Are you ready to improve your education?

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)

Meanwhile, on another planet

Here it is, I have to coordinate the Committee contracts with newly “elected” leaders like Putin and Hollande to ensure we keep our species moving in the direction on which we secretly agreed out in the open, using adverts on billboards and popular websites to describe the project plan, and then, family issues appear, like aliens from another planet, forcing me to bring forth my colleagues to measure certain people for cement shoes.

Either that, or manage their lives through closer surveillance, as usual.

For instance, I get a message like this:

Hello Richard,

Before I go into addressing your concern, I’d like to first apologize for the delay in my responding to your inquiry. Yahoo! Customer Care is committed to answering your questions as quickly and accurately as possible. However, we are currently receiving unusually high volumes which caused the delayed response.

I am sorry you have been unable to access your fathers Yahoo! account. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
I have reviewed this case and I would like to apologize for our previous responses as they were not as clear as they could have been.
As stated in the Yahoo! Terms of Service, Yahoo! accounts and any contents therein are non-transferable including when the account holder is ill or deceased. As a result, Yahoo! cannot provide passwords or access to another users’ accounts including account content such as email. To view Yahoo!’s Terms of Service click:
I hope this information helps, please reply to this message if you have any additional questions or concerns, I will be happy to help.
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Account Services.

Regards,

Dalton
Yahoo! Customer Care

What am I expected to say in an electronic paper trail?  What else, of course?:

Dalton,

Thanks for taking the time to respond and explain Yahoo! policy regarding personal accounts.  I had discussed this with my mother — we talked with a lawyer who said that we could pursue a court order to gain access to Dad’s Yahoo! account but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that Yahoo! will comply with the court order.  Therefore, we’ve resigned ourselves to losing my father’s correspondence with friends and family through the years.  We hope we’ve figured out the financial transactions that were unresolved and closed them.

I completely understand the strict policies that email providers like Yahoo! have put in place to protect their customers.  However, I hope that in the future, we as a civilized society can accommodate digital wills and powers of attorney that give families and associates access to online accounts (especially as cloud services become prevalent) when critical health issues and/or deaths occur unexpectedly.

Regards,
Rick

Shall I complete the takedown of a CEO or two?  After all, Walmart and Yahoo! leadership positions look a little shaky right now, don’t they?  Maybe I should add a few email provider policy creators to the CEO guests on my version of Who’s Still Standing?!

Talk about alien encounters!

While we’re on the subject, I accepted PegLegs request to join the Committee.

See, as a marathon runner, PegLegs offers us a unique perspective.

Just the other day, she completed a 50 marathons in 50 days quest.

As a cover, that is…

She was sent to investigate a rash of reports that tractor-trailer rigs (a/k/a lorries) are spewing more than their usual black smoke trails into the air vents of overly sensitive minicaravan drivers and their spoiled brats vegetatively watching cotton candy viddies in the backseats.

Which can mean only one thing: we’ve reached critical mass in owner-operators hitting rock-bottom, no longer able to afford to maintain their over-the-road vehicles.

One step closer to the global strike by transportation workers…

PegLegs, while pounding her feet on pavement, discovered a new algorithm that tracks those who don’t want to be tracked simply by using crowd identification software to eliminate the trails of people who freely share their geolocation data, making those who don’t want to share their personal lives stand out like a hot dog stand on the last piece of Arctic ice going down the throat of a polar bear burning up in the steaming waters of a global warming sea current changing directions because there aren’t enough whales to release natural gas after eating giant Pacific squids looking for something to eat ever since Cameron’s deep sea dive poisoned the frigid depths with his hot air.

And now we return you to life 1000 years later…

Thanks to Chasity at Perkins; John, Jeremy, Peggy, Dr, Bokor, Stephanie and Brad at VA ICU; Robert at the Rave; Thomas at Chick fil A; Julie and Carla at Tuesday Morning; Esther at Hobby Lobby; Mapco.

How many people have you met in your lifetime?

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.

Texting While Driving

If local laws ban texting while driving, how does that affect my habit of writing messages/journal entries in a notepad while I’m sitting behind the wheel aiming a two-tonne machine on tires powered by an internal combustion engine through traffic?

Depending on the part of the world/country in which you live, you might have a preconceived notion about the driver of the vehicle below:

I don’t.  I have seen men, women, boys, girls, Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, blacks, young and old behind the wheel of dubbed-up rim jobs like this rolling down the highway.  I’ve never seen a homeless type person or an Amazonian tribal member driving one, though.

