Tag Archives: food

Hazel Green, Alabama — McCafe

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Personal note: my wife attends an event at our niece’s house presumably about clothes or jewelry. Meanwhile, I sit in a McDonald’s restaurant, looking at dead flies on window sills and listening to an old man tell his family, “I am NOT moving back to Alabama. You cannot have my car. These are my keys.” while he charges his cell phone that he hooked up to a power receptacle hidden high above an insect zapper he unplugged.

What is the definition of crazy?

Is it the kid using a metal stake to compress the garbage so he doesn’t have to empty the rubbish bin for a while, his McDonald’s uniform askew, his tie hanging loose?

Is it the woman leaning against the wall outside one of the entrances, smoking a cigarette and chatting on her mobile phone in the afternoon August heat?

What about the people speeding by on the highway?

Or me, drinking an iced coffee after eating a dipcone (soft serve ice cream served in a cake cone and dipped into chocolate)?

What about the way Ballmer ran Microsoft into oblivion? Or the way Bill Gates is trying to make up for years of predatory business practices by attaching his name to the reinvention of the toilet?

I could be making notes about comets or Martian rovers.

I could make a list of people to thank.

Instead, I type on a mobile Bluetooth keyboard for iPad, reinventing myself, reiterating the importance of computer connectedness and listening to a family discuss a boy’s future school performance because his father (grandfather?) has issues about moving back to Alabama to care for his wife (daughter?) and [grand]child.

Nearby, the Tillman D. Hill Public Library.

Closer, a live housefly on the tabletop looking for food.

Across the way, a computer for people to request a job at McDonald’s: “Apply Here / Aplique Aqui — This Employer Participates in E-Verify”.

And I have 45 more minutes to entertain myself until I drive back to my niece’s house to pick up my wife.

These are the salad days, the good ol’ days, the golden years, the midlife crisis years…watching a young family load their kids in the Chevy Silverado truck after having loads of fun in Playland, the father wearing a set of girl’s necklace beads because his little baby is about to fall asleep in his arms, the mother loading the other daughter in the backseat.

We live and then we die.

She drives the truck. He drives the Pontiac Trans Am.

One of their children does not look like it belongs to them but they seem to love each other.

An older couple, he wearing an “Anderson’s Dozer Works” blue work shirt, she using a cane, hobble to their Buick Roadmaster in the handicapped spot.

The days of our lives tucked in between birth and death, not far from the border between Tennessee and Alabama, longtime college football rivals.

What more can we ask for? What more do we want, able to drive and talk on the mobile phone at the same time, arguing in one moment and laughing together in the next?

“I’ll put your face all over facebook, MySpace, Google, the whole Web, if that’ll make you feel better!” The old man laughs and his family joins him. “Of course, I don’t have Internet at home.” They laugh some more. “I’ll sue everybody that makes fun of you who could have seen you if I had Internet at home.” They continue laughing, one of them saying, “Well, you’re on the Internet now. Quick! Send someone an email!” They giggle. He guffaws, “I swear, I’m gonna put it on facebook!” The boy states, “They’re gonna call me names,” and storms off to the bathroom. The man: “I’m gonna pull it up on Yahoo!” The woman snickers. “New email!” he declares as she stands up to look. “See!” She leans over and breaks into a broad grin. “See, I’ve posted pictures of last Thanksgiving. What’s there to make fun of?” The boy returns and rolls his eyes: “That!!! You can’t put those on there!” nodding at me as he leaves the restaurant to get in his Lincoln LS sedan and roll down the windows, playing country music loud enough for me to hear.

They calm down. No more arguments about returning to Alabama. A family makes up in a fast food restaurant, at least for the moment.

The man raises his voice, over the protest of the woman questioning what he’s posting next. “By God I do, NOW!!!” She gets ready to go. “See, you can put all sorts of stuff on facebook. Look what he’s put up there on his own. Birthday party. You’ve got to pay attention to what he puts on there. Maybe you should. Maybe you should. Security issues start with facebook and go from there. Anyone can see where you’re going and where you’ve been. See, here’s stuff from when he was 12. Now everybody can see pictures of everybody. Somebody could come in, slap him across the face and another kid take a picture from across the parking lot, posting it for the world to see. What will they think of that?”

