Tag Archives: government

Always testing the waters, sometimes diving in…

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Lists, lists, lists.  Somewhere, probably in Italy at this time, is a person of international fame, if not fortune, who teaches and writes — Mr. Umberto Eco — a man who collects books, even if he does not read them all.

If, if, if.

I was a pledge for a fraternity to which my father belonged in his college days — Delta Tau Delta.

In the pile of papers I found yesterday, after clearing out a bunch of books I don’t need so that others may enjoy their literary/financial worth (sorry, Mr. Eco, I can’t hoard books my whole life — I must learn to let go of my physical possessions as I get closer to my natural death and the loss of all connections to our civilised lives here on Earth), a list of fellow pledges at DTD:

Name, hometown, classification/year, major, local address, local phone
Russ H., Knoxville TN, sophomore, communications, 970 Sunnydale, 693-9353
Bill Smith, Jamestown NC, sophomore, architecture, ?, 974-3843
Greg Scaione, East Brunswick NJ, freshman, political science, ?, 974-2689
David Lucas, Lexington KY, freshman, civil engineering, East Stadium Hall, x-4752
Mike Hinton, Fairfax VA, freshman, aerospace engineering, Greeve Hall, x-8098
David Rice, Knoxville TN, ?, undecided, Hess Hall, x-4062

The year was probably 1982, possibly 1983.  Like going through the ritual ceremony at DeMolay where I observed archaic symbols and recited passages I was supposed to share with no one, feeling more at ease in Boys Scout, I was turned off by Delta Tau Delta after going through the pledge/plebe ritual at Delta Tau Delta.

All that secret society mumbo-jumbo seemed outdated and also…somehow…wrong.

The same was true with some Boy Scout rituals like Order of the Arrow — the whole “rites of passage into adulthood” thing shrouded in stuff we’re not to tell young ones or those who were not deserving of being tapped out.

The only way I could keep from sharing these special words, phrases, hand signals and such was to forget what I saw and heard.

There is no privilege in rank.  Prestige is a crutch on which those without self-esteem lean, it seems, when I look at those who seek rank and privilege.

Those who do not seek but are given special rewards for their sacrifices to the greater social good are a different category.

I can understand why wise sages promote collections of instructions for social behaviour that encourage us to act naturally and let those whose natural acts selflessly benefit the species receive recognition from the rest of us.

The ant and the grasshopper.

Tomorrow or later this week, the judges who sit up high on the U.S. Supreme Court will issue their ruling about a social safety net nicknamed Obamacare.

I have seen the effects of this net, the result of national legislation, in that my mother in-law and father accrued a large cost in medical care by private practice doctors and public hospitals without having to pay a penny themselves; on the other hand, my former brother in-law has complained, amongst others, of having to pay higher out-of-pocket medical insurance premiums the last couple of years to pay for the social safety net.

The cost of running a local business in the U.S. includes socialised programs we call Social Security, Medicare and income taxes for general social government expenses, to name a few, if one has employees on the payroll, the business owner, too, that is.

A natural-born citizen takes no test or learns a secret ritual to earn full social safety net rights of citizenry.  A person not born in this country who becomes a full citizen must take a test and pledge allegiance to gain access to the social safety net legally.

I have a story to tell that takes me out of this realm of day-to-day worries about pledges and social safety nets but I am here to tell the story because of them.

In other words, a system for which I had no direct say/vote in implementing has directly benefited me very recently.  Some of the people who voted for the national legislation in Congress are members of secret societies such as fraternities, Masons, and Skull and Bones.

How many of us get full benefits of a social safety net without lifting a finger to help others in need?

Or do we give more than we receive?

Is there any way to measure our place in the economic and noneconomic portions of our society?  Does there have to be a balance or do we push our debt forward?

What if we paid it forward?

What is a secret smile shared between two strangers worth if it lifted the spirits of a dying person, lowering the need for, and thus the cost of, pain medication?

It’s about time to return to the story of Agirita and her new friend.

Their story is our story.

Allegorical, cynical, satirical.

I met a smile I liked before a metaphor is like a simile.

Rick is back for a brief moment: he thanks Chrispine, Avance, Ruth Ann, Stain, Matthew, Princess, Molly and others.

