And, by extension, what is controversial today is what will be conventional tomorrow.
Tag Archives: humour
Humbled by Community after Pi Day
Always good to know you’re not the first
Found this entry about a science fiction writer I probably read in my junior high (primary) or high school (secondary) years.
Another Post-Aggression Depression Post
Today, many people on this planet celebrate St. Patrick’s Day which, oddly enough, is day when drunk revellers imbibe in the name of a Catholic saint.
Are you willing to share your traditions with others who’ll shape the traditions to their whims, desires and traditions?
Hard to believe only 14,295 days are left and I want to spend this day in a cloud of oblivion, not eating, drinking or consuming more than moist air for my lungs.
Smelling the wind. Feeling vibrations in my feet.
Looking at sweetgum tree buds.
Thinking about no time in particular.
Almost not caring about the arrangements of these words sdfps8′ 3ehp4nh’N#g;p3.
What do you do with yourself in a closed-loop system?
There is a stinkbug caught between the window screen and the window, finding a crack somewhere to get in but unable to find its way back out.
There are an unnumbered number of dead insects at the bottom of the window.
Some days I feel like the stinkbug, unaware that my time spent crawling on the screen, my antennae fully aware of familiar smells/vibrations but unable to get to them, is time spent not knowing I’m not going to get out alive. Perhaps a spider hidden in a corner will find me and make use of me.
Otherwise…
Perfectly, happily, soberly aware I really know nothing.
My brain an Intel Celeron M running Microsoft Windows Vista Basic on a Compaq Presario C501NR Notebook PC, generations and magnitudes less complicated than the world’s fastest human-made supercomputer.
More than sitting on a horse and buggy counting on my fingers, in comparison, but comparison to what?
Who am I to deny any one of the seven billion of us the right to procreate?
Who am I to say billions of us will die for my benefit?
I’m not presumptuous. I’m not the wealthiest or the poorest.
A racetrack or sports arena is more familiar to me as a place of worship than a place of worship.
If more people in the U.S. watch films and shows on the tellie than go to sporting events or participate in formal religious service, what does that say about what we call religion? That is, how are we defining our definitions of morals and ethics for normal social interaction?
How does a child know the difference between fantasy and reality?
When did we start believing food comes in brightly-coloured bags and boxes, not out of farms and ranches?
When did we convince ourselves it’s all right to turn homes into chemical experiments on humans, plants, animals, insects and other living things?
What does it profit me to profit if I’m going to contract cancer from unintentional concoctions?
I’m going to die anyway, right?
Who or what entity is going to test whether the aerosols of chemical lawn fertilisers will mix with aerosols of underarm deodourant, hairspray, furniture deodouriser, kitchen surface disinfectant and cologne/perfume to create a force more invisibly deadly than anything dreamed up by military chemical warfare departments, because no one took into account the change to the microorganisms inhabiting our bodies and the poisons they’ve been, through no fault of any one person or entity, chemically genetically-modified to cover us and fill our pores with?
The Law of Unintended Consequences.
I didn’t get drunk today but, because I mentioned the phrase “St. Patrick’s Day,” someone reads these words and decides it’s okay to have one or two extra litres of beer to show he’s more manly than anyone in the room, stumbles out of the pub, trips on the curb and bangs his head, ending up in a hospital emergency room where he meets a nice nurse he decides to introduce to his forlorn son, their love convincing the father to give up drinking heavily because he can finally forgive himself for not taking good care of his wife while she was dying of cancer she got while visiting her sister’s family near a chemical waste dump they didn’t know existed behind their house that was built in the shape of a stinkbug on an idea an architect got from reading random blog entries one day.
We are an ignorant species so let’s keep looking for ways to increase our wisdom and not just our collections of esoteric information that we cleverly yell out while watching television trivia game shows.
If you knew exactly where a large chunk of galactic material was going to hit Earth’s atmosphere thousands or millions of years from now, would you figure out how to change Earth’s rotation ever so slightly to keep the resulting sonic boom and burning debris from hitting major centres of your species’ population, knowing the destruction of trillions of other microorganisms would have a small but not detrimental effect on your species thousands of years later?
How big a picture can you work with without resorting to using literary devices like magic, superpowers or time travel?
When the timescales of your species have little effect on galactic timescales at which you operate, what does one life matter?
Finding the humour in that scenario is the challenge of my lifetime.
14,295 days, as we call them, to get it right.
Looking at seven billion made of trillions
QChapitre the next.
By candlelight.
