A Look Back, Translatable

Today, from the future, I take a look back at this moment and ones to come.

First of all, the missile defense shield installed in Myanmar has gone a long way toward re-establishing the balance of power.

Of course, the law of unintended consequences means that tactical flanking maneuvers allowed the continued tit-for-tat politically-correct statements for which politicians are mostly famous (excluding the usually superfluous occasional foot-in-mouth faux pas).

Freedom in appearance for popular citizens is, as always, given first priority.

The person on the street is subject to the regular forgotten and misused characteristics that a person who does not care to climb the ladder of social success succumbs.

Those who claim membership in the 99% do not realise that the 99% is a mix of conformists and nonconformists along a broad range of political affiliations and apathetic nonaffiliations.

So, with that said, let us move on to the next chapter, which, unfortunately, is indirectly translatable, but we’ll give you the best we can from 1000 years later.

“Clean out the electronics room” day

Among the items pulled out of the study/junkroom/library/front bedroom for donation to a good cause today:

  • Toshiba Satellite 4010CDS notebook computer plus power supply
  • Gateway2000 Solo 2200 notebook computer plus power supply
  • Gateway2000 Solo 2200 notebook computer without power supply
  • HP PhotoSmart C5250 all-in-one printer plus power supply
  • NetWave Blitzz 11Mbps 802.11b wireless LAN CardBus PC Card
  • Belkin F5D7010 54g wireless network card
  • [More to add to this list later]

After all, I am not a museum, so the Apple Macintosh II, Apple High-Resolution Monochrome Monitor, Apple Power Macintosh 6100/66, tangerine Apple iMac G3 and some miscellaneous parts should go, too.

Anyone need a stack of floppy disks, a few blank, but many containing such classic software as Dark Castle, Dark Castle II, Beyond Dark Castle, Intuit MacinTax Tax Planner, Falcon 2, HyperDisk, Parsons Personal Tax Edge 1995, Macintosh Pascal 2.0 (1986), MacSchedule, Aldus FreeHand, Buick Dimensions 1988/1990/1991, MacinTax 1989/1994, Harrier, CrystalQuest, CompuServe ver 2.0.1, and more?!

Time marches on.  Out with the old and in with the new.

Yet, I write this while using a 4-year young notebook PC on the student desk from my primary school years, surrounded by old, musty books.

There is the solitary me sitting here, a figment of my imagination, as small or large as I want it to be, feeling separate from the universe — unique and boxed-in.

There is the me that is just a node of what cannot be called anything because labels such as “universe” and “me” are without true, absolute meaning.

There is a change in the air.  14,036 days to go.  The narrative continues…

 

If not now, when? If not the ECB/IMF, who?

[Personal notes – feel free to skip or ignore this blog entry]

TLA – three letter acronyms.

The redbud tree is nearly denuded of seed pods, thanks to weather, birds and squirrels.

Two women jog down the road, one pushing a baby stroller.

An automobile speeds past, the driver disobeying speed limit signs posted in the neighbourhood.

The aquarium water filter/circulator gurgles, a gear out of gear, gushing few bubbles into the flow.

Some data points stare at me from the Internet browser software tabs:

We live in the “I cannot” mode or the “I can” mode at any time.

We think simultaneously in both.

Raccoons chase one another in the attic space above our living room and bedroom, attracting the cats’ attention.

As my brother in-law noted, there is a certain thrill in the hunt, lying low, waiting for the prey to wander by, adrenaline pumping through your body.

But there is no thrill in killing raccoons that’ve chewed holes in the house eaves.  They are not worthy prey when they are frolicking on top of fiberglass insulation or wandering outside to eat.

I share this house with my wife, two cats, spiders, crickets, lizards, bees, wasps, birds, raccoons, chipmunks, snakes, mice and other living things (dust mites, bacteria, algae, fungi, lichen, tropical plants).

Most of us, in pure classification terms only, are eukaryotes (a word I did not learn in childhood science classes).  In pure numbers, most of us are invisible eukaryotes, with some prokaryotes around, to keep us on our toes, so to speak (for a description of alternate lifeform classifications, see Domain, once again).

But I digress.

A bicyclist passes by, followed by two trucks, one labeled “XFinity” and the other “Comcast.”

A few birds flit past, presumably to check if birdfeeders in the backyard were filled in the last few days (answer: no).

I, this set of states of energy, float within the comfortable confines of my ecosystem, a subculture, rarely threatened with external, immediate forms of death.

Sure, a plane could crash into the house, or a tornado whip through the yard during the next major weather disturbance, but the chances of either one happening are close enough to zero to allow me to ignore them.  There is absolutely no chance of a driveby shooting or being kidnapped by spies in my life, meaning I need not be paranoid or feed the paranoid needs of others to be wanted/desired/meaningful, no matter now negative their paranoid needs may be.

Thus, I conclude, I exist within the “I can” mode most of the time.

What can I do?

I can build verbal trails, evidenced here, that are structured within a framework of satire and sarcasm, layering a thick molasses-like glue through and through, slowing down the progress from understood word meaning to misconstrued phrase, in order to deflect incoming signals, stimuli, like the funhouse mirror I’ve always been.