Legislative Act No. 34e5-1c

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Let it be known throughout the land that on this day, the 20th day of our month of the longest day in which we bless the harvest that will receive the most highest sunlight for lo, these many days, that our latest legislative act, No. 34e5-1c, has been sent out for our citizens’ enlightened reading and understanding.

Let this legislative act bring onto our people the deepest meaning in their lives as the details of this act are more fully appreciated when the days of their lives are filled with more and more acts like this one that conflicts with both older and newer acts, confusing our citizens and making them less efficient but also less likely to figure out that the body of the legislative electorate is just as confused and conflicted and thus not a good reason for the citizens to cause an uprising and take over the crafting of crafty legislation like this, No. 34e5-1c.

Let this legislative act forever after to be known as the Greening of Our Land.

Let this act be carried with the following rules set in place and enforced by our glorious protectors, the Serve-and-Protect Police Brigade and Lawyer Guild.

Therefore, upon giving these rules unto you, our citizens, the denizens of peaceful obeyance but not yet abeyance (not for a while, at least), you shall agree to abide by them until such time as enough conflict and confusion makes it difficult for all of us to comprehend how this ties in to our regular daily lives, let alone the thoughts expressed in written opinions by our Founding Fathers  Cohabitating Fertile Birth Partners.

Here are the rules:

  1. Now, and forever more, shall the delivery of household pesticides, herbicides and other means to control the spread of unlegislated life unto the domiciles of our citizens not be made by land-based individual pest control or lawn maintenance service vehicles.
  2. Now, and forever more, shall the purchase of household pesticides, herbicides and other means to control the spread of unlegislated life unto the domiciles of our citizens not be made by citizens or their representatives at retail, wholesale or other outlets.
  3. From this point forward shall the delivery of household pesticides, herbicides and other means to control the spread of unlegislated life unto the domiciles of our citizens be made by aircraft authorized to spray or otherwise drop from the sky household pesticides, herbicides and other means to control the spread of unlegislated life unto the domiciles of our citizens.
  4. For the sake of these rules, the word “domiciles” refers to places of habitation by our citizens, which may include, but not inclusively, houses, huts, recreational vehicles (a/k/a caravans), offices, warehouses, shopping centres, tents, and other places that members of the Serve-and-Protect Police Brigade and Lawyer Guild deem necessary to prevent the intrusion of unlegislated life into the productive, efficient lives of our esteemed citizens.
  5. For the sake of these rules, the word “citizens” is currently undefined, having fallen out of favour, much like the phrases “global warming” and “scented air fresheners,” replaced, as needed, with words that serve a happier purpose, like “corporation virtual person,” “replaceable cost of production,” “cyberspace inhabitant,” or other terms joyfully associated with the legislative body that spent long, arduous hours crafting these rules after many nights away from family while drunkenly carousing in local pubs, avoiding sunshine laws, where serious drafting of these rules took place out of view of citizens’ galleries above legislative debate chambers.
  6. Any protests against the release of these rules shall be deemed treasonous.  All protestors are subject to summary judgement by the Serve-and-Protect Police Brigade and Lawyer Guild and shot on sight as needed to preserve the peace.
  7. Any derogatory or inflammatory statements in relation to this Act shall be censored from Internet search results.
  8. Any Internet searches for negative responses to this Act shall be deemed anticitizenry behaviour and the deviants sent to retraining camps immediately.
  9. All happy, positive reinforcing behaviour associated with this act shall be rewarded with extracitizen rights and privileges.  See Act No. 87-2w for details about extracitizen rights and privileges for which you may be eligible (note: the Act is not now currently available for general citizenry review; only those already having extracitizen rights and privileges may see how they can obtain extracitizen rights and privileges in the first place).
  10. Thus concludes the current set of rules assigned to this Act.

This Act may be added upon or revoked at any time without prior consent from citizens, their legislative representatives, or members of the Serve-and-Protect Police Brigade and Lawyer Guild.  Further, revocations of or additions to this Act need not be sent to the citizens in any form, now or ever.

My mother’s valedictorian speech — 60 years later…

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Evelyn’s Valedictorian’s Speech

for Graduation at Everett High School

Maryville, Tennessee

May, 1952

Blount County Schools

Our schools in the past have had an important part in making our county the great county that it is.  You have heard the report from Miss Long which tells us what our schools have meant to many of our professional and industrial leaders.  It is true that we have accomplished much, but we must not be satisfied until we have made our schools meet the needs of our people.

