Tag Archives: chapter excerpt
Data points to connect the next chapter
- Can you hear the ol’ me now?
- Uncanny or simply catty?
- Programming your way out of your own future.
- Has your tap water reached its peak?
- Can you help your fellow citizens design their sustainable future (whatever that means)?
- Are ebooks a sustainable technology?
For the rest of the day, silence speaks louder than words.
Household Gods
In writing the narrative about our species in which we head for star systems as a investment in the nest egg of nest eggs (thus, the timeline that includes an event 14017 days away), one must consider the alternative timelines and subplots galore.
That, or Zsa Zsa Gabor’s family history…
In any case, it is the case of the glass case of one’s household gods we consider at this moment.
What are your household gods?
Religious/Sports/Music/Dramatic Arts/Business/Political/Literary/Scientific figures? Holiday figurines? Your pets? Hobbies?
These and other questions will fill the spaces between now and then.
In hindsight, the decades to follow will look like a mad dash.
We, however, are living from one moment to another in slow motion, it seems.
The supercomputers woven into your fabricated fashions will drive us maddeningly happy with joy and variety unknown, or barely imagined, by previous generations.
As you know, generations have shortened from 20 years to 10 to 5 to 2 to…what next?
Just like ocean waves that overrun each other, trends will pass by us too fast for us to notice until retro trends show us what we missed the first, second, or third time.
After all, what is faster than the speed of light?
After the Higgs boson, what’s going to hold our scientific interest?
When was the last time a chair seduced you into taking a seat?
Are you seated comfortably and ready to listen?
Good! Let the story begin again anew…
Letting the Waters Rush Past
In this moment am I,
Alone with quiet sounds of a nearly deserted house,
Influenced mainly by my thoughts only,
Letting neurons of old memories fire at will,
Wondering about the falsity of history,
The noisemakers who’d want my attention if I paid it willingly…
Prose. Prize. Reprisal. Appraisal.
Sounds evoking images the way they do.
Letting go of phrases.
“We all create reasons to justify our innate/trained behaviour patterns.”
“I” is a unique combination of nothing new, sharing traits with intersecting subsets.
Letting go of me.
Bowing out.
Happy in my anonymity, happy with momentary friendships, instant companions.
Au revoir.
Until we meet again…
This — a dance of words — a kind way of saying nothing.
A rock in a river, slowly rubbed smooth in the temporary meeting of a particlewave energy exchange.
With no ears to hear in the sedimentary substance, what effect does the noise of the rushing water have on the rock?
The Success of Formulasation
Chapter of Extreme Measures Merry Making
There are days, when managing the affairs of state from one’s center of the universe…
It seems my hackers, mobsters business associates, colleagues, and others on the take (you decide whether labels like politicians, teachers, pensioners and religious leaders are synonymous with “others on the take”) are happy to give me my usual breaks to live like a regular member of our species.
But, they reckon, it’s time I pick up the reins again and lead this wagonload of Motley Crue groupies out of the rut and away from the road that leads to the town square and gallows that smells of fresh pine wood and hemp (rope, we assume).
I enjoyed that momentary feeling of blissful craziness a U.S. Presidency (that’s a capitol capital P that stands for Pool and that means trouble!) headed (or occupied, if you will) by Newt Gingrich would have given me for four fun years.
My wife does not speak for me but I’ve got to mention at this point my wife is convinced that voting for a Mormon for U.S. President is not that bad an idea. A conservative businessman, governor and man who believes in marriage for life — my wife’s [nearly] ideal presidential candidate. After all, Mormons believe in talking/burning bushes, astrological signs and other miraculous signs of an invisible God, just like any other religion out there. One’s as good as another as long as the kids’ moral and ethical behaviours are all right (or left (or center( or…))).
As for me…well, you see, I’m independent, which means, in this case, that, as a citizen of the state of Alabama, my vote is pretty much useless. Some sort of Republican will receive the state’s vote in 2012, no matter which candidate I think expresses my view that my view is my view and my view only.
