So you want to be a millionaire…on the run?
Embezzlement – it’s not just for politicians tapping “re-election funds,” anymore.
How to get your very own free billboard ad!
The Value of Money
Tag Archives: happiness
Signature
Dots of white light reflect off domed water spotting tree leaves.
The hum of a heat pump and flapping of paper pinned to the wall indicate warm air flowing through ducted channels under the floor.
A minimalist going with the flow, following the past of least resistance for the simple pleasure of enjoying one’s thoughts.
A pair of thoughts – one’s carbon footprint and annual crop hectare usage – vie for attention.
Solar evacuated tubes give one a desire for relatively cheap “off the grid” independence, DIY, if necessary.
Then all one needs is a reliable source of water and food to claim freedom from social needs.
If that’s what one wants.
Economies of scale ignored for the fact of inexpensive, low disaster-prone land areas on which to live in many places around the world.
Quality of life more important than quantity/length of life.
Segue.
Having never received nor asked permission to live, one moves forward inch-by-inch, seeking balance in every moment rather than promising oneself there will always be a future moment to reconcile one’s brash actions in more youthful days.
Sad, but not depressed.
Begin.
Translating a blog into 16 languages not desired today.
Nobody knows who I am because I do not exist.
Free from agenda, one is and is not, free to stare at the woods with no movement except reaching to drink a cup of tea occasionally.
Purposeless.
Thoughtless.
Happy, but not exhilarated.
Almost absent of emotion altogether.
The perfect state.
Neither chased nor chasing, neither hurried nor held back.
Serenaded by a mechanical hum on a sunny day.
aum…zzz…amen
Orange background colour is a registered trademark
Woz is the wizard of Id…or is it, Superego?
Reminder to self: spend years planting ideas in spouse’s thoughts that a propane tank in the side yard is good insurance fueling gas-powered heat pump and oven/stove when electricity is unavailable in the unforeseeable future.
Dual-use 3D maps – are you taking your government-backed project to the open market?
Agreed
When you need to map the world, a flat screen is flat.
Lone Star Tick
Let’s leave testosterone and oestrogen out of this discussion, shall we?
There are ticks all over the yard.
They’s even a’crawlin’ across my new storage shed, afore I finished a’buildin’ the thing, too!
I’m a’gonna step away from fancy talk for a moment and get down to business.
Smellin’ the wind and tastin’ the rain earlier today, I was.
Nothin’ like a May flower rain shower to give this ol’ pilgrim a sense of what’s a’gonna happen next.
Seen a June bug crawlin’ on the driveway.
It’s another sign I reckon is a’tellin’ me what’s a’gonna happen next.
Thing is, I don’t rightly know if’n I otter tell you’ns.
A suburbanised country boy who’s a’fixin’ to tell you sump’n important to you but not to him.
Don’t feel right.
Don’t seem right.
Should I just keep muh big trap shut and let it happen anyway, you not really able to do much about it no hows?
It’s a modern feudal society, they tell me, but I don’t know what that means, do you?
I’m a Traveler, feedin’ off the land. Watchin’ out for feller predators, I am.
There’s a sucker fish born every minute.
You want I should fix your roof or slap a coat of asphalt on your concrete driveway, gettin’ paid up front, of course?
I can charge it to your credit card so I ain’t the only one a’preyin’ on your financial predicaments.
I don’t barter none. Cash or credit.
Meantime, there’s sump’n acrid on the wind, a cool breeze blowin’ in.
Ya know what that means, don’t ya?
Muh mindreader is here. We’s a’gonna tell you’ns who’s been a’cheatin’ on whom.
A fancy set of wheels and shiny baubles on your fingers, wrists and neck are signs you been barterin’ for sump’n I reckon is worth tellin’ the world about, don’t you?
After all, there’s more in a pot of beans than water-soaked seeds!
Time to read some crawdad shells and see what this blackberry winter’s a’predictin’.
My skin’s a’crawlin’ – them tick bites’ a’itchin’ like nobody’s business. Someone’s in trouble, that’s fer sure.
Watches Nuts and Bolts
Rain fell, as it always seems to do.
Rarely, without the assistance of wind or antigravity, does rain find a way to move upward out of dense humidity we call clouds to reach outer space.
This tale will tail the sordid details of telltale signs of rain.
“Raja!”
“Yes, Lee?”
“When did you first join the Order of Mathemati-e-radicals?”