She shakes her head. “They won’t do that. I’ll be back.” She walks out to the Lincoln, lights up a cigarette and drives off with the boy, leaving the man to work on his laptop and talk on the cell phone.

Time for me to leave, a little early to pick up my wife, but well within the range of conversation of an adult man and adult woman having a little fun with a teenage boy about pictures of his offline life in perpetuity on the Internet, while learning from each other what’s important in the boy’s online life.

Double Sided Sales Slip Customer Copy

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A couple of kids protesting in a church on the other side of the planet taught me that if you want to play with fire, be prepared for the consequences.

A musician who’s part of a corporatised musical group playing officially-sanctioned anti-corporate lyrics taught me that hypocrisy knows no cultural bounds.

You see, I’m all about the power of the people.

But keep in mind that my goal is to move the wealth of many thousands of millionaires and billionaires out of reach of the people.

The “people,” of course, is a meaningless term that can be used positively or derogatorily: “We the people…” or “you people,” and its many forms used to provoke crowds in time for [re]election.

The people get used a lot, don’t they/we?

Keep people distracted while we prepare…

Well, I’m not supposed to tell you what’s being prepared, am I, if I am to maintain this storyline?

Let’s imagine a few possible futures:

  1. It’s clear that changing the habits of billions of people to save themselves from themselves is not going to happen when so much profit is at stake, including just good enough profit to feed the mouths of billions of people.  If you had the opportunity, would you set up a location for your friends and family that is safe from invasion by non-heavily armed people and sufficient to provide you a livable subculture/ecosystem while the rest of the world was experiencing major/negative climate change?
  2. You have great wealth at your disposal and you believe that the global economy is your friend so you spend your billions of dollars trying to improve local economies which, in turn, improve the global economy, increasing not only your chance for survival but the whole world’s, too.
  3. You and your friends in private and public businesses have been testing the theory that living off-world is a sure way to hedge your bets about Earth’s climate change and any detrimental effects it may have on your way of life.  You encourage the use of public funds to affirm your theory while you amass the resources you need to build off-world colonies.
  4. Your family has lived in relative poverty for generations.  You have competed against your peers and created a small empire — it’s time to enjoy the fruits of your labour, cost no object in pursuing a life of luxury.
  5. Your family has lived in the peace and comfort of middle-class living for generations — no reason for you to change the course of history.
  6. Poverty means nothing in your subsistence lifestyle.  Words like “blog” and “computer” do not exist in your language full of nature-based terminology.

All of us are familiar with these scenarios, through personal experience, from someone we know or by popular culture references.

In telling the story of our species in relation to the humongous universe in which we barely understand we live, tying these subplots together is interesting some days and boring on other days.

However, it’s all I have to work with here.

Like going from static cartoon strips to creating animated daily cartoons in writing, if not drawing.

Protestors with machetes will most often lose to security guards with guns, who will always, always, always claim self-defense after discharging their weapons and killing protestors.

My question is this: if the commander in-chief claims credit for killing a notorious villain, does he also take credit for the most number of military suicides of any commander in-chief during his time in office?  If your military has some of the lowest morale on record, then I, in honouring my father’s legacy, have to ask myself why anyone with a military background would vote for you?  Following that train of thought, how many of us benefit from one of the largest peacetime (sorry, I mean “war on terror”) military deployments in history — should we also question re-electing the commander in-chief?  In this case, the Law of Unintended Consequences meets the Law of Diminishing Returns.  What am I missing here?  What am I not telling the reader?  I am not my father so why is there not a viable third candidate for me to elect?

Ahh…the balance of power.  ‘Tis a game that entertains, n’est pas?  Sarkozy and Berlusconi quickly become footnotes in history.  Merkel, like Kohl, is not far behind.  Anyone remember Mikhail Gorbachev or Deng Xiaoping?  Did Greece used to be a country?

It will be no different on the Moon or Mars.  More pioneers, more forgotten history as we scramble to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves from the elements while armchair bystanders question our motives and protest our version of progress that clashes with theirs.

