Tag Archives: humour
Books galore
While the remnants of hurricanes and typhoons perform their whirlwind dances, stranding, killing, dousing, removing the doubts of droughts (and draughts (or drafts) of drafts (or draughts)), the author returns to the habit of bookreading, starting with Ringleyville USA.
Next on the list (typed on an Apple iPad at a Barnes and Noble Cafe):
1. “Writing and Difference” by Jacques Derrida, (c) 1978
2. “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets” by Michael J. Sandel, (c) 2012
3. “Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion” by Alain de Botton, (c) 2012
Patrons walk through the store, browsing like eddies spun off from the whirlwinds of society — business, leisure, school — stirring up dust mites, mighty dust, dirl devils and other remnants of life billions of ago on Mars.
In the distance, Chinese leaders secure relationships with Indian and German leaders, both political and business, Iran uses the Syrian infighting for further diversions from its national nuclear weaponry plans, crape myrtle bushes shed the last of the summer’s petals, and our tiny planet participates in the whirlwinds spun out by an imaginatively big galaxy.
In the last instance is the focus of our story, for we need the distance between our tale and our species to get away from men carrying baby carriages with their foamy lattes and mothers taking their tiny children for frothy milk and cookies on a Friday afternoon, husbands using the calendar coupon on the last day of August for a free spicy chicken sandwich at Chick Fil-A to get out of the house and explore why fiction that doesn’t include us DOES include us.
All in the name of entertainment to explain why a pebble in a pond is just the intersection of differing dense sets of states of energy.
The Huntsville shuttle bus speeds through the Jones Valley Farm shopping Centre.
When will the first tourista-nauts sit in their luxury weightless orbits, staring out of portholes at the thin atmosphere that separates us from the relative vacuum of space?
It is the answer that carries us to a question 1000 years from now.
Philosophy, religion, economy, politics — these subjects weigh down and anchor our thoughts to this moment.
Without these subjects, we create people who are not people, sentient beings whose “organs” are spread across the solar system, similar to us in some ways but much better at rapid thought processing and self-replication than us as we know ourselves now.
That is the object of the subjects of this storyline, the tale that weaves in and out of our lives from a fourth dimensional distance.
It does not care about gender preferences, origin stories, employment rates or tax burdens.
Progress is not its middle name.
The storyline is.
It exists, speaking all languages and no language, soaking in solar rays and cosmic rays, emitting energy like there’s no tomorrow.
Let the tale begin the beguine again…
Mashup of the day
When Apple has the patent on robotic mechanical breathing devices, will your newborn baby have to pay royalties for taking its first breath?
Rumour graphic of the day
Domestic quarrels
Domestically, how many entertainers whose salaries put them in a category called the 1% wrap themselves up in “Occupy Wall Street” symbology, bashing others for proudly showing and protecting their wealth, when the entertainers themselves have financial advisors and accountants setting up tax shelters and foundations to protect the entertainers’ wealth?
I watched a few minutes of…
Wait a minute. I was about to comment about an entertainer whose whole purpose in life is to get rich riling up people as they watch his show on TV.
If I mention his name and what he said (making fun of another person’s body weight, one of the weakest attack methods in debating), then I promoted him and his show.
Instead, let me practice the method of “water on a duck’s back” and return to storytelling of my own, a time 1000 years from now when all of this, though entertaining to me in the moment, is forgotten.
…while watching my neighbours rush up and down our quiet suburban street in their motor vehicles like they’re running from a pack of rabid dogs.
An ordinary walk on an ordinary day…
Where shall one find peace in the midst of chaotic violence?
How shall one shed the labels and symbols of one’s youth in order to move into a comfort zone?
Should one consider questions such as “Am I better off now than I was four years ago?”
If the answer is no, then what? If yes, what then?
Desperate times call for desperate measures, the saying goes.
What if the times are just so-so, not good, not bad, just malaise and blasé rolled onto bland dough?
What of the longterm plans to populate celestial spheres with Earth-based lifeforms?
What of other plans not documented here?
Where will the storyline take us next?
Mexican warlords directing drug mules to attack and destroy American police stations kamikaze style?
Roving gangs of rogue police officers no longer beholden to upholding the law, having no pensions or medical coverage to prop up their lack of loyalty to authority, using the disguise of their uniforms to spread chaos and violence in once peaceful sub/ex/urban environs until their demands are met?
What about advances in science not covered by pop culture mass media outlets?
How do we train a whole species to reduce consumption in order to push potential catastrophic crop failure effects farther into the future?
Order and chaos — the classic dynamic dichotomy.
Extra ordinary today and that is okay.
Ahh…there’s a tug on the leash. Time to go.
Happy 26th anniversary to wife and self. Hard to believe we met in summer church camp 38 years ago!
The World is My Oyster Bed
This is one of those days when meditating on life, the nature preserve in the front yard, and the happiness of peaceful bliss suffices.
13, 764 days to go.
Pithy quote from slate.com
From Alan Lightman’s intricate 1993 novel Einstein’s Dreams; set in Berne in 1905:
With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.
From:
“I’m Not Fighting or Battling Cancer—It’s Fighting Me.”
The “unpublished jottings” of Christopher Hitchens from his posthumous book, Mortality.
By Christopher Hitchens and David Plotz
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2012, at 2:13 PM ET
Erlebe. Entdecke. Teile.
Und lass uns wissen, wie es dir gefällt…
I guess it’s time to move back out 1000 years from now, when the reverberant effect of the Montana Freemen (not Morgan Freeman) and the “overreaching power” of Janet Reno (not Reno 911) repeat themselves ad nauseum.
As will undoubtedly play out, larger and larger groups will form to counter the perceived threat against a way of life that is neither here nor there.
Will it just be another fringe group effect, with a few people willing to die for their beliefs or, if the economy sours further, will a coalition build that has momentum bigger than the forces necessary to stop smallscale uprisings?
Little did I ever realise that I would be able to move into an area of life that is seemingly above and beyond all local calls for action.
I defend life itself, regardless of temporal politics.
My goals are to maintain a storyline that is outside one species or even one world.
Even so, I can entertain myself along the way, move a few chess pieces and watch the pond waves scatter.
Observe archetypes listening to clandestine MP3s and homemade DVDs in public carparks in preparation for personal war while legally amassing armaments and getting quartermasters to turn the other way.
It’s much more exciting to let an armed populace battle itself (e.g., Syria) than get wrapped up in an imaginary battleground of multiplayer online games.
Where is the storyline leading us today?
Hier ist dein Bamboo.
Draw me a tale, if not a tail. Create a comic, if not a comic. Package a graphic novel within a graphic novel with novel graphics.
When the pen and the sword are equal, the fun begins.
We don’t need alien attacks or Andromeda strains to enrich the plot.
We might as well have urban clubs where people buy fresh cadavers for the main course at dinnertime than the rare serial killer cannibal in bestseller lists.
Reality is much more interesting.
Pull my leash, it’s time to take me for a walk…
Pictures of my office coworkers
I’m often asked by anonymous emailers what my office looks like. Well, thanks to the folks at FastCompany, I can finally release mug shots of my office coworkers, if not the office itself:
Where everyone is cute like baby animals…
treetrunkdings 