Tag Archives: politics

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.

Parting Shots – “Gone crazy. Back soon.”

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A CIA employee quit to become a bishop.  Now all his files are marked “Sacred” and “Top Sacred.” — The American Legion magazine, May 2012

Reminds me of an insight that occurs and re-occurs in me with occasional irregularity.

Do you ever wonder why people and organisations make and keep secrets?

Well, for starters, if they fail at a secret task, only those in on the know will know what they know about what failed and why it failed.

In addition, they can [somewhat] control the perception of the failure.

That’s why I operate on a species-level scale.  I want our failures out in the open as much as possible so we can learn from our mistakes and get out of the perception-is-reality business.

To be sure, we’re an unusual species, in that our disguises are meant for each other as well as for predators/prey.

But many species play bluffing games with each other, having larger antlers, bigger nests, brighter plumage and flashier courting rituals.

We are, supposedly, smarter than all that.

We can — again, supposedly — see through our limited attempts of increasing our chances for reproduction and resource access.

Supposedly.

That’s the key word here, isn’t it?

Perhaps I put too much thought into our abilities to rise above our past.

We all make mistakes.  Me, especially.

Mine, as thinker, writer, and tinkerer, are here as much as possible for you to peruse and ponder in making decisions about yourself and ourselves together as one superset of states of energy (i.e., one species).

Enough pondering. pompous pontification for today.  Time for action.

Two thoughts for your daily thoughtfulness

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In an all-luring story that has rocked the boat of the sports fishing  industry, federal investigators, after years of infiltrating the deepest pockets of the business, were caught in a dragnet of controversy.

After spending millions of pounds/yuan/dollars in coordinating with international police authorities, our national team of crack crimestoppers, unwilling to let any criminal activity go unpunished, no matter how insignificant its effect on our general economy, finally revealed the information that freedom fighters have been requesting for decades.

Apparently, sponsors of major fishing tournament winners have long been paying locals to catch, raise and fatten prize fish, then releasing them just in time into secret spots that sponsors then suggested to their celebrity sports fishermen to call their own, thus ensuring their sponsorship money was not wasted and their winners won.

The shock that has rippled through the stream of the sport has turned many of the most diehard fans into temporary doubters, wondering if all that talk about the best bait and the most expensive, yet successful, fishing gear — including boats, sonar equipment, beer kegs and excuses to get away from family in order to catch edible foodstuff — has been in vain.

County, state and federal subcommittees have been called into emergency session to question fish and wildlife employees about fishery and hatchery practices.  Have they been reporting dead fish that were actually sold to locals?  Are they eating fish they killed and claimed as losses?  Are the stuffed and mounted fish on their trophy walls victims of “spoilage” reports filed in dusty government storage boxes?  How far up the government ladder does this go?  Did this cause the housing crisis in some obscure way that gets financial investment companies off the hook?

= = = = =

Quote for the day:

I hate to break it to you, but your $2,000 designer dog is a mutt.  Puppy stores and breeders have created these cute names like Morkipoos and Puggles, and now people are paying $2,000 for a dog they couldn’t give away at the pound ten years ago.  Whoever started the trend is a marketing genius.” — Dennis Leon, DVM (courtesy of Readers Digest, May 2012 issue)

= = = = =

Bonus puzzle of the day: I have a fellow secondary school alumnus who is a local state representative.  I have a fellow secondary schoolmate, an employee of a local newspaper, who endorsed a rival candidate running against the state representative.  One, should that affect my mental thought set about the two of them as friends/classmates?  Two, should newspaper (or any mass media) employees publicly endorse political candidates and if so, should they have to make it clear they speak for themselves and not the mass media company that employs them?

Gender in the news

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Putting aside the issue of nontraditional gender roles, on a basic level of two genders in our species, here’s some interesting data to crunch for today:

  • Gender in the U.S.
  • Gender by age in the U.S. — interesting trend by age and by decade, isn’t it?  Those baby boomers are bulging in more ways than one, it appears:

Both Sides of the Law

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While an Arby’s Junior dissolves with curly fries in my stomach, topped with a Reese’s bunny-shaped peanut butter flavoured bar, NASCAR drivers prepare for their usual weekend gig and Brazil nuts grow in the jungle.

A friend asked me why we no longer debate the [de]merits of having a chief executive in the White House with no military experience.