Remember the Golden Rule: S/he with the most power protecting a stash of gold makes the rules.

Looking Back

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A reposted blog entry referencing Andy Griffith (from here):

02 February 2009

What’s a groundhog got to do with it?

2 February 2009, 11:32 a.m. – Two nights in a row with no sleep…am I supposed to see my shadow today? At my age, I know my moods, my body ailments, and my set of reactions to the familiar world around me. Once, I would attack the world like Don Quixote, jousting at monsters with relish, exhilarated in the extreme during the thrust and plunged into depression when the dragons of the world defeated me with laughter. The highs and lows have mellowed somewhat with age. I, I, I…it’s not all about me. I have to keep telling myself that, reminding and repeating myself often, because as a selfish person I tend not to care about others. I just said this to myself and heard echoes in my thoughts of repeating even these set of words. The next thing I know I’ll say is, “Yet, because I was raised to worry about what the neighbors think, a selfish person like me still doesn’t exceed a limit of social decency that I wish did not exist.”

I look at the words, phrases, and sentences I’ve written and exasperate myself with my attitude of “good enough” (as in “good enough for government work”), not taking the time to perfect my use of the rules and suggestions of the English language. Thus, I’ll use too many commas or place a word with a similar but not quite precise meaning (e.g., “I see” versus “I comprehend”).

I write for an unknown reader. Well, I write for myself first but myself as a person with a group of colleagues (including some imagined ones, such as other writers who had brains superior in calculation capability than mine but whose inspiration gives me hope for the value of my work), well-read colleagues who may not exist except in my imagination. Colleagues who enjoy reading dictionaries, plant identification books, philosophy, cartoons, economic analysis reports, sports headlines, milk cartons, random blogs, user manuals, billboards, handwritten letters from friends, LP liner notes, fortune cookie slips and literary fiction.

On a flight from one forgotten destination to another a few years ago, I read a book highly recommended to me titled, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves.” The friend who suggested the book to me majored in English in college and had more than a passing interest in the correct use of punctuation, even though her career had moved into computer equipment sales. I suppose our lives crossed paths for a reason (a reason, mind you, not a purpose). I reason that I wanted to major in language studies or literature but my upbringing pointed in the direction of the hard sciences such as chemistry, engineering or computer software design, thus my vocation would always clash with my avocation of reading and writing literature (literature in the form of poetry, short stories, novellas, skits, plays and novels; I hesitate adding the word “essays” to the list because the blogging world has taken over the world of the formal essay, where even a haiku becomes both blog and essay; I might add “graphic novel” one day should my artwork interest hold my attention for longer than a day of drawing). So literature becomes a joke about a panda that serves as a book title which mixes my life and my friend’s life well.

You know the joke, don’t you? A panda walks into a bar, sits on a stool, munches on some peanuts, kills the person sitting next to him with a gun and then calmly walks out of the bar. A patron turns to the bartender and asks, “What was that all about?” The bartender responds, “Don’t you know that’s a panda?” The bartender hands a poorly written children’s alphabet animal book to the patron, who turns to the letter P and reads the definition of panda: “an animal, native to China, that eats, shoots, and leaves.”

Today, literature as solely a written art form almost has no meaning. The Internet has invaded our thoughts and actions so pervasively and persuasively that we’ve become both creator and audience at once. The visual arts, including rap and hip-hop songs, take literature from the static written page into the three-dimensional realm from whence it originated. Our storytelling ancestors sitting in caves would understand us and our need to carry around Internet devices in the form of cell phones and other UMPCs.

Yesterday afternoon, my wife and I watched the movie, “Inkheart,” at a local theater. If you haven’t seen the movie and plan to, then you should stop reading here because I’ll soon discuss spoilers. As in right now. LOL Toward the end of the movie, the character played by Jim Broadbent (one of my favorite actors, by the way), the writer of “Inkheart,” expressed his wish to move out of the regular, lonely world of writing and into the exciting world he created with his writing. I don’t know how the third act of the movie jibed with the “Inkheart” book series on which the movie’s based, but I was happy to see the writer character get his wish granted.

