Now that I’m a patriarch (quasi? semi?), I guess it’s time to get serious about the family tree, see where the roots and branches spread…
Standing on this stump, looking forward and back, back and forth, in time, is an interesting, yes, even dizzying, perspective!
Have you ever sat down to write a story?
Any kind — fiction, tall tale, business case study, autobiography?
And, with the thinnest of plots, started writing, regardless of plausible outcome?
Or did you pause, chronicling the writing process itself for fun?
Friends of mine gave me a new device to play with.
Combining a modified through-the-wall radar unit, microfacial/skin movement detection webcam software routines, and a black box they won’t tell me what it contains, I can, while looking rather geeky wearing a fanny pack, walk down the street and read people’s thought processes, not just feel their “mirror” neurons firing in sync with mine.
But how do I know if the device works as my friends promised?
Easy!
Try it on myself, of course.
If I look at myself in the mirror, I am a woman about 5′, 8″ tall, 125 lbs, brunette hair and green eyes.
I have a great personality which makes my ordinary looks more appealing than the average bear.
Oh, I forgot to tell you. I am a woman bear with higher-than-normal intelligence, thanks to my “parents,” who programmed my genetic material to create a humanlike child in personality inside the figure of a brown bear.
Anyway, I set the device in front of me and let it read my thoughts.
According to the device, I am thinking about writing a short story, my back itches where I can barely reach it, there’s an almost imperceptible buzzing sound in my ears and I’m hungry.
But wait! That’s not all!
I can see the early sketches of the short story taking place, with snippets of previous conversations flowing through my thoughts, images both real and imagined merging into background scenes for characters studies I haven’t formulated yet.
Ah-ha! My right ear is buzzing much louder. My boyfriend wants my attention and, thanks to long-range wireless enhancement of my “love/sympathy/mirror” neuron network, he can get it.
Talk about fuzzy logic!
What is love if we don’t immediately respond when our loved ones really need us?
Oh well, gotta go. I’ll complete this short story another time. I need a good doorframe to scratch my back first!
After years of back-room wrangling, leaders of every major sport played on or near Earth announced a two-tier approach to their individual sports.
For instance, in the Olympics, athletes who use no enhancement drugs will compete in the same event with those who do. Two separate award ceremonies will be held for every event, giving the best three who use use enhancement drugs, and the best three who don’t, Olympic medals.
Same for individual awards in cricket, football, baseball, hockey, basketball, cycling, swimming, running, motorsports, wrestling, etc.
That way, we keep a sense of honesty and integrity out of the picture, allowing “dopers” to show the latest advances in medical enhancement technology and non-dopers to show the latest advances in “natural” training methods.
As the saying goes, may the best team/player win!
They talked about the convergence, the “singularity,” but they didn’t see themselves existing in a time after the moment passed.
At first, we wrote tales about gods and science fiction stories about automatons, robots and imagined some perfect/dystopian future in which we interacted with artificial beings.
Then, as time collected in history books, we lost track of the changes.
Our toys became more sentient than ourselves.
Our friends turned into cyborgs without us noticing.
We augmented our reality so slowly that we missed when we no longer depended solely on our memories and person-to-person storytelling to describe our worlds, the reality around us.
In a flash, cave drawings, hieroglyphics, books, computers and ubiquitous bioelectronic network technology became part of our lives.
It was one small step forward for the solar system, transforming a single species into a management system for one planet that expanded on to other planets and eventually beyond the edges of the solar system itself.
We thought we were in control.
Little did we know the convergence, the “singularity,” happened millennia ago.
We, the current seven billion, are a tiny snapshot of the post-convergence generation.
Singularity is an antique term no longer applicable.
It is time to get ahead of ourselves and see what we’ve really become.
Look back 1000 years from now, or even just a few hundred…
…understand why so many of us appeared weak, soft, spoiled and easily hypnotised by our well-developed self-hypnosis techniques handed to us by generations of ancestors slowly coalescing via mass hypnosis.