After all these years.
Sketches
Wondering without forging wordy girders.
Building the foundation for a new bridge.
Destination.
To be decided.
Soon…
Championship Rings
On a solar scale.
I can’t help but think about the film “Akira” today. I know many of you have.
I’m not a manga fan, picking the film up last year at a going-out-of-business sale by a local video rental store that lost out to the redbox business plan.
I may have heard of “Akira” once or twice before by some of my former employees who were into niche markets exemplified by Comic-Con, Dragon*Con, Trekkie conferences, offroad/4×4 events and ham radio swap fests.
Meanwhile, the Chargers savour another win while preparing for the next game.
I must decide about moments yet to be.
Is there a place for me in our socioeconomic system, either on the micro or macro scale? Or both?
If I do not exist, does it matter what these states of energy do with themselves?
Although thoughts from many walks of life flow through me, I am a relatively simple guy.
Is there a place for simple in today’s economy?
“Noisemakers are not allowed,” the loud announcer said noisily over the PA system. What?
To what am I sensitised today? Usually, I feel a level of tension build up and then assign an event that serves as the relief valve.
All of us are motivated by something.
I think and I write.
Maybe it’s time to move from “I” to “i” to encourage movement along the path of absence of self.
Otherwise, vanity will get the best of me.
It’s easy to talk about states of energy being absent of good and evil when one has a solid sense of one’s comfortable set of moral and ethical boundaries provided by subcultural guidance and natural/genetic propensity of some sort.
I am a member of my species, not another, although i contain close to 100% of the same genetic material as many other combined states of energy we call separate species, whether they/we are directly codependent or indirectly tied to me through the global ecosystem.
Imagine the impossible and then make the impossible practical.
As my accountant said, there are many people with 100 patents in their names but few of them are earning a living off their inventions.
I hope Jennifer Hudson is not taking uppers or other “dietetic” supplements to push her weight down.
I before e, except after c.
Mixing formality informally.
Asking because i don’t know or need/want to know everything.
I forget what I told myself to do, repeating, repeating because I can’t remember I was once i before.
What’s next for me?
Is simply observing enough?
The universe is vaster than my readily-available thought set but it doesn’t stop me from adding new memories, neither punishing nor rewarding myself for recognising I’ve regained lost memories or lost them forever because I know these states of energy like to demonstrate the concepts of inertia and entropy for no other reason than to play a joke on themselves.
I fade away slowly. i guess that’s simple enough for now.
Not that I’m suggesting anything…
While putting together the script to top all scripts about college basketball, I’ve considered sharing some of the images with you:
- A college fraternity sneaking into the gym at night and changing out banners, with new ones containing small but perceptibly clever anagrams that are not obvious to the casual viewer.
- A few students from the computer science/engineering department coordinating with students from the electrical/mechanical engineering departments to turn basketball goals hanging from the ceiling into mechanical dancers, or…
- The same and more students turning the basketball goals into mechanised dragons and/or bats hanging from the ceiling.
- LED light bars hidden in the rafters and turned on after the championship game to spell out a message, depending on the winner.
- The same for the basketball court, using mesh-networked, battery powered miniLEDs inserted between the hardwood strips or on the gym walls.
- School team coloured fog pouring out of the air vents after a big event.
- A remote-controlled, programmable variable delay in the PA system – nothing like an announcer who hears his/her voice microseconds later than she/he expected, especially as the delay and/or compression varies in length while the person is talking, without the crowd hearing a pitch change.
- Creating an alternative to the official event program, with whatever the creative minds in the art/literature department can come up with, distributing free and/or placing in the stands.
- Reprogramming the security guards’ 2-way radios to pick up a music station in a foreign language at odd intervals.
- Soap, paper towels and toilet tissue in the bathroom that change into the school colours as they get wet, the colour being semi-permanent and nontoxic.
- Changing select sections and bars of music scores in the pep band’s music holders.
- Replacing slides in brass/wind instruments to a slightly shorter/longer length and smaller/larger diameter; putting remote-controlled, programmable passageway restrictions deep down inside the slides; wind instruments with reconfigured fingering.
- The team jokingly sending out fake players onto the field for practice before the game.
- The referees wearing white-and-black striped shirts instead of black-and-white striped shirts.
- Referee whistles that sound like foghorns or train whistles (again, programmable).
- Home team fans/students sitting on the visitors side, filling up the seats before the doors are opened.