The night before, I slept in a fit of delirium. I tossed and turned, fighting the enemy who has stalked my dreams and wishes like the shadow from “Inkheart.” I suppose all of us have seen such an enemy as mine, who works night and day to drain me of my true desire, waiting for the moment to suck the life blood out of me and turn me into a zombie, with which the shadow can play like pieces on a chess board or marionettes on a puppet stage, reducing me to the role of an automaton working in an office full of fellow robots. In the dreamlike state, I defeated the enemy because I surrounded myself with the love and support of those who believe with me that my creative talent is worth calling myself a writer. Or more than that, really…I’ll take a deep breath here, look around me to make sure no one is looking, feel my heart beat in my throat before I speak and finally say, “I am an author.”

After watching the movie, my wife and I returned home to watch the spectacle known as the Super Bowl. With a superlative like “super,” we can automatically assume the bowl is anything but. However, I have accepted the conditioning of my society to cheer for or against the participants of the main event, grown men running around chasing an inflated bag of sewn pigskin (and if you ever want a humorous view of football, listen to Andy Griffith‘s comedy sketch “What It Was, Was Football,” – even if you’re not a fan of “The Andy Griffith Show,” the skit is funny), whilst with bated breath we gaze at the screen for gleeful exposure to commercial advertising.

As the NFL game progressed, I glanced at the clock, mentally counting down the hours until the countdown ended for the opening of submission of works of fiction for the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award at www.createspace.com/abna. When the game ended after 9 p.m. Central, I grabbed another bottle of Yuengling Black & Tan and headed to my study, where I could sit and listen to jazz on old vinyl LP albums and watch the countdown clock on a webpage. Tick. Tock. Or so my brain thought because the silent digital display simply showed the word, “Tonight,” underneath was which a counter of hours, minutes and seconds. My blood pressure leapt when the numbers dropped from 01:00:00 to 00:59:59. Had I made any glaring mistakes in the work of fiction itself, much less the other text I had to submit for the contest, including an excerpt of less than 5,000 words, a pitch statement of less than 300 words, an anecdote, a biography and a description to be used for the novel should the contest judges deem my novel worthy of posting on amazon.com as a semifinalist in March?

Finally, as the hour shrank to ten minutes, I resigned myself to the fact that no matter how well my novel succeeded in capturing the attention of the editor(s) who reviewed first the pitch statement (to reduce the 10,000 entries down to 2,000) to create a reasonable set of good entries and then read my novel excerpt (to drop the entries down to 500, I believe), I had written an opus, though not perfect, which represented me, complete with poor punctuation – with ill-advised comma placement, or omission – and lack of precise word usage.

A groundhog does not determine the next six weeks of weather any more than a randomly selected judge determines the worth of my writing. At 23:11 (11:11 p.m. Central, or 12:11 Eastern time on 2nd February 2009), I clicked the Submit button and received confirmation that my novel submission was completed and accepted for the 2009 ABNA contest.

HAPPY GROUNDHOG’S DAY, EVERYONE!

Posted by TreeTrunkRick at 1:12 PM

= = = = = = = = = =

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!  Thanks to Megan, Pat, Gail, Derek, Andrew, Heather, Roy, Cassandra, Shirley, Stephanie (a/k/a Athens pie)

Walking on sunshine

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I wonder how much I can trust the person we gave my old job if he didn’t even bother to change the password.

Anyway, this is Rick.

Many years ago, a path was cut through the woods owned by the local land baroness, Margaret Ann Goldsmith.

After the path was cut, TVA power poles were raised and strands of wiring strung high in the air like trapeze artists use, arching from one pole to another over hilltops and roadways.

At first, I was sad to see the forest cut down.

Then, the scientist in me stepped forward, taking notes on the change in flora and fauna.

Today, as I walked underneath the lines that are there only in case of emergency and note used regularly, I found a ripe passionfruit.

But this was a rare subspecies, the “Nectar of the Gods,” the local natives called it.

I hold it in my hands.

The aroma alone is making my writing difficult.

