Tag Archives: chapter excerpt
Domestic quarrels
Domestically, how many entertainers whose salaries put them in a category called the 1% wrap themselves up in “Occupy Wall Street” symbology, bashing others for proudly showing and protecting their wealth, when the entertainers themselves have financial advisors and accountants setting up tax shelters and foundations to protect the entertainers’ wealth?
I watched a few minutes of…
Wait a minute. I was about to comment about an entertainer whose whole purpose in life is to get rich riling up people as they watch his show on TV.
If I mention his name and what he said (making fun of another person’s body weight, one of the weakest attack methods in debating), then I promoted him and his show.
Instead, let me practice the method of “water on a duck’s back” and return to storytelling of my own, a time 1000 years from now when all of this, though entertaining to me in the moment, is forgotten.
…while watching my neighbours rush up and down our quiet suburban street in their motor vehicles like they’re running from a pack of rabid dogs.
An ordinary walk on an ordinary day…
Where shall one find peace in the midst of chaotic violence?
How shall one shed the labels and symbols of one’s youth in order to move into a comfort zone?
Should one consider questions such as “Am I better off now than I was four years ago?”
If the answer is no, then what? If yes, what then?
Desperate times call for desperate measures, the saying goes.
What if the times are just so-so, not good, not bad, just malaise and blasé rolled onto bland dough?
What of the longterm plans to populate celestial spheres with Earth-based lifeforms?
What of other plans not documented here?
Where will the storyline take us next?
Mexican warlords directing drug mules to attack and destroy American police stations kamikaze style?
Roving gangs of rogue police officers no longer beholden to upholding the law, having no pensions or medical coverage to prop up their lack of loyalty to authority, using the disguise of their uniforms to spread chaos and violence in once peaceful sub/ex/urban environs until their demands are met?
What about advances in science not covered by pop culture mass media outlets?
How do we train a whole species to reduce consumption in order to push potential catastrophic crop failure effects farther into the future?
Order and chaos — the classic dynamic dichotomy.
Extra ordinary today and that is okay.
Ahh…there’s a tug on the leash. Time to go.
Happy 26th anniversary to wife and self. Hard to believe we met in summer church camp 38 years ago!
The World is My Oyster Bed
This is one of those days when meditating on life, the nature preserve in the front yard, and the happiness of peaceful bliss suffices.
13, 764 days to go.
Pithy quote from slate.com
From Alan Lightman’s intricate 1993 novel Einstein’s Dreams; set in Berne in 1905:
With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.
From:
“I’m Not Fighting or Battling Cancer—It’s Fighting Me.”
The “unpublished jottings” of Christopher Hitchens from his posthumous book, Mortality.
By Christopher Hitchens and David Plotz
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2012, at 2:13 PM ET
Erlebe. Entdecke. Teile.
Und lass uns wissen, wie es dir gefällt…
I guess it’s time to move back out 1000 years from now, when the reverberant effect of the Montana Freemen (not Morgan Freeman) and the “overreaching power” of Janet Reno (not Reno 911) repeat themselves ad nauseum.
As will undoubtedly play out, larger and larger groups will form to counter the perceived threat against a way of life that is neither here nor there.
Will it just be another fringe group effect, with a few people willing to die for their beliefs or, if the economy sours further, will a coalition build that has momentum bigger than the forces necessary to stop smallscale uprisings?
Little did I ever realise that I would be able to move into an area of life that is seemingly above and beyond all local calls for action.
I defend life itself, regardless of temporal politics.
My goals are to maintain a storyline that is outside one species or even one world.
Even so, I can entertain myself along the way, move a few chess pieces and watch the pond waves scatter.
Observe archetypes listening to clandestine MP3s and homemade DVDs in public carparks in preparation for personal war while legally amassing armaments and getting quartermasters to turn the other way.
It’s much more exciting to let an armed populace battle itself (e.g., Syria) than get wrapped up in an imaginary battleground of multiplayer online games.
Where is the storyline leading us today?
Hier ist dein Bamboo.
Draw me a tale, if not a tail. Create a comic, if not a comic. Package a graphic novel within a graphic novel with novel graphics.
When the pen and the sword are equal, the fun begins.
We don’t need alien attacks or Andromeda strains to enrich the plot.
We might as well have urban clubs where people buy fresh cadavers for the main course at dinnertime than the rare serial killer cannibal in bestseller lists.
Reality is much more interesting.
Pull my leash, it’s time to take me for a walk…
Pictures of my office coworkers
I’m often asked by anonymous emailers what my office looks like. Well, thanks to the folks at FastCompany, I can finally release mug shots of my office coworkers, if not the office itself:
Where everyone is cute like baby animals…
Cuban cigar sandwiches
After Fidel Castro dies, how will the island be treated?
Would you want to vote for a national leader and, if so, would you base your choice on the candidate for whom the majority of military members is willing to die?
If you knew that taxes were an illegal form of wealth transfer, would you fight to prove that paying no taxes is the second-most patriotic act (the first being to die for preserving your municipality)?
Should the legally-accumulated gains of alpha males/females have to be redistributed to the less-than-alphas with whom they competed in the first place and won?
A little island like Cuba is a lab experiment.
Let us watch its transformation, the transcendent effects on the rest of the world, and smile…
The Dream of an ice-free Arctic Ocean/Sea shipping zone is soon upon us!
We may debate the current/future detrimental effects of climate change many call global warming, but let us remember that opportunity arises from adversity like necessity is the mother of invention.
Look how much closer we are getting to an ice-free Arctic Ocean/Sea in the summertime:
[from: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png%5D
Will the shipping industry find significant cost savings with permanently open shipping lanes at northern latitudes?
Will the savings, in turn, correlate to reduced use of greenhouse gases?
Meanwhile, as Greenland ice masses melt further, how will our shopping/shipping habits change in relation to our ecosystem adjustments while shorelines recede and deserts grow?
At the end of the day, who benefits and who suffers depends a lot on our species’ classic characteristics of pecking order — alpha males/females, etc.
another kickstarter project supported
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I DRAW COMICS Sketchbook & Reference Guide
by Matt Marrocco
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You are just too kind! You’re getting a copy of the I DRAW COMICS Sketchbook & Reference Guide with matching pen, but now we’re throwing in a sweet I DRAW COMICS vinyl decal to throw on your ride, laptop, window – whatever! Oh, and we’ll also give you a shout-out on our website so everyone knows how generous you are! (CANADA/MEXICO SHIPPING PLEASE ADD $10, INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING PLEASE ADD $15)
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Nov 2012
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