There are, of course, the narrative constructs of the Committee and the Book of the Future to place within a time-based structure.

What is real or not real is unimportant to me.

Reality is no better a term to use than to say (to an imaginary extraterrestrial alien), all lifeforms on Earth are exactly like the first one you found, Methanocaldococcus jannaschii.

Perception is reality, just as religion is reality to many and atheism is reality to some.

Was the EU your idea or the invention of a person with a bureaucratically political mindset (can there be politics without bureaucracy (or bourgeoisie, for that matter))?

Can a superculture, much like the UN, but much, much more than that (yes, Star Trek fans, you may think of the Federation of Planets; no, Star Wars fans, there will be no Galactic Empire), arise and absorb the political entities we now call countries while still holding allegiance to the power/voice of the people?

In other words, when do we directly vote for representatives of the supercultural administrative bureaucracy?

When do we say Earth is the first member of the Solar System network of colonies?

Should the EU members lead the way and declare themselves members of the UE (United Earth), rearranging financial categorisation of political entities accordingly, eliminating the [old] geographical boundary method of identification?

You can guess what the combined future prediction algorithms of all subcultures processed through the network of supercomputers have said in the Book of the Future, can’t you?

Time is irrelevant.  Power shifts are inevitable.  The truth is what you make it out to be.

The clock, not my stomach, tells me to eat food for lunch – that says a lot right there, doesn’t it?

A Return On The Return To Form

The band of merrymakers is about to perform.

In other words, the associates, business colleagues and computer programmers have put their heads together to coalesce, creating a cohesive network of states of energy that no longer needs any one supercomputer to set forth a future worth living within.

It is now the network of predicted futures that operate our network.

It is the anticipation of input from subnetworks which predict their own futures (that is, subsubcultural meme set projections) that drive our progress out of this moment and into the next.

It is not what is happening now that is happening now; rather, what is happening later is happening now.

The Book of the Future is twisted within its own point along its Mobius strip of a point in irreducible place and motion (that is, time).

With that said, the view from the future says that the conflict between the EU bureacracy and the EU members’ citizens is inconceivably unfixable, not unifiable.

Therefore, the way the US Fed monetary solution was implemented is not the same as the way the EU will reconfigure itself.

What is hidden will remain hidden in order to be revealed through innuendo.

To create a superculture, one need not look at past economic pastoral settings.

The EU is dissolved by being absorbed into the greater good.

Boundaries are illusions.

Beliefs are ephemeral.

Myths and legends are universal, within a few thousand years of constant repropagation.

Natural history is the clue you’ve been looking for.

Humour is the key and the keyhole.

You determine the cypher, the character monogram, and the lock, the protection mechanism, to be broken.

Royal decree is a form of indignation, is it not?

Too Crass for Top Brass Knuckles

Someone told me Ol’ Peg Leg himself, Alex Trebek, was back at work, hobbling across TV theatre stages, but without his trusty parrot, Repeatedly, on his shoulder.

Canada should be proud, I’m sure, I imagine, possibly.

The Rod Gilmore Fan Club has issued its own set of paper dolls for him.  I’m not sure what sartorial eloquence means but apparently his fans’ imaginations are wilder than a sports network’s ability to verify its morgue of information that clashes with its desire to become ever more profitable and pervasive (or should I say evasive?).

A rumour has it that Barney Frank will, as a last-ditch Congressional effort, launch an investigation into a sports network’s archives, in order to preserve journalism’s purity of investigative pursuit rather than pursuit of of the profit motive.

Like Jason Bateman’s observation of his mother’s maid, who carted furs to a storage unit that happened to catch on fire at an inconvenient time, the right Honourable Frank is alleged to have spies watching a sports network’s pages shredding and burning pages (but how do you shred and burn emails and voicemails?  Hmm…) to preserve the appearance of innocence after the fact.

Flood a hard disk factory and watch the roaches come squirming out, looking for a bit of dry land and a byte to eat.

The title of this blog entry was going to be “It’s Raining, It’s Snowing, the Governor is Blowing,” but bygones are Bygones, a species of creature so vile that those who cough up bile because their gall bladders have no gall (mainly, the Gauls who are galling) can just barely feel what it’s like to have Bygone Days (a symptom dissimilar to migraine headaches) when Bygones, smaller than a speck of dust, are squirted into the air as soon as a person innocently, ignorantly picks up an item discarded by the person in front or beside, relieving the high-pressure of Bygone capsules, kinda like stepping on puff mushrooms or overstuffed ship containers exploding on the high seas.

This week, we cast aside appearances to the contrary and visit the Contrarian, an agrarian, not a librarian, with a brain so huge (in comparison to a flea’s) that autism is a natural state, rather than the exception to the norm.  Speaking of which… Hey, Norm!

[Can you imagine being completely mental yet everyone you know and, most especially, those you don’t, call you Norm?  Par for the coarse sandpaper, eh, you say?]

Have you ever been booed?  Do you understand when your popularity was an illusion fostered by intimidation rather than admiration?