I would venture to guess that driving is inadvisable at this time.

I stood and watched bumblebees fumble into the passionfruit flowers on the vine and fly away drunk.

Would I have found this natural gateway drug if Margaret Ann hadn’t sold the rights to TVA to remove swathes of mature trees and underbrush from her land, just barely a stone’s throw from where her father sold property to the builder of my cabin in the woods?

I feel giddy, mischievous, desiring to pull a joke on someone.

Should I change the password of this account and see how the person who took over my network responds?

You don’t always have to be taller and stronger to win…hehe…we rarely forget the lessons we learned the hard way, rather than reading about them in books!

Bury the Curmudgeon, not the Man

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In business, as well as real life, we make decisions based on evidential test results.

In real life, we made decisions based on opinions, dreams, imaginations and occasionally facts.

So it is with grieving the loss of my father in the rest of my natural life.

He lives on here — in recorded memories and anecdotes, photos and videos, audio files and books — the cybersphere.

I mentally cried in my thoughts up until yesterday, making it…oh, about two and a half weeks of heart-wrenching solace and mourning.

Now, I live with him as a reminder, a silent, unspeaking totem on an imaginary column standing invisibly behind me.

The good and the bad, the kind-hearted elder and the stern disciplinarian wrapped in fading memories.

In other words, I personify the genetic and nurturing elements of a man toward his son, his eldest child.

My father’s influence upon others started at his birth, with most, if not all, who nurtured him now gone, too.  His best friend of 73 years still lives, his neighbourhood playmate, classroom buddy and adult confidant.  His wife of 55+ years — my mother — is quite much alive, although in mental pain as she reconciles the loss of a dear friend and husband, the father of her children.

I am no longer a child.  Bigger problems than the loss of a parent push in on my thoughts but they are not more important.

How do we tell readers that the situation in Syria is merely a place for the national production of weaponry to turn a tidy profit, loss of lives a necessary component of the process?

There’s always some hotbed of violence we can use to our species’ economic advantage.  More people die from person-to-person combat between people who know each other — gunshots, knife stabbings, choking, burning, poisoning — than all terrorist attacks combined.

After all, “terrorist” is a label we reserve for “them,” not amongst ourselves.

The brother who stabs me is not a terrorist — he’s just a close relative with an anger management issue and a drinking problem — unless he gets the attention of the media ahead of time and becomes notorious, shooting off his mouth about socially-unacceptable concepts and ideals.

But we know all that already.  New crops of journalists, editors and publishers seem not to — they just as easily fall prey to the idea of perpetuating extremist thinking for a profit that also divides the political opinions of the majority of Americans, for instance.

Anyway, I digress.

After a discussion with the Committee, I’ve decided to share with you more of the products coming out of our laboratory and into a grocer’s market near you:

  • DNA tracking devices disguised as cereal flakes and coffee beans/grounds
  • Chemical hypnotic material mixed into charcoal briquets that are released at high temperature, used at backyard BBQ events to turn whole crowds into well-organised mobs when the need arises
  • Bacteria in ice cream and other products in the frozen goods department that activate at body temperature, lodging in people’s bodies at strategic locations; can be turned into cancerous growths with a certain level of mobile phone radio signal strength exposure.

Well, that’s all for now.  The use of comic literary devices is all about timing.  We’ll save the rest of the items for a more perfect moment.

Happy eating!

Oh, I’m back in the saddle again…

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Amazing, what a few days mean in the life of one species.

Part of the annual cycle of life here locally, for instance — the little “sugar” ants have found their way into our kitchen sink like clockwork.

And who says astrology doesn’t work — why, the Earth’s position around the Sun is directly connected to these ants before me.

And the Moon-influenced tides…well, I’m sure if I traced the ecosystem connections I could find the tidal pools in the Gulf of Mexico have an indirect influence on the movement of species in and around this domicile.

Not sure about Venus aligning with Earth’s view of its transit across the face of the Sun, though.

But hey?  I’m just a bigger ant on this planet.  What do I know?

Pop music flows through my thoughts today, from this century and centuries past.