Good question.

We spend many a minute examining the minutiae of business experiences of major political candidates, including the incumbent, but we fail to notice their lack of actual, on-the-ground, basic-training, in-the-bunker or sweating-in-the-field-tent combat training.

Because I live in a town that generates a lot of local tax revenue from government-based military operations, my perspective might be different from that of a city dweller where large chunks of the economy come from the financial sector, tourism, creative arts or academia.

Sometimes, I get so wrapped up in the dual-use aspect of government spinoffs, including rocket technology and outer space life support systems, that I forget other industries prop up our modern standards of living, too.

What about the global economy in general?  It would be easy for me to get lost in reports about our hyperconnected world but I’m interested in more than that, as you know.

The global military budget is about 2% of world economic production.  Now, ask yourself, do you spend more or less than two percent of your household budget (post-tax take home pay, that is) to protect yourself, your loved ones and your possessions from the desire by others to possess what you have?

Think about these examples: the locks on your doors and windows; home security system; computer antivirus software; gates, fences and other property barriers; insecticides and herbicides; curtains/drapes; wall/ceiling/floor insulation; enclosed heating/cooling system; paper shredder; file cabinet/safe; personal weaponry (guns, knives, etc.); apartment/flat doorman.

What about the knowledge that your neighbours having some of the things above, that you don’t, acts as an implied deterrent for you?

Today, my family received the great news that my father, who served in the U.S. Army, and was recently diagnosed with ALS bulbar option, will be able to spend time in a temporary skilled nursing facility at the nearby VA medical center to aid in his rehab and preparation for longterm care.

History says we are involved in fewer and smaller wars as the years progress in this current cycle of globally-connected subcultures (a/k/a the one-world civilisation/order).

Despite our growing civility toward one another, old thought patterns prevail, meaning there is still a need for protective services of one sort or another and, in the longterm, medical care for those who served and sacrificed their time, effort and lives for the rest of us, whether or not we served and/or paid for protective services ourselves.

Our family thanks many who helped my father regain his physical strength and helped us work through the paperwork to secure a place for my father’s continued medical journey — IPC (Heather, Carmen, Anna), HealthSouth Rehab Hospital (Jennifer, Ethan, Amy, Amanda and many others), and VAMC (Heidi, PJ, and more).

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?

Where is Watson?

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Instead of coding my new app, I’m sitting here, pondering the itches at my elbows that hint at a poison ivy infection picked up from hacking away the brush in the front yard ditches.

Brush?  A generic term, standing in for periwinkle (both Vinca major and its variegated leaf variety), privet, sweetgum, hickory, cedar, sumac, poison ivy, Virginia creeper, forsythia, deciduous ivy, and an unknown set of grasses that manage to push up into the sunlight.

Hackers aren’t just mainly guys who try to script their way into computer systems.

Speaking of which, where is that omniscient Watson computer system that can look at a person’s EMR set and determine one’s major illnesses?  Do I have to keep depending on the limited brainwave combinations of people to assess my father’s health?

Hey, I’m all about socialising in the moment, getting to know people and their motivations, giving back to them whatever makes them feel happy/wanted/needed/fulfilled.

However, I want most of all to put our social network to use for the sake of my father and his nuclear family right now.

Otherwise, I’ll open up the case that cradles the crystal ball and share with you the next few decades and centuries of technological advances that will make a subset of our global population very successful, including the means of complete ownership of political officeholders, with no cares about hiding how our population really works in every so-called enlightened age.

Do you know how many people’s backs, both local and foreign, you’re living on to create the time you call leisure and the objects you call luxury?

Do you know how many people, both local and foreign, are living off of you to support the time they call leisure and the objects they call luxury?

I’ll save those questions for a scenario in a future chapter of the story of our lives together.

Time to return to writing my app.  After all, so far I haven’t found a way to get apps to write themselves by reading my thoughts and figuring out exactly what I want and how to implement it on incompatible technology platforms, just like I haven’t found an automatic way to get doctors to act as one “the buck stops here” stop to solve my father’s medical problems.

I’ll catch up on thanking others soon.

Cheap purchase of the day: keyboard/cover for iPad2

More news from around the weather

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Just when this reporter thought he had seen it all, earlier today the administration announced, during an election year, no less, that it has banned personal pet ownership.