There are many needs, but I shall discuss only a few.

It seems to me that one of the most important needs is to let our schools grow up.  The old ways of living have passed.  We are now in an electrical and atomic age.  Educational facilities of horse and buggy and dirt road days do not meet the need of our motorized and fast moving age.  Our industries have grown into adulthood and our employers are demanding that our employees have more and better training.

We must stop looking at our schools as childish toys and our teachers as baby-sitters.  We must see our schools as institutions where the lives of our youth are being molded to become leaders who will have life’s responsibilities of tomorrow.  Children are not toys to be played with, but men and women in the making.  They must be given the principals [sic] of health, honesty, moral and spiritual living.  The school environment must be such that these principals [sic] can be properly taught.  Children must not only be taught, but must see the things practiced which are taught.

In the pictures which you have seen you noticed that all lunchrooms in the old buildings were in basements where artificial light was necessary and ventilation was very poor.  In the new buildings you noticed that lunch-rooms were modern and the most attractive room in the building.  This is as it should be.  Do you know of any home where the kitchen and dining room is in the basement?  If we practice in the schools the things which are taught, teaching is much more effective.  We are taught that in order to digest our food properly we should have a cheerful and happy environment.  It is evidence of growth in our schools when we take our lunchrooms out of dingy, damp, dark basements and put them in light attractive rooms.

There is a need for school growth in our transportation system.  We teach moral, and spiritual growth in our schools, but when we get on our bus to go home, boys and girls are packed together like sardines in a can.  We have one bus which has a seating capacity of 48.  The driver says that at times he has a load of 86.  Such conditions do not teach moral and clean living.  We need to allow our transportation system to grow up so that boys and girls can ride as our adults ride.

We must see our school needs and have a desire to do something about them before our needs are supplied.

We are able to supply our needs.  We are living in one of the wealthiest and most progressive counties in the state.  In population we rank 9th.  In wealth we rank 6th.  We are rich in industries.  We have excellent farming land.  We have lumber.  We have thousands of tourists.  We have marble.  But our greatest asset is the boys and girls in our schools.  We have the material.  If we have the will we can supply our needs.  There is evidence that we have that desire.  Within recent months our County Court has appropiated [sic] an additional $3,000,000 to meet pressing building needs.  Our school should prepare students for life responsibilities whatever they may be.  We are facing many new and difficult problems which must be rightly solved or our national life, as we know it today will be in danger.  Our educational system is the key to a solution of many of these problems.  In 1941 in Blount County 1124 children entered the first grade.  In 1950 there 1307 entered.  In 1941 we had 359 entering high school.  In 1950 there were 698 entering high school.  Our county superintendent said that he expects 150 more first grade pupils next year than we had this year.  This means that we will need 5 new teachers and of course 5 new classrooms for the teachers in the first grade.  It also means more teaching material and more buses.  This is only an example to show how our schools are growing.  If our schools are to adequately prepare our pupils for tomorrow’s citizenship, these needs must be supplied.

We are building great industries where people are earning a comfortable living.  We are improving our farms so that we may have better crops.  We are building more comfortable and attractive homes and we are furnishing them with the most modern equipment.  We are building larger and more beautiful church buildings where we can satisfy the hunger of our souls with the Bread of Life.

We are making progress, but much needs to be done.  Our school buildings and grounds must be made attractive and kept that way the entire year.  We must pay our teachers so that we can get the best.  Then we must demand of them satisfactory service.  Our transportation system must be modernized so that each youth will have a place to sit in decency and comfort.

God had given us our beautiful country.  He has given our county more than 10,000 school boys and girls.  293 of this number are graduating from high school this spring.  We thank God for His blessings upon us.  We thank you public officials and our parents for your efforts on our behalf, but our work is only in its beginning.

Fellow Classmates!  We have had many difficult problems during the past four years.  But now payday has come.  In our joy let us not forget those who have made this day possible for us.  Jesus healed ten lepers at one time, and only one returned to thank Him.  Let us be like that one.