Dreams have flowed through my subconscious thoughts, dreams that center on my dead father and his last two months in a variety of healthcare facilities.  Just another shot.  How about one more day with him?  Have we considered this experimental treatment?  Or that one?  Were there any unkind words I said through the years that weighed down his thoughts in his last days?  Did he feel I neglected him recently?

Part of the healing process, no doubt.

A new crossroads in the road in front of me — I can choose “Happiness,” “Depression,” “Anger,” “Denial,” “Remorse,” “Regret,” or the one I plan to take, “Unknown.”

A bit overgrown.  Underused.  Neglected.  Quiet.  Secluded.

In other words, the usual path of mine.

Wandering in and out of the actions of my species.  You, me, us, as usual.

Synching back to my self’s syncopated rhythms, out of step and in tune with our social changes, our connections with the universe at large.

Thinking my thoughts, no matter how strange, weird or normal they may be, sharing a few of them here.

Conforming to (staying within the parameters set by) local laws to preserve my relative freedom from conformity.

Letting subcultures be — live and let live.

Competing in the marketplace of ideas when I feel like going up against adverts of marketing machines blaring deafening sounds and spouting subliminal messages.

So many stories to be told, like the young lady whose [great]grandparents’ home in Hamilton has been transformed for a new generation of nonfamilial owners.  Sound familiar?

Or watching the tiny facial twitches on the President when he gave a[n election season] speech for the unveiling of a previous President’s portrait.  How easy is it for you to be a mind reader then and predict the future?

We learn a lot when we learn alot about Camelot on the backstage lot.

Do kids still learn to type “These are the times that try men’s souls“?

Is there proper thumb-typing body posture or mobile phone use etiquette taught in schools these days?

When technology moves faster than generational education cycles, what is a generational education cycle for, that period of time we stop children from performing manual labour and coerce them into classroom settings between ages 4 and 24, just to watch many of them drop out of the cycle to return to ageless, aging manual labour practices?

In the days when everyone is more equal to everyone else than ever before, is it still safe to refer to the peasant class even where literacy rates are a nonissue and people still want to get their hands on simple, low-paying, physically laborious work, no matter how many memes float through their language-filled thoughts?

How [un]important are the economies of geopolitical zones we call countries like Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland to the global economy at large?  What if we let them deteriorate into complete chaos?  Can we not wait to see the phoenix that rises from the ashes or are we too afraid to risk our investment portfolios to find out?

Why am I sitting here instead of enjoying the pleasant weather outside?

A-ha!  Finally, a question I can answer.  Time to close down this laptop and invite mosquitoes to savour the flavour of the blood-filled organ called my skin.

And remember: a fine, country dinner shared with David and Evelyn in their house overlooking a forested creek; pulling out bushes with David, Melinda, Melinda’s father and John; sorting through family memorabilia with Dan and Fay; Robbie, Aaron, and Christopher at the Rave; Martha at Carson’s Grille; Rogersville Produce Market; Debra, Pat and Veronica at Hales Spring Inn; Pals #13; Oh Henry’s; my blog-connected friends, and more…

Texting While Driving

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If local laws ban texting while driving, how does that affect my habit of writing messages/journal entries in a notepad while I’m sitting behind the wheel aiming a two-tonne machine on tires powered by an internal combustion engine through traffic?

Depending on the part of the world/country in which you live, you might have a preconceived notion about the driver of the vehicle below:

I don’t.  I have seen men, women, boys, girls, Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, blacks, young and old behind the wheel of dubbed-up rim jobs like this rolling down the highway.  I’ve never seen a homeless type person or an Amazonian tribal member driving one, though.

Makes me wonder…

If we’ll spend fifteen thousand dollars on a set of wheels, would we spend fifteen large on annual healthcare or a ride 100 km above Earth’s surface?

I am a childless, dying person so I don’t have to worry about leaving a legacy behind.  I can say what I want and do what I want while deciding if I want to obey local traffic laws when scribbling personal observations and notes to remind myself to thank others for their kindness to me throughout the day.

There are 13,883 days to reach the next milestone.