- A referee fan club cheering every time a foul is called, with signs held up showing the referee’s name in large letters; the fans cheering, “run, referee [or referee’s name], run!,” every time the team ball possession changes.
- The announcer calling out a different foul than the one indicated by the referee.
- The foul shot shooter insisting on shooting from the top of the three-point line, with the coach running out and arguing for an extra point when the ball goes through the hoop.
- The hoop/goal a large electromagnet programmed (again, remotely) to repel/attract the official game ball, which is actually a fake one lined with a metal mesh inside.
- Both teams secretly agreeing to walk to the wrong side of the court for a foul shot.
- Harlem Globetrotters appearing in one or both teams’ uniforms during halftime warmups and acting like nothing’s the matter but slowly swapping out with the real players as the Globetrotters take the other team’s sideline seats – a joke on the coaches.
- Coaches encouraging the other team’s players and screaming at theirs – wait, they already do that, don’t they?
- Fans/students clearing the gym just before players appear for halftime warmups.
- Videographers’ cameras programmed to record in reverse/negative or some effect like magnifying soap bubbles.
- Photographers forced to sit in the upper deck.
- Reporters told obvious lies by players/coaches/fans/administration, all of the interviewees maintaining a straight face.
- Fans running up to NCAA officials and asking for their autographs and photos with the family.
- Gym lights briefly going out (or for lights that need warmup time, getting covered) during an official timeup, leaving only black light bulbs illuminating the gym for a couple of seconds.
- Opposing pep bands playing a song round-robin style.
- Renumbering the seats in opposite order, right-to-left or left-to-right (same for rows and section numbers).
- Swapping out Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola labels to see who notices the difference.
- During the game, announcing the scores of a completely different sport in a country that has maybe one or two players in the current game who get the joke.
- The school mascot wearing an altered headgear, or one programmed to change shape throughout the game.
- Cheerleaders jumping up and down and making mouth/facial expressions without saying anything audible.
- Cheerleader megaphones with voice changers.
- Folding bleachers that slightly move forward, backward, left or right throughout the game (millimeters, not inches).
- Seats/bleachers that randomly make loud groaning sounds or aahs whenever people sit down or stand up.
- A fan that belches loudly throughout the game.
- A family that sits and reads some obscure literature during the game, discussing fine plot points no matter what’s going on on the basketball court.
- People hidden under the bleachers who take, move or swap out whatever people have placed beside their feet.
- Students holding up tablet PCs that spell out phrases, either scrolling or static.
Those are just a few of the images the script will display to the reader, including the usual clever wordplay, innuendos, misunderstandings and inside jokes we’ve come to expect.
Let the games begin! The best teams win.
Thanks to my friends who attended such pranksterish schools as CalTech – your stories from the ’80s inspire me to this day.
A shoutout to Dr. Dalle Ave for his…well, his reputation (or lack thereof?) of kind elderly customer care. The word is out, dude. As the UAH students say at basketball games, “airball, airball, you suck!” [I don’t think their cheer of “Ug-ly play-er” during a foul shot applies here, though.] Thank goodness, my mother in-law has kids, grandkids and in-laws who care about her as a real, living, loving person.
Sympathies to the family of my high school/UTK mate, Monica. Your father was a great man – Eastman chemist, Amway star, lakehouse chaperone, road runner, deer hunter and wise advisor to teenagers. You, your siblings and children are wonderful examples of your father’s ability to raise well-rounded kids. He died much too young but he’s with you in spirit the rest of your days.
Survivor: Real-Life Classroom
From my folks, both educators:
Have you heard about the next planned “Survivor” show?
Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped in an elementary school classroom for 1 school year.
Every business person will be provided with a copy of his/her school district’s curriculum, and a class of 20-25 students.
Every class will have a minimum of five learning-disabled children, three with A.D.H.D., one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three students will be labeled with severe behavior problems.
Every business person must complete lesson plans at least 3 days in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives and modify, organize, or create their materials accordingly. They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences. They must also stand in their doorway between class changes to monitor the hallways.
In addition, they will complete fire drills, tornado drills, and [Code Red] drills for shooting attacks each month.
They must attend workshops, faculty meetings, and attend curriculum development meetings. They must also tutor students who are behind and strive to get their 2 non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the State Mandated Tests. If they are sick or having a bad day they must not let it show.
Every day they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into the program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment to motivate students at all times. If all students do not wish to cooperate, work, or learn, the teacher will be held responsible.