Parents, teachers, and friends, if it had not been for your patience, thoughtfulness, interest, and love we could not have come to this hour.  We thank you, and we promise to work with you in making our schools the best possible, and our county a better place to live.  We shall do our best to live in such a way that you will not be disappointed in life.

=======

NOTE: My mother’s school advisor for this speech was also a local minister.

Do not combine “6,” “four”, “nineteen,”eighty,” and “9” together in one sentence

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With only 13,850 days to go until the next major milestone is reached (there, of course, are bonuses should we complete any of the many minor assignments for the milestone ahead of time), let us look at the theories of the day and ponder their implications…

In previous decades, we could ruin the reputation of guns-for-hire or “secret agents” by outing them — exposing their homosexual trysts/relationships through a mass media leak.

Times have changed.

It takes more than outing a spy to turn the spy into a criminal.

These days, we have to claim the operative is a cannibal.

Hey, go with the flow.  If zombie films and zombie apocalypse shows on the tellie are popular, then take advantage of the zeitgeist and make spies zombies amongst us.

That’s why we turned a “Canadian” agent into a flesh-carving and eating zombie.

It would have been a lot easier to send photos of him with his Chinese boyfriend, a double agent himself, to a television talking head but *YAWN* the producers would have said, “So what?,” and parked the pics in the morgue.

Instead, hire a body-double, stage an Internet viral video or two, send a few body parts to government offices and next thing you know you’ve turned a useless rogue agent into a grotesque mockery of a good cover story of a porn star trying to infiltrate the snuff film industry.

Thing is, we in the government are a little short of cash right now.  Anyone want to buy the film rights to this soon-to-be blockbuster quadrilogy that makes the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo look like a baby’s bedtime story?

James Bond may like fisticuffs but our new fictional psychopathic agent will do whatever it takes, including consuming his victims, to serve Queen and Country.

“O Canada, we stand on guard, we stand on guard for thee…”

Meanwhile, in a test of the possible terrorist spread of tropical disease (Chagas, etc.), we released genetically-modified bedbugs into luggage traveling through busy airports — Denver, Munich, Beijing, and Moscow (we tried London but their security is locked down tight ahead of the Queen’s rainy reign anniversary and the 2012 Olympics).

We tracked the bugs, which are invisible, pure black boxes, under UV and infrared light, only visible through the radiation detectors installed in popular mobile phones, to see how reasonable to believe such a terrorist threat could be.

Strangely enough, we’ve caused a quiet epidemic of dandruff.

Ahh…the unintended effects of a fielded theoretical experiment.

We don’t dare tell you what happened to the irradiated fibers we placed in bus and train seats last year…

A Voice in Anger

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Or, how the goons of Rocket City (the Huntsville Utilities tree trimming crew) ruined my wife’s day and thus mine.

It has been a long year.

First, my wife’s mother fell ill back last March/April and died in November.

Then, immediately following, my father’s health declined rapidly.

Sure, it’s the cycle of life and all that, but it’s also emotionally/physically draining.

Then, to make matters worse, a crape myrtle I have protected year after year from the butchery of power line tree trimmers was nearly slaughtered by the uncaring, untrained hands of those less-educated brutes who attacked my wife’s favourite blooming bush at the end of the driveway this morning.

From a 20-foot tall beauty to a 3-foot stump in a matter of minutes.

All while my mother, sister, niece and I fret over the care my father receives with the caring, trained hands of the medical staff at the local VA hospital.

In addition, an heirloom Rose of Sharon was damaged, along with two smaller crape myrtle bushes.

This, my friends, in the town that helped put men on the Moon!

So, let us serve as a warning to those wanting to move to Huntsville, Alabama, USA.

Yes, it is in the state where George Wallace stood on the steps of the University of Alabama, barring African-Americans from crossing the threshold of higher education.

Butchers still live in this area of the world.

They hide behind chainsaws and cherry pickers, taking out the frustrations of their home lives on the helpless hybrid plants growing beneath the hazardous, humming harbingers of electrical shocks and high monthly utility bills.

They exist to make your life miserable.

They succeeded today.

Where’s a city forester to provide an educated point of view about how to carefully trim trees and bushes for the health of citizens?

Today, I am very unhappy…modern civilisation has let me down.