Thanks to Shannon at Arby’s, Liz at Beauregard’s, Michelle at Dreamland BBQ, the busy staff at Gibson’s BBQ on the last free pie day of April, Nichelle at PVA, Joe and Jenn at KCDC, Irina and Julia, Hannah at Shaggy’s, Danny at Walmart, Jonathan at Anaheim Chili, Ian at the Rave, Lynn, Sarah and Dr. Pugh, and many more.

Pause for thought of the day.

On a personal side note, I’ve found that recent stress has greatly increased my desire for sex.  Very interesting as well as disruptive, as if I’m creating vast stores of testosterone in order to take on and conquer the world.  Makes me not want to look into a person’s eyes because I feel like all the lust inside of me is pouring out through my face.

Spending time on self-examination takes away from building scenarios for the story of our lives told in this blog.

For instance, my dreams have reached vivid proportions.

In last night’s dream, while my wife and I traveled through snowy country on a tandem bike, we topped an icy hill and were suddenly sitting in a car.  Topping the next hill, we happened upon a set of railroad tracks.

We stood by the tracks.  I was holding the reins of a rope harness attached to a cow.  The cow was pulling a set of railroad cars which had big wooden wheels like you see on a child’s playtoy set.

The cow was very tired.  It wanted to get into a hot tub.

I climbed into the hot tub with the cow so it could warm up its legs.  Sitting in the tub was a woman with orange hair and ivory-white skin covered with freckles.  She was a cow whisperer.

My wife asked the cow whisperer to interpret what the cow was saying.  The cow rubbed its head against me like a cat, making low mooing sounds like a cat’s purr.  The cow whisperer said the cow was weary of the ways of the world and wanted to quit pulling the railroad cars.

The cow, tub and whisperer disappeared.  I was standing by the railroad tracks with the rope in my hand.  My wife wanted to go on to the hotel/chalet where we had a reservation.  I pulled hard on the rope and finally got the railroad cars rolling in parallel with the railroad tracks.

We entered the chalet and walked the halls looking for our room.  I kept pulling the rope, wondering if the railroad cars would fit in the hallways and stairwells we walked and walked for a while.

Finally, we found our room.  Inside was a man who looked like the character of Mr. Ripley played by Matt Damon.  The man kept telling us one different story after another about why we had this particular room, including why I had the rope in my hand.  He promised to tell me if the railroad cars would fit in the chalet hallways when the phone rang.

I jerked awake.  The bedside phone rang, disturbing the cats sleeping next to me.  My wife had already left for work.

I answered the phone.  My mother was on the line giving me an update about my father’s stay at the VA.

My wife decided to interpret the images of my subconscious thought for me during dinner at Dreamland BBQ tonight:

  • The cow was my mother and the railroad cars were my father.
  • The man in the hotel room was my alternate egos.

While she told me her interpretation, TV screens around us featured talking heads analysing the recent suicidal death of Junior Seau, a former fearsome NFL player.

While I dreamt, a blind man proved he can change the course of history by standing between the governments of China and the U.S.

If a parrot can live longer than the average member of our species, then a dream can live longer than one civilisation cycle.

And texting while driving is a matter of interpretation.

Time to give my dreams impetus/motivation and transportation!

If it weren’t for the battery life…

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If it weren’t for the battery life I’d keep using the resistive screen of the 7-inch Sylvania Android 2.31 tablet, which meets my basic needs for checking email, listening to Internet radio, looking at some of my favourite websites (as well as a few random ones for edification) and maintaining a daily blog.

That sums up the life of one mortal human being tied to the electronic social network as defined/updated by us in this moment together.

I believe we have arrived back at a blog entry in which the storyline we’d left where the reluctant leader steps back into the picture and tells us how things are going on the Committee, don’t you?

Either that, or release random ASCII character sequences that represent the latest cracked password of a heavily-guarded secret location and let the world of script kiddies have fun for a day.

Sold by Jennifer Nye — independent consultant — the wax of a block of Amber Road ™ Scentsy wax melts in a bowl atop a Morocco warmer which sits in the place where a spider web/dropping covered book by Paul D. Ackerman used to collect dust.