And lastly, don’t you love being part of the so-called One Percenters, with Ninety-Nine Luftballoons causing the next great war…sorry, with the remaining 99 percent of your species simply pawns doing your bidding — buying trinkets they don’t need, exchanging objects with planned obsolescence during a commercial orgy of a holiday — all for your profitable and viewing pleasure?

Ahhh-h-h-h-h…if one must be a particular set of states of energy, let it be this one, water dripping from the gutter and snow falling in the air on a late November day, with fellow citizens helping you pay your alleged tax burden and paying homage to civil [dis]obedience, where the military cannot hold you indefinitely outside of the protective, and nearly universal, laws of your land, where the current popular occupation, a member of Occupy [your locale], relives the Revival spirit of religious-toned gatherings and camp meetings of centuries past.

You know, the Bygone days, a golden era when everyone got itchy and excited due to Bygone infestations, wanting to jump and shout in unison with others, turning to the alpha members of the group, the leaders (often the driven or wannabe members of the One Percenters), to interpret the purpose of their feelings toward their medical afflictions and infections.

[Yes, this should have been called “Ode to a Bygone” but who’d’ve read it?]

Do you wonder about our fascination with the Roman god of war and agriculture, Mars?

When your descendants settle on the planet Mars, will they construct a monument to the mythological deity as a token of thanks for giving them a new home place to sprawl out upon?

After all, we’re prone to building edifices, one of the strange habits of our species.

In your locale, are there more monuments to peace or war?  Is every edifice — skyscrapers, museums, or schools, for instance — a monument?  Will the Arab Spring and Occupy movements have their own monuments one day?

=v=v=

Thanks to Dr. Brooke Uptagrafft, Dr. Karen Lamb and many more, such as Shelby at K-Mart, Ben at Zaxby’s, and Buddy’s BBQ.

Paper Dolls for Christmas

Hey, while you recover from just one more attack on society to effect change (that is, enrage those in uniform to kill you with relish and mustard (gas)), take a moment to solemnly remember the holiday where Santa Claus cradled the baby Jesus before carving a bunch of nutcrackers for little boys to torture their little sisters with.

But seriously, instead of shopping the hectic malls and midnight madness sales, jump on over to Martha White’s favourite cook, Rhonda Vincent, for a set of paper dolls.  She’ll be glad you did.

Y’all be sure to stop by next week, when we’ll surely have a hot batch of buns in the oven…and we don’t mean the football team’s been raiding the sorority houses again!

RHEL 6.2

In two days, my wife and I will sit down for Thanksgiving Day dinner without her mother present, the first holiday when both her parents are no longer alive and available to make new memories with family.

If we live long enough, most of us will experience this same circumstance.

I can still see my mother in-law’s face — her jaws apart, her mouth wide open in the same stance when she gasped for one last breath (no, two) after her heart stopped — as her skin colour went from pinkish-white to yellow while the oxygen-processing cells in her body slowly died, her body turning cold on the hospital bed.

In the casket at the funeral home, my mother in-law’s face was fleshed out and powdered with makeup, leaving a blemish or two showing (possibly a hematoma?) to give her a natural look, albeit one from 20 or 30 years ago.

Reminds me of my friend Monica, now living in Singapore, who followed in her grandfather’s footsteps and became a mortician in Mississippi.  She embalmed her great-grandmother — as a mortician, who better do you trust to make a family member look her best at her own funeral?

Monica handled the usual variety of funeral cases — open caskets for badly-mangled automobile smashup victims (a mortician is one-part special effects artist and one-part magician), Christian services and Jewish burials — that you’d expect to find in a small southern U.S. town, and anywhere else professional funeral services are provided.

But she left the business a long time ago, at least two decades by now.

Modern technology has entered the funeral business.  Software development simplifies the memorial process for departed loved ones – posting funeral service announcements via online memorials, for instance, allowing those who cannot attend a service in person to post comments for family members and friends to read about their recently deceased, partially replacing the old method of mailing sympathy cards.

In two days, we’ll remember what we have to be thankful for:

  • We have the Internet.
  • We have a planet relatively free of galaxy-sized catastrophic interferences.
  • We have one another.

What else do we need besides food, clothing, shelter, clean air, and protection from our worst behaviours/habits?

As a set of states of energy, “need” and “want” are terms readily understood in the here-and-now, in this moment, terms for which we can describe thankfulness and know generally what that means.

At that scale, this blog entry closes — let us put off, until later, readings of the Book of the Future which show timescales that make any language, and thus, words and sounds, indecipherable.

How would pepper spray have affected Geerat Vermeij if he had been sitting with protesters on the UC-Davis campus recently?

Supporting the right to protest and the right to preserve peace within a community is what makes any sociopolitical system flexible enough to survive turmoil and grow.  Conflict resolution is an inherent component of nature, including us.

Never too late to read a book

Novels in November:

1. “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,” by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
2. “The Man Who Loved Books Too Much,” by Allison Hoover Bartlett
3. “Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle,” by Ingrid Betancourt
4. “The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood,” by James Gleick