Guess I better start attending the Committee meetings again, listening to the same viewpoints and arguments the Committee members have been espousing ever since their predecessors determined they were worthy of Committee member status, no matter whether the status has no meaning outside the Committee meetings…
We’ve a planet to run, a species’ miniecosystem to box up and ship to cosmological parts unknown, and, perhaps, a bit of fun at our species’ expense along the way.
If all I do is express a formula in verbotic, unsanctimonious, mathematically-obscure word form, using a set of nested blogs to fill out the subscripted footnotes before your eyes magically, then I’ve accomplished the goal set before me years ago.
I’m falling behind in my thanks and’ll have to catch up later.
Speaking of formulae, my wife and I sat through a viewing of the film production based on a tired script of “Iron Man III,” set in 1891 apparently. I’m afraid, Watson, there was little that was elementary about all the explosions and pastperfectfuture androgynous, joker-homaged, testosterone-filled, demographically-profiled videogame settings.
Enough of the chitchat.
Back on my high horse I go.
You’ll have to find another chap to whittle your matchbox figurines in foxholes with. I’ve a script to write in realtime…
Theatre of the Absurdists
Choices of entertainment for one evening:
- The Living Christmas Tree at First Baptist Church
- Kinesthetic Cue Weekly Dance Party
- Recent moving pictures
- XXXmas Party with Aunt Sofonda (of Posey Peep Show) and musical guests The Wrong Brothers, pleasPlease, Scabley & Scarley Stubidge and more!
In an ode to Newt’s passion for adultery, here is the choice that was made:
Entertaining, indeed.
Contrast this with the Rockettes show we saw a while back and it tells us much.
First of all, humour is flavoured varietally. If there is a supreme being, then we can safely assume that every variation on a theme has been concocted and projected by the being in one form or another.
We can easily say that every subculture has a means of positive reinforcement of its living standards.
Those who praise a supreme being, which may or may not actively participate in their lives, will find a way to center their thoughts and actions on positive reinforcement of their praise and beliefs.
Those who find no justification for beings in any form, seen or unseen, creative or destructive, will find a way to center their thoughts and actions on positive reinforcement of their beliefs.
It was at summer church camp that I learned from listening to camp counselors about five years older than me about a Saturday evening program called Saturday Night Live.
Thus, while my parents taught me the values of moral and ethical training found within their Christian belief system, I learned not only from them but also from those within that system who sought other forms of enlightenment to feed their desire for intellectual stimulation not readily available in the repeated, steady diet of annual Christian rites and rituals.
College football games. MAD magazine. Television shows (minus coverage of the Vietnam War, which my father expressly forbid us from viewing nightly news footage of such).
Of the list of choices at the top of this blog, I have seen them all in one form or another, in this or a previous year.
Constant learning. Continuous improvement. Infinite curiosity. Stoking my imagination.
What did I learn last night?
Well, the level of talent in Huntsville and the surrounding area varies. I saw an absurdist theatre production of “Cabaret” crossed with “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” both which I first observed in my youth.
If you claim a Christian background and current practice schedule, when your children go to bed on the 24th of December, will you have put into their thoughts a prayer toward Santa Claus or Jesus for the gifts they hope to receive in the morning?
For the rest of the world, what do the next few weeks of your exposure to frantic holiday shopping and bright light displays mean to you and your family?
TV — the final frontier?
While chewing my lunch…
Ahh…an appetite for budgetary constraints. Here’s another tidbit to put into the computer for future admiration — the cost to raise a child in modern society:
Family planning has made the news headlines lately and I’ll let it alone. I’m more interested in comparing apples to oranges, family budget to national government budget, for an analysis that contains no paralysis.
If you want, we can throw in capital punishment for a right good show on touchy topics du jour.
Let’s not and say we’re knotted on this one.