As the room fills with the hints of smells of an exotic bazaar, let us step into the shoes of the reluctant leader and see what’s going on…

Hi there!  Reluctant Leader here again!  Just the other day I was nibbling samples at a shoppe called Nothing Bundt Cake, remembering the scene in some Greek-themed film where a character tries to pronounce the word “bundt.”  In front of me, an eager man watched my every move.

You know the type, always gauging the customer’s desires, trying to meet the character’s needs, catering to the curmudgeon’s every whim, no matter how surly he may be while stroking his curly, unkempt beard.

That was me, the Reluctant Leader, in ordinary disguise, acting upon my urge to Manage By Walking Around.

You see, the Committee is back in crisis mode (is there ever a moment we’re not?).

As you’re fully aware, we coordinate the activities of people you would say are aligned with major political public business entities called nations.

It’s our policy to leave pretty much well alone the individual decisions of those who feel they have been destined to reach the highest offices of their politically-oriented business paths.

For instance, we could predict when the leaders have to use toilet facilities very easily but we’ve learned it’s best to let the leaders think they’ve decided on their own, unpredictably, when they feel the urge, regularly or irregularly (in fact, it was one of my predecessors who won a wager because he accurately predicted when and where George Bush deposited his meal in the lap of another dignitary).

Do you consider yourself one of those average citizens who is mentally engaged in silent conversations with or makes extemporaneous, expository speeches to the people around you about the goings-on of the elected or appointed officials in your geopolitical zone, and get emotionally involved in the actions of officials outside your geopolitical zone?

Chances are you will, if you don’t.

In addition to herding all seven billion of us toward establishing offworld colonies, I have the assigned goal of keeping you believing that world leaders are not actively talking to each other about the apparent rogue actions they take.

Some of you know better.

The Committee is composed of direct representatives of major trends in motion, including the most common sociopolitical movements about to change your life forever.

Because trends range in age from a few fleeting milliseconds to many centuries, the Committee membership varies accordingly.

Just the other day, I found an ancient-looking mummy propped up into a dark corner of the Committee Conference Center (sounds formal, but the room is really just an old cave in, at this time, an undisclosed location near some of you).

I started to ask if any of the Committee members knew where the mummy had come from when it spoke.  Turns out the mummy is an old member of a line of Celtic leaders who’d hope to take over the world a dozen or so centuries ago, but when the vote came up, the mummy had fallen asleep and did not awaken until I started poking around in his pockets for spare change.

He gave me some wisdom that I’ll share with you as soon as I translate the curse words he had for me into something more family-friendly.

Always trust your Mummy to tell you the honest truth about yourself!

Anyway, it’s getting close to lunchtime and I’ve got a few errands to run.  Afterward, I’ll sketch out the plots, subplots and false trails we’re planning to place in the popular news media to keep you clenching your teeth or nodding your head in your belief that subpopulations are out to get you or out to support you, depending on your mood we’ve set at the time.

It’s seems silly spending so much of my time making sure your idle moments are filled with what we want you to think, but if it gets us closer to permanent settlements on other celestial bodies, I’m game.

Does that mean I have to stop calling myself the Reluctant Leader?  It’s not like I completely relish all the fine details of putting subcommittees in action to plant ideas in blogs, tweets and street protests which inspire editors and producers to send their reporters out to fill columns and video screens with the news we want you to use and spread…

But I’m just a character in a blog and that’s my only choice, isn’t it?

More People to Thank…

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Thanks to Judy, Robin, Shawn, Amy, Lisa W, Marla, Carol, Ethan, Heather, Courtney (did I already thank Jeff Gulley and Andy of Ambulance Service of Bristol?); Food City, Marie; Miss Bea’s; Pal’s; Amis Mill Eatery, Tanima; El Paraiso, Lucy; Big Lots, Juanita, Lana, Tori; Advance Auto, Aryonna; Healing Grounds coffee shop, Brandy (barista); Zoomerz 69; Cupboard/BP; VA/CLC, Heidi; Col. Heights Presbyterian church staff and parishioners, neighbours providing food/emotional support; MassMutual, Christine; more to follow…