But then again, based on recent reports of 8th graders, science is not their best subject, which leads directly (through misunderstanding a tree’s anatomy and human psychology) to why government tree trimmers have a lack of understanding the need to aesthetically please the people who pay their salaries.

Maybe I ought to lobby to fire a few tree trimmers or heavily reduce their income to balance the local government budget?

Or at least educate today’s kids to become better qualified tree trimmers in the future.

Even after writing this blog entry, I still don’t feel better.

There’s a stump in the yard where a majestic myrtle once stood and there’s not a single thing I do about it from here, except shoot pictures and ask questions later about Huntsville Utilities departmental budgets and personnel files (nothing like an inside job to build a paper trail and get revenge the cold, hard way — expense report abuse and timecard fraud are common offenses, for starters — local government officials failing the newspaper test right before fall elections).

We may be on the verge of populating space habitats, making a lot of us very busy, but there’s still time to play games with people’s lives who cross my path and upset my wife in the process…

Meanwhile, on another planet

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Here it is, I have to coordinate the Committee contracts with newly “elected” leaders like Putin and Hollande to ensure we keep our species moving in the direction on which we secretly agreed out in the open, using adverts on billboards and popular websites to describe the project plan, and then, family issues appear, like aliens from another planet, forcing me to bring forth my colleagues to measure certain people for cement shoes.

Either that, or manage their lives through closer surveillance, as usual.

For instance, I get a message like this:

Hello Richard,

Before I go into addressing your concern, I’d like to first apologize for the delay in my responding to your inquiry. Yahoo! Customer Care is committed to answering your questions as quickly and accurately as possible. However, we are currently receiving unusually high volumes which caused the delayed response.

I am sorry you have been unable to access your fathers Yahoo! account. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
I have reviewed this case and I would like to apologize for our previous responses as they were not as clear as they could have been.
As stated in the Yahoo! Terms of Service, Yahoo! accounts and any contents therein are non-transferable including when the account holder is ill or deceased. As a result, Yahoo! cannot provide passwords or access to another users’ accounts including account content such as email. To view Yahoo!’s Terms of Service click:
I hope this information helps, please reply to this message if you have any additional questions or concerns, I will be happy to help.
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Account Services.

Regards,

Dalton
Yahoo! Customer Care

What am I expected to say in an electronic paper trail?  What else, of course?:

Dalton,

Thanks for taking the time to respond and explain Yahoo! policy regarding personal accounts.  I had discussed this with my mother — we talked with a lawyer who said that we could pursue a court order to gain access to Dad’s Yahoo! account but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that Yahoo! will comply with the court order.  Therefore, we’ve resigned ourselves to losing my father’s correspondence with friends and family through the years.  We hope we’ve figured out the financial transactions that were unresolved and closed them.

I completely understand the strict policies that email providers like Yahoo! have put in place to protect their customers.  However, I hope that in the future, we as a civilized society can accommodate digital wills and powers of attorney that give families and associates access to online accounts (especially as cloud services become prevalent) when critical health issues and/or deaths occur unexpectedly.

Regards,
Rick

Shall I complete the takedown of a CEO or two?  After all, Walmart and Yahoo! leadership positions look a little shaky right now, don’t they?  Maybe I should add a few email provider policy creators to the CEO guests on my version of Who’s Still Standing?!

Talk about alien encounters!

While we’re on the subject, I accepted PegLegs request to join the Committee.

See, as a marathon runner, PegLegs offers us a unique perspective.

Just the other day, she completed a 50 marathons in 50 days quest.

As a cover, that is…

She was sent to investigate a rash of reports that tractor-trailer rigs (a/k/a lorries) are spewing more than their usual black smoke trails into the air vents of overly sensitive minicaravan drivers and their spoiled brats vegetatively watching cotton candy viddies in the backseats.

Which can mean only one thing: we’ve reached critical mass in owner-operators hitting rock-bottom, no longer able to afford to maintain their over-the-road vehicles.

One step closer to the global strike by transportation workers…

PegLegs, while pounding her feet on pavement, discovered a new algorithm that tracks those who don’t want to be tracked simply by using crowd identification software to eliminate the trails of people who freely share their geolocation data, making those who don’t want to share their personal lives stand out like a hot dog stand on the last piece of Arctic ice going down the throat of a polar bear burning up in the steaming waters of a global warming sea current changing directions because there aren’t enough whales to release natural gas after eating giant Pacific squids looking for something to eat ever since Cameron’s deep sea dive poisoned the frigid depths with his hot air.