“Funny you should ask. I was just about to eat my mid-afternoon snack. Here, let me show you.”
Raja put his right index on his nose, drew a straight line in the air down to his breastbone, moved his index finger to his left shoulder and drew a horizontal line across to his right shoulder and then picked up the bowl of freshly-cut fruit on the table.
“Yes, Raja. I know the sign of the Order. Did another member teach you the sign?”
“Not that I’m aware of. My friends at university invited me to attend a special meeting in a large building they called a church. Inside, they made the sign of the Order and informed me they also made the sign before they ate their meals.”
“So…”
“So I’ve been making the sign ever since.”
“And…”
“And one day a member of the Order quoted a long mathematical equation to me after I made the sign, which I could mentally picture as a completion of the formula.”
“You mean he…”
“She…”
“She told you THE formula?”
“Yes. And I could see its beauty immediately, the ultimate explanation of the explanation for everything!”
“She must have assumed you were a higher member of the Order. To share the ‘decoder ring’ in public like that…”
“Yes, well, we weren’t out in the public. Anyway, I quoted her a piece of an esoteric math model developed thousands of years ago, dug up by an archaeologist friend of mine. That got us talking and she inquired about which branch of the Order I belonged to.”
“‘Which branch?’ There are branches?”
“Groups which merely disagree about the purpose of some unsolvable problems, that’s all. Not formal suborders. She holds the belief that no equation is perfect, that a hidden variable, or many, wait to be revealed in even so simple a statement as 1one quals one.”
“She invited you to join the Order after that?”
“No, she assumed I was a member. I guess I’ve always been a member and didn’t know it.”
“What about the Ritual of Initiation?”
“Oh, I’ve taught it to new recruits so many times now I can’t remember.”
“Wow, Raja. To think you slipped into the Order that easily…how many others are like you?”
“Lee, I could say the same about you. How many members require a lot of ceremeny, pomp and circumstance when our only shared goal is the study of the purity of mathematics?”
Lee lifted a glass of water that was three parts per trillion impure. “To the Order!”
Raja raised his fork which speared a piece of what was mostly mango. “May we teach people that the only true religion, science, art, politics or sport is Applied Mathematics – to the Order!”
From the foreign files…
Thanks for the condolences.
Old Mother Hubbard’s not the only one…
…with a bare cupboard.
Another reason that letting the wealthy say all is good is not good.
First Shallow Thoughts of the Day
As far as the recently announced death of an international criminal…my wife and I are optimistically cautious. Of course, the man is credited with full responsibility for the 9/11 attacks but we don’t want him to become a martyrized hero for the opposition, either. He is simply a criminal and should be ignored as such.
However, we can thank our armed forces and intelligence agencies for hopefully reducing the potency of currently-recognised terrorist organizations, fully aware that opponents of established governments perennially sprout like weeds in one name or another.
Let’s hope history forgets about the recently dead criminal and doesn’t make much of his personal impact on civilization. His family and subculture still have to account for contributing to the sins of the son, do they not?
In my opinion, Saudi Arabia still has blood on its oily repressive government hands – leaders in that country have a long way to go to grant freedoms to their people and prevent future uprisings or terrorist training camps.
In the meantime, let’s celebrate a meaningful victory for military veterans and others who’ve been injured, critically or fatally, and the sacrifices families have made in the effort to pursue “justice,” as U.S. presidents, current and former, call this event.
I will not say we can justify the death of one person for any reason until the day I give in and admit we are a barbarous species.
One thousand years from now, we will look back and say today’s generation was still barbarous but let’s hope we figure a way out of our interspecies killing path.
Best comment of the day
I bet Bin Laden regrets allowing his iPhone app to “use his current location”. — from Megan, under Yahoo comments.
Flush out the covey and watch the hunters take pot shots at the rest of the flock.
Anyone for guessing who the next official “Public Enemy No. 1” will be? My inquiring mindful bookie wants to know.
Thanks to the anonymous neighbour and his son for checking to make sure my wife and I hadn’t succumbed to CO fumes pouring out of the generator that was running hours after we had power.
Time to read what my ants had built and see if this here future is all they say it’s gonna be – them wooly worms ain’t been as good a fortuneteller as my Crab Orchard neighbour promised me that night we finished off a jug of ol’ “mountain dew.”
Six-legged creatures are just as good, I reckon.
That’s all she wrote for this evenin’ – my bottle of muscadine wine has run its course through muh veins.
Night, y’all!
treetrunkdings 