We will talk about the present-viewed-from-the-future tomorrow.
Tonight, sleep well. Get some rest. Let your dreams comfort you.
Then, when most of you are fully awake, we will describe the future where we no longer have to fear ourselves or each other anymore.
G’night!
The producers of the film, “Kick-Ass,” expressed their wishes to dedicate their movie to the girl, Malala Yousafzai, for her courageous stand for girls’ education and survivor of an attack by the Taliban.
The graphic novel creators have not confirmed they are writing a fourth book in the series of the story expressly turning Malala into a Pakistani superhero.
I lay on the sofa in the sunroom, watching leaves follow an imaginary gravitational path to the ground, when a mosquito bounced against the window screen.
I thought about all the mosquitoes that are born and never find a meal, dying before they reproduce.
I thought about why our species has such a strong urge to save so many of us from certain death.
I remembered the poetic recount of the Seven Ages of Man.
I wondered what it would look like if I pretended not to know what the Seven Ages of Man is supposed to represent.
I thought of beds, chairs and desks.
That’s it! The Seven Ages of Man is about furniture!
We live our lives to give furniture meaning and a feeling of purpose.
Thanks to the following websites for the reposted use of their images:
http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/44400/44468/44468_baby_crib.htm
http://www.freecraftunlimited.com/clipart-school-2.html
http://jessesharville.com/2010/09/08/lazy-lovers-in-bed/
https://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/thales-wins-dmo-cisso-contract
http://classroomclipart.com/clipart-view/Clipart/Legal/legal_1-judge-on-bench-in-court_jpg.htm
http://www.andreadams.com/the_cartoon_express_senior.htm
http://imgur.com/r/pics/O5IzW
Here’s that second repost I promised, about the Fourth Wall.
Speaking of walls, here’s an interesting blog entry about the DMZ between the two Koreas.
Right now, the two frontrunners in the U.S. presidential election are debating each other, the debate broadcast through various mass media outlets.
I listened for a few minutes and heard the same things they’ve been saying to and about each other all over again all over again.
So, I wandered into the study and decided to blog about my day, instead, which is more interesting to me right now, stoking my ego, not a presidential candidate’s.
Earlier today, I finished sewing the fiber optic light components onto my “Captain America, the ‘late Elvis years'” outfit for an upcoming costume party while I watched the home refinishing crew working on the house next door and the chipmunk/squirrel/wren wildlife digging through the leaves that have fallen onto our driveway.
Later, my mother called to say she’d found our family history book dating back to the beginning of the American Revolutionary War and will pass it on to me, leaving me as both inheritor and carrier for our future family members.
Later still, my wife and I drove on out into the countryside, stopping at a community center to greet our friends, the Cox family (no, not this one),who told us about their days working as tenant/cropshare cotton pickers, moving from rented house to rented house where crop work was needed, long before the high-tech days hit Huntsville and provided them office desk jobs.
Going to the community center was like walking back into the lives of my wife’s and my hometown.
Local politics, loosely tied to national issues but focused on specific problems that can easily be addressed without a legislative stalemate — prioritising road construction projects, sympathetically addressing the legal education needs of citizens going through the probate process, shaking hands with everyone in your district rather than swooping in for photo ops using canned speeches and preapproved Q&A sessions.
Tonight, the community center hosted three candidates for local political office (quotes below taken from their political handouts) while providing free dinner — southern pork BBQ, baked beans, potato chips, soda and tea:
I really want to write a scifi short story but first, a mention of the phrase “dark social,” the aspects of computer technology-assisted social connectivity that we don’t talk about as much as we used to, which may explain American ideology, or might not.
My wife says she can’t tell if either presidential candidate won tonight’s debate. As for me, I was turned off by their angry debate style and left the room, but you know that already, because I have bigger fish to fry.
Speaking of which, only 13,716 days to go!
treetrunkdings 