And now we return you to life 1000 years later…

Thanks to Chasity at Perkins; John, Jeremy, Peggy, Dr, Bokor, Stephanie and Brad at VA ICU; Robert at the Rave; Thomas at Chick fil A; Julie and Carla at Tuesday Morning; Esther at Hobby Lobby; Mapco.

How many people have you met in your lifetime?

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I remember when it took months, sometimes years, for the result of litigation concerning an automobile smashup to be announced.

This morning, while I reprogrammed the connections between my synapses and the autonomous transport vehicle carrying my physical presence to another location on our home planet, I caused the vehicle’s guidance system to malfunction, resulting in a smashup on an offramp of the local highway.

I stare at the hole in my labour/investment credit account where I was billed a large sum to be paid off in installments to cover the cost of the smashup as well as medical bills and the usual “fee” for pain and suffering to prevent someone like me from thinking about toying with transportation vehicles en route.

Yes, the news was filled with photos and diagrams of the smashup, claiming a new record — five seconds — was set between the end of the smashup and the guilty verdict given to me, a few nanoseconds before my account was sucked dry.

I’m lucky.  I can remember a time when we had real lawyers and judges who worked out deals in judge’s chambers or argued cases in newspaper headlines in order to sway a jury of one’s peers.

Now, our fully connected surveillance and transport system monitoring equipment can sort out the cause-and-effect event instantaneously, leaving a small assortment of people to plea their legal issues in front of computerised/crowdsourced adjudications.

A child dies from a bee sting.  The bee’s venom is traced to a natural hive.  The parents have already banked on their child’s future earning potential.  They want justice.

To whom do they turn?

I am the last of my breed.  It’s my job to decide if the natural hive has thrived because of a local farm or the nearby section of the globalised network of natural parks.

Should I award the parents their citizenry “fee” based on the limited earnings of the farmer or the seemingly unlimited earnings of the global government’s Natural Park Management Foundation?

As judge, jury and lawyer for both sides, I take every case handed to me seriously.

Besides, I have a new subculture to pay for over the next five decades, since in a subsequent ruling, it was decided that my smashup caused a future reconfiguration of the small neighbourhood in which the smashup took place.  I have to foot the bill for the whole shebang?!  Wow!

After monitoring the tracers I inserted in 20% of the beehive workers, it appears that nearly a 50/50 split exists between bees who visit the natural park and bees who pollinate the farmer’s crop.

Hmm…

Do I follow previous rulings that say a party which has even the slightest responsibility over 50%, no matter whether it’s 99.9999% or 50.0000000001%, is automatically guilty of the whole thing?

Do I rule that minor accessories to a crime are just as guilty but only responsible for their slice of the pie?

Do I rule the parents are at fault for letting their child, known before birth for susceptibility to fatal bee stings, walk through a strip of grass between her domicile and the transportation device which took her from one parent’s workplace back home during Take Your Child To Telework/Shared Office Space Day?

I have three seconds left to decide this case.

I’ll take a one-second nap and then submit my ruling for crowdsourced refinement, which usually only takes a few more seconds before the case’s outcome is officially stamped and approved, the sting of a single bee changing the course of our whole species in an instant.

As Joggers Pass by the Cedar-Sided House in the Woods…

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Working with my cadre of computer coders to gather data from (i.e., infiltrate) the apps most commonly downloaded by the hapless, in order to prepare a future of inexactitude.

The Chinese and [some] African national leaders say they are preparing a future that corrects the mistakes of Western foreign policies of the past.

Former enemies, the Brits and the Spaniards, approach a nearterm future of recessionary policy correction.

How long can we continue to suffer the pains of governments shrinking their influence upon the economy until the next breakthrough occurs?

Do we reword our headlines to say high unemployment rates are the goals we are achieving?

How do we prove to the restless youth that we’re encouraging them to think for themselves, outside the cereal box of toys and teeth-rotting sugary substances that drain their futures?

You are challenged to create the future in your own image.

