Yard Art Sculpture Update # ICANTKEEPCOUNT

After setting up an offgrid meeting with the powers that be, using a dance-with-my-shadow practice session as a cover story, I’m returning to the yard art sculpture currently in S-L-O-O-O-O-W-W-W progress.

Still on the to-do list:

  • Creating the metal framework for the arms.
  • Creating the arms with keyboards and computer mice.
  • Creating the body armor using old floppy disks.
  • Incorporating an 18-foot LED rope light.
  • Deciding how much animation to put into a yard art sculpture exposed to the weather 24/7 —
    • Phase/Version 1: easy, wind-activated response
    • Phase/Version 2: moderate, motion-activated response
    • Phase/Version 3: time-consuming, animatronic interactive response

Sandbagging

How to maximise the local resources?

That question dogged us for many years as we planned our electromech construction crew that would “set up house” on Mars before we got there.

The mechs were fully capable of building adobe houses on Earth.

Water, though, was a key missing factor.

That encouraged us to find liquifying alternatives because we wanted to minimise the material we sent with the mechs.

We could have sent tonnes of sandbags and had the mechs build dry adobe huts under which our habitation modules would fit, providing extra protection in the Martian atmosphere, like parking an RV or caravan in a garage.

We challenged ourselves to create a solution that was both energy-efficient and easy to build.

Then, one day, after we had received the list of common chemical elements in Martian soil samples tested by the first wave of mech probes sent in the early 21st century to find suitable colonisation sites and entered it into our lab network, our semi-autonomous 3D printer on a mobile robot base started constructing an extruded Martian home.

Watching the 3D printbot create its own construction scaffolding was fun as it built a two-story structure that hinged and opened up to accept our current working version at the time of the habitation module that also served as transportation ship and landing craft.

Our Test and Evaluation department set to work calculating the wear-and-tear on the 3D printbot, estimating how many spare parts would be needed as the bot coordinated with the mechs to excavate Martian surface for the right ingredients, processing the Martian soil and then feeding the bot or its future equivalent the “right stuff” for habitation module protective shells.

To verify their theories, they drove the printbot and several prototype mechs out into the high desert, skipping a Martian landing simulation in order to focus on the printbot/mech adobe house construction techniques.

One of our lab personnel proposed commercialising the process, which later helped fund many of our side projects that we encouraged in case a crazy idea panned out and led to better procedures and/or understanding of settling Mars — whole desert communities were 3D-printed, followed by sustainable neighbourhoods in temperate zones around the world.

The future never happens the way we imagine

Looking back at this 2045 conference in 2045 is about as entertaining a picosecond as it gets in the futurists’ party lounge these days.

In other words, would you say that your email and texts are as unable to interpret and respond to emotional social context as a person on the autism spectrum?  In what situation are they identical and thus the avatar of one is the same as the other?

Plate of shrimp, the prequel

What are the chances that two nights ago I tripped over my copy of “The Saga of the Sour Toe” by Capt. Dick Stevenson, edited by Dieter Reinmuth, and then today this story pops up in the news?

All I can say is thank goodness the universe was exists purely to create me and entertain me.

Otherwise, I’d go mad (no, don’t tell me I’m mad — let it be your secret you can keep from me!).

Viral Video Vini Vici Vino Vincent Vickie, via Wiki

The colonists looked everywhere but in each other’s eyes.

Despite their knowledge, their scientific curiosity and their access to the ISSA Net database, none of them was quite willing to talk about the elephant in the room:

When the only source of protein, the flesh of a recently-deceased colonist, was known to contain stage-4 cancer, was it edible?

On so many levels — emotional, ethical, practical, moral.

Back on Earth, body parts recycled for food had entered the fictional mainstream eons ago, the food made flesh (or was that the other way around?) long before Martian colonisation became a buzzword, let alone a reality.

On Mars, though, there was not the sophisticated equipment to separate healthy flesh from diseased flesh.

Malnutrition and scurvy had swept through some of the outer settlements.

Colony No. 1 was not supposed to suffer the fate of poor planning and execution.

Burying the dead was no longer an option, had been argued and regulated out of existence several generations back.

The colonists put the decision off a day.

Sure, they were rational beings but mourning the dead was still an active part of their subculture.  Give themselves a day to grieve before making this important decision, they told each other without saying a word by leaving the lab where a dear friend, colleague and family member lay motionless, eternally unresponsive.

Learning and doing

Reminder to self no. 1000000.

While the noise of a television channel blares, filling the silence of an automobile repair shop, I review last night’s thoughts.

My wife pays for dancing lessons in order to put me in a showcase at Madison Ballroom. Thus, the dance instructors ensure they involve my wife in the choreography practice sessions (even though she is not in the showcase) so she will not fall behind. Yet, she and I never dance very often at local clubs or ballrooms.

I am comfortable in the presence of my wife but I am not desirous of dancing with her.

I find I do not feel validated as a man by her, mainly because she does not desire to make herself look physically attractive for me.

It becomes a descending cycle of loss of physical contact between us.

After 27 years of marriage and 40 years of knowing each other, the familiarity of this cycle has become the norm between us.

I continue reducing my weight anyway, a mild form of physical discipline nowhere near the old military workouts of old.

Discipline in all areas of my life may improve in response.

It’s the big picture on which I focus, allowing personal thoughts to pass through this blog seamlessly.

[Recording conversation for future chapters]

“I have, and Guin agrees she has too, created my own set of rules for my life…and stuck to them.  But my boyfriend has no rules.  He believes that it’s okay for him to be polyamorous but he wants all of his girlfriends to be monogamous only to him, there when he needs them.”

“You wondered why my boyfriend made a big throat-clearing sound when you mentioned the redhead?  She used to be his girlfriend.  It just didn’t work out.  Didn’t stop her from coming to my birthday party.  You remember how she sat upfront, trying to get attention the whole time.  Well, Kirby was curious about how many people my boyfriend had slept with, pointing to one woman after another, Guin saying ‘Yes’ over and over.  As the redhead walked behind Kirby, he said out loud, ‘Sounds to me like Bai’s boyfriend has fucked every girl in this room!’  That ended things completely for the redhead.”

“You know the woman who usually takes the money at the club?  She has an emotional attachment, a ‘text relationship,’ with my boyfriend.  When she found out he was going back to France, she took it personally, asking why he was leaving her.  He leads her on without knowing it, or at least not acknowledging it.  He keeps saying that he will have time for her later and doesn’t want to end their friendship before they become lovers.”

“Two months ago, I finally realised that I am truly polyamorous.  My friends were shocked that I didn’t already know.”

“Why did I get divorced?  I had an affair because I knew but didn’t know I was polyamorous and needed more than my husband’s love.  He had an affair just to get back at me.  He left me and then he came back.  Did it twice.  The second time I got pregnant and had a miscarriage.  It pretty much ended our marriage.”

“George, my flat mate in a month, broke up with his girlfriend a few minutes ago.  She went to get beer to try to make it up to him.  She just saw me walk out of the flat and dropped the beer on the sidewalk.  She started crying that she had no place to go.  She’d have to get a hotel room because she didn’t want to move back in with her parents.  She said she would come back for her things after she cleaned up the beer.”

“She was only living with him for three weeks and had already brought her Crock Pot to the flat.  Now that’s love!”

“She spent 15 minutes writing that goodbye note.  Can you believe it?”

“The girl was crazy.  Sure, she worked in the media office on the military base, reporting straight to the highest-ranking female general in the Army.  But I’m telling you, she was crazy.  We’d been friends for two years and only become lovers a few weeks ago.  She starting talking about marriage, kids…wanted to know where I was going all the time.  I couldn’t take it.  If I want to go next-door and sleep overnight at my friend’s place, that’s my business, you know?”