The official spokesperson for the administration, Whyte Lizun Taultayles, explained that although the administration has no direct bearing or influence on the fluctuation of petrol prices that deeply affect the feelings of citizens who rely upon transportation devices to carry them from one retail purchase to another as well as to their four or five retail sales and/or fast food jobs just to make ends meet…whew!  Ms. Taultayles had to take a deep breath there!…the administration’s own privately-funded public thinktank had determined that ownership of pets or companionship with species not our own is solely responsible for the excess use of petrol that, unlike stories of speculation or market manipulation by highly-influential donors from the oil industry to the current administration (and to every administration before or after), can be tied to dragging down what should be the great news of our economy’s strong growth in these uncertain times caused by unspecified unfriendly international interests and rogue nations.

From the 9th of April onward, any person, family, household, business, nonprofit organisation or international NGO caught harbouring animals not belonging to the species Homo sapiens will be regarded as a traitor of our nation and subject to permanent retainer in baggage compartments and boxcars that have been rigged as mobile detention centers in which interrogators will ferret out all members of secret groups tied to the breeding, care and distribution of nonfood species.

The agriculture industry has stepped forward and declared that their members are in full compliance with the new executive order.  Any farmers overheard giving their cattle or sheep nicknames are not to be construed as treating the animals like a pet; rather, the farmer is merely using a simple mnemonic device to separate the best of the best in breed for future sales calculations.

Political pollsters are stumped that such a drastic measure would be taken this late in the election season.  Analysts are scurrying to determine if there is some new metric the administration has dreamt up to sway a particular segment of potential voters because none of the core voters of any of the main political parties has ever mentioned the desire to tie petrol prices to pet ownership or the pet industry in general.

Meanwhile, the famous author, Benton Revenge, has released a new autobiography about the 62 years her father served as a janitor of the local public school and the effect it had on Benton.  The book promises to reveal sex scandals, the change in quality of chewing gum over the decades, the evolution of stuff kids paste inside their lockers and the cycle of the role of authority that teachers play in the lives of students, administrators and faculty members like Benton’s father which had an important role in turning Benton into an independent, unmarried writer rather than a teacher and mother, seeing as it denied her the access she craved to hoard guinea pigs in broom closets on school property because her father was obsessed with keeping things in their proper places, being a shining example of the perfect student in the “golden age of public education,” he has reminded his daughter on more than one occasion.

The Russian tycoon, Petr Petroyovich Petr Petroyovich, not to be upstaged by James Cameron or Jeff Bezos, launched an expedition to recover one of the Soviet exploration Lunokhod vehicles that ended its mission on the Moon.  We await word from Chinese tycoons about their grand plans for membership in the oneupship club.  Carlos Slim has denied the need to participate, simply being happy as world’s richest person.

Time Share

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While computing quantum computer computations, the Committee today announced a joint agreement between major professional sports organisations and carpark services.

From now on, tickets to a sporting event are leased an on hourly basis only.

For instance, those attending American football events such as an NFL game may lease an assigned seat for up to two nonconsecutive quarter periods, but not the first and fourth, first and third, or first and first (figure out the last conundrum on parchment paper, preferably highly-combustible flash paper near a blast furnace).

In a motorsports event such as a Sprint Cup NASCAR race, tickets will be issued on either a per wreck or per time-period basis, as well as both.  One may use a seat for up to three wrecks in any fifteen-minute period, or three laps, whichever comes first.  No refunds for snoozefests.

Carparks may remove vehicles occupying a carpark space greater than 50% of the time length of a sporting event, towing vehicles to impound lots on the other side of the ocean via moldy cargo carriers, stowed behind impenetrable chainlink fences and guarded by dogs impervious to taser attacks.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has announced that, contrary to popular belief, Miss Baker‘s cryogenically-preserved body had not been fused with the DNA of Merkozy to create the lab specimen Francois Hollande allegedly planned for a secret launch to the ISS for the first orbital celebration of a French citizen taking office without getting elected or giving rivals the guillotine while smoking nicotine and drinking Ovaltine outside the Oval Office.

On a personal note, thanks to the cast of billions supporting my father’s health change adventure.  May the moral of this story (or the storal of this mory) be a tale worth regaling with humorous (or “humour us!”) afterthought, aftertaste and a sweet aroma of eau du backwash.

More as permits time (or Kermit mimes).