Makes me wonder…

If we’ll spend fifteen thousand dollars on a set of wheels, would we spend fifteen large on annual healthcare or a ride 100 km above Earth’s surface?

I am a childless, dying person so I don’t have to worry about leaving a legacy behind.  I can say what I want and do what I want while deciding if I want to obey local traffic laws when scribbling personal observations and notes to remind myself to thank others for their kindness to me throughout the day.

There are 13,883 days to reach the next milestone.

Thanks to Shannon at Arby’s, Liz at Beauregard’s, Michelle at Dreamland BBQ, the busy staff at Gibson’s BBQ on the last free pie day of April, Nichelle at PVA, Joe and Jenn at KCDC, Irina and Julia, Hannah at Shaggy’s, Danny at Walmart, Jonathan at Anaheim Chili, Ian at the Rave, Lynn, Sarah and Dr. Pugh, and many more.

Pause for thought of the day.

On a personal side note, I’ve found that recent stress has greatly increased my desire for sex.  Very interesting as well as disruptive, as if I’m creating vast stores of testosterone in order to take on and conquer the world.  Makes me not want to look into a person’s eyes because I feel like all the lust inside of me is pouring out through my face.

Spending time on self-examination takes away from building scenarios for the story of our lives told in this blog.

For instance, my dreams have reached vivid proportions.

In last night’s dream, while my wife and I traveled through snowy country on a tandem bike, we topped an icy hill and were suddenly sitting in a car.  Topping the next hill, we happened upon a set of railroad tracks.

We stood by the tracks.  I was holding the reins of a rope harness attached to a cow.  The cow was pulling a set of railroad cars which had big wooden wheels like you see on a child’s playtoy set.

The cow was very tired.  It wanted to get into a hot tub.

I climbed into the hot tub with the cow so it could warm up its legs.  Sitting in the tub was a woman with orange hair and ivory-white skin covered with freckles.  She was a cow whisperer.

My wife asked the cow whisperer to interpret what the cow was saying.  The cow rubbed its head against me like a cat, making low mooing sounds like a cat’s purr.  The cow whisperer said the cow was weary of the ways of the world and wanted to quit pulling the railroad cars.

The cow, tub and whisperer disappeared.  I was standing by the railroad tracks with the rope in my hand.  My wife wanted to go on to the hotel/chalet where we had a reservation.  I pulled hard on the rope and finally got the railroad cars rolling in parallel with the railroad tracks.

We entered the chalet and walked the halls looking for our room.  I kept pulling the rope, wondering if the railroad cars would fit in the hallways and stairwells we walked and walked for a while.

Finally, we found our room.  Inside was a man who looked like the character of Mr. Ripley played by Matt Damon.  The man kept telling us one different story after another about why we had this particular room, including why I had the rope in my hand.  He promised to tell me if the railroad cars would fit in the chalet hallways when the phone rang.

I jerked awake.  The bedside phone rang, disturbing the cats sleeping next to me.  My wife had already left for work.

I answered the phone.  My mother was on the line giving me an update about my father’s stay at the VA.

My wife decided to interpret the images of my subconscious thought for me during dinner at Dreamland BBQ tonight:

  • The cow was my mother and the railroad cars were my father.
  • The man in the hotel room was my alternate egos.

While she told me her interpretation, TV screens around us featured talking heads analysing the recent suicidal death of Junior Seau, a former fearsome NFL player.

While I dreamt, a blind man proved he can change the course of history by standing between the governments of China and the U.S.

If a parrot can live longer than the average member of our species, then a dream can live longer than one civilisation cycle.

And texting while driving is a matter of interpretation.

Time to give my dreams impetus/motivation and transportation!

Great News for Marching Band NASCAR Fans

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes before you hear the performer(s) sing/play the pregame song before your favourite sports activity?

Well, here’s a bit of info for those who will watch an upcoming NASCAR-affiliated race [courtesy of a marching band parent]:

Dear Parent(s) and Students:

Late yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from the Denny Hamlin Foundation requesting the Lancer Band’s help. For those who do not know, Denny Hamlin is a Manchester graduate (Class of ’99) and currently the driver for the Fed Ex #11 Joe Gibbs Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup Team. Each year prior to the NASCAR race at Richmond International Raceway (RIR), Denny hosts a celebrity charity race to benefit the Denny Hamlin Foundation that donates money to Cystic Fibrosis and other children’s charities.