You don’t have to depend on mass media portrayals of backyard BBQs, retirement accounts, jogging baby strollers and mobile phone technology implants because you need to communicate your thoughts before you think them.

Rushing into the future is no rush.  The highs get duller and duller.

Crime is a matter of perspective.

As joggers pass by the cedar-sided house in the woods, they burn energy, converting their sets of states of energy into portable heaters.

That’s the future you want to concentrate on.

The one that matters most.

After all, what distinguishes a natural-born member of our species from a cybernetic simulation?

Is it the jogger, the cedar siding, the house, or the woods?

A question posed 1000 years from now on a celestial body far from Earth.

That’s your future we derived from your app data.

Deal with it.

The Wisdom of Southern Football

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Well, what do we have here today, young’ns, to stick between our teeth and gums, salivating over a big wad of molasses-soaked tobacco chaw, counting back the days of our youth when life was simple again?

Seems like only yesterday I was working amongst the wee people of the Emerald Isle, they being mostly Catholic in the southern part of the country.

And there I was, standing tall in their misty midst, wearing a shirt that proudly proclaimed the colours of [one of] my alma mater(s).

The University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Not far from Pigeon Forge, near to the place where adults and children alike enjoy the entertainment of Dollywood, named after Dolly Parton, who has one of the straightest, flattest roads in the county named after her, not to mention the cloned sheep, Dolly, also named in her honour but not for her road-worthiness.

‘Twas my boss, a fine fellow of the name of John Curran, if my memory serves me correctly (and after many a tiny sip of poteen, I can’t say my memory is what it was or or will be), who pointed at my shirt and asked what I was trying to provoke.

Were there rivals of the SEC (Southeastern Conference) there in our Shannon office I didn’t know about?

“Provoke?”

“Yes,” he said, half-angry, half-mockingly, “that jersey of yours is worse than anything you could put on to rile up the Munster or Leinster fans…you know that, don’t you?”

“I can’t say that I do. Is there something I’m missing here?”

“Missing? Yes! Eight hundred years of oppression! Have you not heard of the Orange marching down our streets, looking for trouble? Do you not know you’re working in Catholic country?”

I looked at my orange-and-white striped shirt, with a emblem showing an overlapped U and T. “It’s the colours of the University of Tennessee.”

“Not around here, it’s not. You might as well say you don’t want to work here. If you wear that shirt again, I’ll have to fire you. I’d suggest you go back to the hotel and change. Otherwise, I can’t promise what some of the guys here’ll do to you when no one’s looking!”

At least that explained why it appeared the waiter had spit into my Irish breakfast that morning.

So, you see, that’s the way it goes. We never know what kind of cud others are chewing on and mulling over.

A few days ago, I stopped at a petrol station to fuel my car and put food in my belly.

I parked next to a caravan full of young women who looked like they were on their way to a rally of some sort.

Pasted across parts of their vehicle were stickers that looked like a curly, capital letter – “A”.

Figuring them to be members of a sports team associated with the University of Alabama, I asked if they were fans of the Crimson Tide.

“Huh?” the leader asked me.

I pointed at the stickers on the caravan.

“Oh, those!” She and the other women laughed. “No, we’re not fans of the Crimson Tide. You see, it’s our symbol.”

I nodded, my turn to look confused.

“You know,” she said, and planted a big kiss on the lips of the woman next to her.

I might be dense at times but I can see Lilith Fair groupies when they spell it out for me. “But…”

“Yes, we know what you’re thinking. We were tired of the same old stickers that implied our gender preference. We heard that gay men now put Auburn stickers on their cars and wear Auburn colours to indicate their preference. We figured that we’d wear the colours of the rival to Auburn — the University of Alabama — to indicate ours.”

And I thought my orange jersey stirred up controversy.

Oh well, next thing I know, it’ll be the Manchester United scarf that represents the whole LGBT community.

Or that the 2012 London Olympics symbology is a cover for British members of al Qaeda, Red Guard and other gangs vying for “baddest of the bad” designation in mass media portrayals.

BTW, according to a journalist friend of mine, the government’s royal guard is secretly training an elite corps of prostitutes to act as supplemental entertainment for the Inner Circle and an outer line of protection against prying journalists and indiscreet hotel employees.