Back to lunch.
If you want reform…
A friend on facebook wants to reform her national government.
Kathy, if you want reform — that is, to make significant changes to the way tax revenues are spent (and possibly, collected, decreasing the debt load) in your local/state/national government — look at the numbers.
And, while looking, ask yourself what you’re willing to give up, both now and in the future, if reform to you means lowering the total expenditure.
For instance, here’s the pie chart of U.S. total spending for FY 2011:
Perhaps your local political entity has a similar, easy-to-view breakdown of the way tax revenues/debts are supposed to be divided.
Where do you want to see changes made?
Where are the areas that change will be most effective for you and your sub/culture?
Can we manage government budgets as if they’re our own households?
What is a manageable public debt load? After all, who’s going to call in your government’s debt? Has your government’s debt been called in?
If bankruptcy is not an option, is eliminating the wishy-washy ratings agencies a good starting point?
More later.
Time for lunch and a few good books to read, including an ebook titled “Three Cups of Deceit – How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way,” by John Krakauer.
= = =
Thanks to Joe and Harold at KCDC; Tee Aundra at Krystal.
Is 4.74 Degrees Cold or Warm?
A reader sent me a sheaf of pencil shavings, asking me if I’d apply my divination skills to discerning the future from the bundle.
Whoa, woe is me, weary and wornout, beset with warts and all manner of worrisome wheretofores.
Last night, I took apart the battery pack attached to this notebook computer to see what’s inside.
Six cells, labeled “LGEP218650,” glued and soldered together, with some circuitry tucked in beside.
A set of Li-ion energy packs whose roar is less trustworthy for long stints away from AC power sources.
Same for the pencil shavings.
How long ago were they made? The wood I can figure out. The graphite source is easy to trace.
But the patterns…hmm…
If I read them correctly, there is a secret executive order, approved by the World Court, that says, because everyone is less than six degrees of separation from anyone who claims association with al Qaeda or similar officially designated terrorist organisations, all members of our species are subject to unlawful seizure and indefinite imprisonment by those in military/police uniform but, most especially, useful as free labour in the New Corporate World Order profitmaking schemes.
And now, let the racial accusations fly (or at least hear politicians running for [re]election take claim for such): whites will fear retribution by nonwhites, nonwhites will fear retribution by whites and native Americans will moan, saying “Here we go again!”
I’m shaking in my boots. Wait, I’m not wearing boots. I’m wearing leather moccasins! That means, yes, that I now have PETA on my tail and an association with native American fashion to contend with.
Where can I go? Where can I hide my hide?
That’s what I get for telling readers not to send nude photos of themselves to me via post or email. It just opens up all the other possible permutations and combinations of things that CAN be sent to me.
All I wanted to do was sit in my cabin in the woods and meditate on the meaning of the nothingness of meaning.
Instead, I have delivery trucks stopping by my house both night and day, dropping off packages carefully wrapped by those who hold the belief that I divine the future because I don’t care about the future and thus can tell the truth about what’s going to happen next in the collision of waveforms in the nearby sections of the known universe.
I lift my cup of tea, put in a drop or two of humour, doubt and disbelief, stir in a bit of sarcasm and happiness, and take a slow sip.
It is a good day.
The rhythm of lines of water dripping from the broken gutter forms quickly moving bars and stanzas of translucent sheet music following gravity’s trail from sky to ground, thanks to the condensed moisture (i.e., rain) heavy enough to be attracted to Earth’s core.
Time to investigate more about the subculture of the lilypad Arduino and its future effect upon us all…
…and wonder why facebook discourages making connections with complete strangers. Aren’t we all connectable? How else are we to reach out and get to know as many of our fellow seven billion as we can before we die? Other than the unencumbered/uncensored Internet, that is.
Imagine an interconnected army of Elmos invading your children’s hearts and thought sets. Wait, it already happened! 😉
treetrunkdings 