If not involved in extracurricular activities with the students (out-of-town sporting events, math tournaments, spelling bees, etc.), the business people will only have access to the public golf course on the weekends, but with their new salary, they will not be able to afford it. There will be no access to vendors who want to take them out to lunch, and lunch will be limited to thirty minutes, which is not counted as part of their work day. The business people will be permitted to use a student restroom, as long as another survival candidate can supervise their class.
If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials before, or after, school. However, they cannot surpass their monthly limit of copies. The business people must continually advance their education, at their expense, and on their own time.
The winner of this Season of Survivor will be allowed to return to his/her job.
FINIS
You Can Run But You Can’t Hide Your Running Hose
This time of year, at least in this part of the country, nasal/chest congestion complaints fill the air.
So, with that in mind, I’m moving my imaginary international troops into Libya and declaring a global free-trade zone; also, sending UN troops to Bahrain to protect against invading Saudi forces.
Oh wait. I’m sorry, skip that last part. I forgot I eliminated political borders in this realm. Everything goes, doesn’t it?
Let’s fight Saudi forces with U.S. forces and pit American fighting weaponry against itself. I’m sure the Iranian leaders would love to see that! I’d love to see it spill over into Iranian airspace, a simple excuse for taking care of paramilitary cyberwarriors hiding behind computer screens.
Are we a behind-the-times species acting like it’s still a few packs of primates running from large predators?
My network demonstrated its power in Chile, China, New Zealand, and Japan. Time to stir up the sands of the Middle East and show how fleeting oil power really is, isn’t it? One scientist suggested twisting the magnetic poles out of shape a little faster, breaking apart the mantle and sucking raw oil reserves down into the core.
Is there not another planet to play with? Is Carlos Slim the best the world has to offer?
This, there, another.
Word trails trailing off into infinity…
Infernal internal combustion engines.
The shadow of a car making an outline of the Penn State Litany Nylon logo.
A mother in-law needing emotional support more than a cat needs dental work.
Ants roaming the house while the yard gets soaked with rain.
Giving over to randomness to prove that randomness is the variation in predictable patterns.
Watching family members insist the mother/grandmother must give up her way of life for their love and support (and their convenience, coincidentally), not the other way around.
Hearing so many others in nursing homes tell the same story – “my [family relation] felt it was in my best interest to move closer to him/her.”
I want to die where I was most comfortable, not where it was convenient for those taking care of me who’ll end up inevitably extending my life in strange surroundings which I’ll never enjoy as much as I enjoyed my comfort zone. Do us both a favour – put me in a wheelchair and push me into the woods behind my house on a cold winter’s night, with a beer in one hand and a tall glass of whiskey in the other.
Bumper sticker on Honda CR-V near Alabama A&M campus – “My karma ran over your dogma.”
I can’t imagine having to worry about a slow decline or sudden weakness in my old age and afraid to tell my family relations I don’t feel well, knowing they’re just waiting for an excuse to move me to their comfort zone, thinking little of what “home” means to me, not them.
I gave in to temptation today. Yes, my flesh is weak. I bought my wife and me six, count them, SIX cupcakes decorated in green and white for St. Patrick’s Day, courtesy of Publix and David (customer service team leader) and Nathan, bagger supreme.
During a walk up and down the street, I played chase with a neighbour’s little boxer puppy and had fun like a kid again.
Do you manage the IT department of your company? If so, do you read or have an employee read/scan the emails of employees/executives for company security purposes? Do you archive IM sessions and SMS text messages sent from company smartphones? Do you monitor IP traffic passing through the airwaves of company property? Do you use GPS trackers in company cars and company credit cards? Are you part of a larger network paid to keep tabs on specific individuals for a purpose that may or may not coincide with company policy? Do you secretly pay car rental companies to provide tracking data and private investigators, when off-the-books recordkeeping is absolutely necessary?
Thank goodness, no one wants to keep me alive for his/her sake, except my wife, of course, most days, anyway. 😉
Otherwise, as my sister says, it’ll just be a matter of managing my monetary resources to stretch them as much as possible to provide me the comfort and care that is as humane as I would choose to treat my aging pets.
Vanna, I’m glad you still have that smile.
Claire, sorry to hear about your transportation vehicle.
Holding seven billion people and the supporting global ecosystem in my hand, I ask myself what tearing down and rebuilding the system to my specifications (with guidance by the Committee, as always) will bring to future generations unaware of invisible hands directing their ancestors’ actions.
Thank goodness, I’m not the only one.
It’s all about the paradigm of the network in today’s pallid parlour parleying parlance.
