway a jury of one’s peers.

Now, our fully connected surveillance and transport system monitoring equipment can sort out the cause-and-effect event instantaneously, leaving a small assortment of people to plea their legal issues in front of computerised/crowdsourced adjudications.

A child dies from a bee sting.  The bee’s venom is traced to a natural hive.  The parents have already banked on their child’s future earning potential.  They want justice.

To whom do they turn?

I am the last of my breed.  It’s my job to decide if the natural hive has thrived because of a local farm or the nearby section of the globalised network of natural parks.

Should I award the parents their citizenry “fee” based on the limited earnings of the farmer or the seemingly unlimited earnings of the global government’s Natural Park Management Foundation?

As judge, jury and lawyer for both sides, I take every case handed to me seriously.

Besides, I have a new subculture to pay for over the next five decades, since in a subsequent ruling, it was decided that my smashup caused a future reconfiguration of the small neighbourhood in which the smashup took place.  I have to foot the bill for the whole shebang?!  Wow!

After monitoring the tracers I inserted in 20% of the beehive workers, it appears that nearly a 50/50 split exists between bees who visit the natural park and bees who pollinate the farmer’s crop.

Hmm…

Do I follow previous rulings that say a party which has even the slightest responsibility over 50%, no matter whether it’s 99.9999% or 50.0000000001%, is automatically guilty of the whole thing?

Do I rule that minor accessories to a crime are just as guilty but only responsible for their slice of the pie?

Do I rule the parents are at fault for letting their child, known before birth for susceptibility to fatal bee stings, walk through a strip of grass between her domicile and the transportation device which took her from one parent’s workplace back home during Take Your Child To Telework/Shared Office Space Day?

I have three seconds left to decide this case.

I’ll take a one-second nap and then submit my ruling for crowdsourced refinement, which usually only takes a few more seconds before the case’s outcome is officially stamped and approved, the sting of a single bee changing the course of our whole species in an instant.