Denny has asked the Marching Lancers to perform the National Anthem at RIR prior to his race and the Late Model Stock Car race held on Thursday, April 26.

Each Marching Lancer- brass, woodwind, percussion, guard, and twirler- is invited to participate.

This is quite an honor and Denny really wants it to be a hometown-feel type of event hence him asking for his high school band.

Thank you all for your support and patience! The people at RIR, the Denny Hamlin Foundation, and NASCAR, are extremely excited about the Marching Lancers performing Thursday night. We are the only high school in the country that will perform the National Anthem at a major NASCAR race this season. We are extremely honored!

Here are some important details:

…we will travel via school bus to RIR.
We will perform the Anthem twice.
6:55PM- Perform Anthem for Late Model Stock Car Race
8:25PM- Perform Anthem for Denny Hamlin Short Track Show Down

After the second Anthem performance we will move in to the stands to watch Denny race. We are his special guests for the evening.

Students need to bring a jacket/sweatshirt. We will Not change out of our pants.

Students MUST BRING EAR PLUGS to be worn during the Anthem (to counteract sound delay of PA system) and for the race. It will be painful without hearing protection. Regular foam earplugs will work fine. Students will not be allowed to wear headphones during the Anthem but can do so during the race.

Bring the earplugs for tomorrow’s rehearsal, too, so you can get use to wearing them while we play.

Bring money for dinner at the concession stand.

Have black socks, white gloves , and marching shoes.

Ode to my father, continued…

Here are some images in a continuing series of an ode to my father — the days when he and I attended automobile races together.

Today’s feature race:

the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach
(with a side visit to the Richard Nixon Library and birthplace);
memorabilia attached below…

[Copy to be inserted into e-brochure]

Welcome to the wonderful world of space travel.  The package you have selected includes the following itinerary:

Days 1-7: Orientation — physical fitness examination, G-force simulation routines, safety procedures

Days 8-9: Travel to first destination — launch from spaceport, short G-force experience followed by two days of weightlessness, sightseeing from viewing ports, preparation for docking

Day 10: International Space Station excursion — shuttles will take those who paid for this 8-hour tour of the ISS, starting with a quick Q&A session between you and the ISS crew members (subject to crew member availability; specific crew members requests cannot be made at this time), introduction to the features of at least two modules and more as time permits

Days 11-12: Travel to Bigelow Space Hotel — in-flight entertainment includes an acrobat show, singalongs and 3D roulette wheel gambling, not to forget the 24-hour freeze-dried food buffet!

Days 13-19: Your ultimate destination for luxury space accommodations, BIGELOW SPACE HOTEL!!!  During your stay, your personal assistant — programmed to look like the person of your choice, including a wide range of celebrities or a “friend” from your past — will provide anything and everything you want to make your stay the guaranteed most wonderful experience of this or any of your previous/next regenerated lifetimes!

Days 20-21: Return to Earth.

Days 22-24: Gently reintroducing you to the drudgeries of your daily life, including Earth’s painful gravitational pull, global warming and overcrowding, just enough incentive to get you to book your next trip with us very, very soon!  We guarantee it because we have your personality profile on immediate e-memory recall!

How does parenting affect future adults?

Ahh…the parody, of the day, if not a lifetime: “Daddy didn’t hug me” photo series.

And a look back at military humour, just to show the progress of time is an illusion:

Like Jackie Gleason said, “Ten million comedians out of work and I’ve got to compete against the absurdity of politicians to get quality air time!  Who’s gonna think I’m funny after listening to them?”

A nod to humour everywhere, including Cairo.

Maybe a little ancient air-conditioning will cool off international tensions.

Back to raising the next crop of hackers to keep our species honest, whatever that means.

Like molecules bouncing around

Do you ever read through blogs, look at the list of followers and likers, create a related network diagram, listen to ‘Krzysztof Penderecki and Jonny Greenwood‘ in it entirety, and see how our personalities, as represented by blogs/tweet/social network nodes, act like molecules bouncing around in a chamber, some getting attracted and forming a macromolecule, or forming locally-dense collections of similar molecules?

How often do we honestly pay attention to voices in dissent against our own?

How often do we need to?

Two data points for the moment – nope, make it your usual three: