[Personal notes — feel free to skip]

I sit and stare at the computer screen while the antivirus software performs a “quick scan” of the hard disk drive after the IE10 web browser software on my evaluation copy of Windows 8 acted funny.

Not that I trust the antivirus software to find anything amiss.

These days, when flood/drought cycles flow over land and our species has a short-term memory problem about scientifically-tested ecological history, I am not as easy to hypnotise into believing that the bits and bytes that comprise the virtual world I pretend exists in order to add electronic words to the pile make any sense.

Better to believe I am insane than believe I can see through solid sheets of molten sand called windows.

Two more tenets of my belief set:

1. Don’t take myself seriously.
2. Don’t take myself seriously that I don’t take myself seriously.
3. Jokes are almost always better in threes.
4. Time is an illusion.

The quick scan has almost finished running — the antivirus popup/miniwindow shows 94% progress.

Needless to say, I am not chewing my nails or suffering anxiety about the pending results of the quick scan.

Yet, hickory nuts are pounding the roof loudly, waterlogged from an overnight rain event, seeking a closer relationship with Earth, sharing a gravitational love with each other.

What if there is a connection between the house roof, the hickory nuts and the antivirus software?

What if there isn’t?

By asking questions about which item does not belong in a list, can I show myself if I am sane?

Was it sane to wait and watch, having an ounce of belief that Obama might have made a difference, seeing that his two best accomplishments were the Affordable Care Act and institutionalised drone killing?

This is progress?

This is why tens of thousands of soldiers died in the American Civil War 150 years ago?

Meanwhile, Chinese military experts expect a sea-based conflict to protect Chinese economic interests because Chinese authorities believe they don’t have to anticipate land-based military skirmishes with their Russian neighbour?

Thank goodness, the antivirus software declared “NO THREAT FOUND.”

I can relax.

Technology has come to save the day, so I can now let autoupdate install the iTunes 10.7 software that flashes me a message via the User Account Control function before making my computer compatible with devices running iOS 6.

It was good to relieve some domestic tension and give Obama his four years to show that skin colour alone does not determine a person’s qualifications.

For that, we have the events of the American Civil War and its eventual outcome to thank.

However, now that we’ve accomplished that goal, let’s look at other more important issues such as defining for a large part of the disillusioned world what their subcultures can contribute to world history better than being crushed by homogenising muliculturalism.

Me, I’m still getting used to the fact that some of my childhood friends from 30+ years ago were/are gay/lesbian/transgender/bisexual, let alone the fact that the U.S. president was “outed” by his VP to support gay marriage.

Force-feeding multiculturalism on the general population has unintended consequences that, if I am to understand our species correctly, leads to battles between us over how we believe we fit into the role our sets of states of energy play in the [un]observable universe.

Another four years with Obama at the helm shows scenarios that I’m not comfortable with — more suppression of groups opposed to government oppression of longstanding subcultural beliefs, including overt mockery of Mormonism, which means a reduction in the economic strength of the people who have lost their viability/trustability as productive members of society.

The U.S. has a large population of unemployed, underemployed, and incarcerated citizens who are quickly losing their belief in the American Dream, a net drag on our place in international worth.

I care about the lost opportunities we have here, right now, that the current U.S. president has been unable to address: those who bought into Obama’s hope and those who didn’t, both having no hope for their futures, many worse off than their ancestors.

Ultimately, we may not be able to address these issues domestically because we are fighting an uphill battle against the negatively growing sine wave of economic history.

However, I love change.  Obama was a change.  Romney will be change.  Nader would have been a great change, too.

The candidate who admits he’s willing to improve our nation’s education/economic status while keeping an eye on ecological sustainability without forcing us to compromise our beliefs is the one I want to support.