If you can’t harness the Sun, then grab le règne by the horns.
My worst torture – being the eldest male at a funeral and filling up my thoughts with more and more new comedy sketches about the dead but mentally shutting down and going into automaton mode while having to play the part of the serious wise elder, not the wise guy.
Celebrate living by having fun – there’s plenty of time to be dead serious.
Most of us grew up some place we call local and probably “home.” Don’t feel sorry for everyone else – just treat them like good family members, with a little love and gentle humour to help lighten the burden of daily living.
Besides, Earth is home to all of us, no matter how we treat it or each other.
Hard to believe the Bristol race track is as old as I am. My father says he took me not long after I was born so the speedway is just about my oldest memory other than my parents’ loving faces. Let’s go racing, shall we?
Glad the Kingsport track is running.
Time to put Claire Lynch back on my Internet tunes and swing to her sweet bluegrass voice.
2011 is not the worst year in my life (or my species) but it sure is a big one. Good thing I know all about the big picture and the circles, cycles and spirals that make everything new all over again.
Mike “Aww Shucks” A. Bee
When life hands you lemons, plant an orchard and start a citrus import/export business.
We continue the experiment on time/heat-released dissoluble, transdermal patches built into athletic socks and that control biorhythms.
A nod to the painted faces last night – great team support by fans!
As 2011 progresses, I ask myself what I am to do with myself.
Past the skin barrier, where does self end?
Or, for that matter, where does self start?
Am I a self-starter?
Every generation thinks it’s the first and the last.
I know better because I do not exist.
Therefore, although it would be a hearty suggestion, I’m not going to go around convincing subdivisions/housing estates to erect art sculptures at every entrance in order to help support “thinking outside the box” that art is supposed to start.
I just watch and listen.
Let the shepherds have their sheep.
On galactic scales, we’ll disappear soon enough.
Life has become so much more enjoyable after I let myself accept I’ll be dead and forgotten but giving care and attention to those I can without making extraordinary effort (“do until others undo you”):
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. — Joseph Campbell [Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_campbell.html#ixzz1Gb5ZsTJt]
Our yard is my homage to the natural world, including invasive, nonnative species competing with native species to capture my attention, especially in spring, with crocuses, daffodils, vinca, marsh marigold, trillium and violet blooms in full display; squirrels, chipmunks, chickadees, hawks, crows, cardinals, snails, lizards, spiders, roaches, lichen, moss, and mushrooms at work/play.
I am neither peacenik nor warhawk, I repeat, but troubleshooter and solution seeker.
Like Hermann Hesse, I don’t know which of the many doors in the Magic Theatre to walk through. Life is a series of macabre, as well as normal-looking, opportunities for decisionmaking.
A temporary conflux, I am here to represent the universal that flows through me (like it flows through all of us as states of energy within the current version of the universe that we see it in this moment together).
I will not compete with what others call their visions for the future.
All I can do is follow the path that hindsight/foresight reveals to me in real-time.
Go with the flow.
Let private property rights’ opponents, both in ownership and in disagreement over the right of private property, work out their differences.
After all, I don’t own the universe nor it me. I type words in my thoughts that somehow make a little bit of sense on the electronic display in front of me.
If the environment in which I exist is not conducive to healthy thought patterns, is there a conducive environment and do I have the fortitude/energy to move into that shared space?
If temptation is an illusion of subcultural training (i.e., a byproduct or negative consequence of a subculture’s preferred behaviour set), then what are the behaviours I prefer to nurture within the states of energy that are me, knowing I am a product of a mixture of subcultures because none of us live in a vacuum (although some are fairly well isolated socioculturally)?
If sanity is an illusion based on unwritten formulae for group normality conformity, and I care little about the definition of normality because it does not exist, why do I find a fairly benign public persona to project to others socially?
I have nothing to hide/protect although I care about comfortable companionship with others.
A chameleon confirming others’ beliefs, letting them keep their illusions intact.
Some days I want to expose the illusions and some days I enjoy playing along.
I neither hate nor love my subcultural training – my states of energy are in their shared condition because of my background/upbringing – I will neither condemn nor praise my past, illusionary though it may be.
Stick to the moment because my memory is false and filtered like official historical tales.
The alternate universe of a blog is, to remind myself, a manipulable entity to help me discover what it’s truly like to be part of a universe at play in the moment; that way, I never have to care about the difference between imagining what’s real and what’s not real.
This moment passes and then the next moment passes. That’s as real as it gets these days.
treetrunkdings 