Are they alike, similar, or opposing, in your view?
Tag Archives: religion
In support of my mother and our family
I was sent the following information in response to one of my recent posts. Good advice, regardless of [non]religious belief:
Ecclesiastes 9:10
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Am I alive?
While I wait for my new LCD monitor with HDMI connection to arrive, thus turning my smartphone into my desktop/laptop PC at home and Internet phablet on the road, I shall write here once more.
That, and the overwhelming reader response to ending this blog, as usual.
This afternoon, I attended the funeral of a 98-year old man, met his widow, and am friends with two of his children, one who is a girlfriend of a longtime friend of mine from our college days in Knoxville.
I also saw some familiar faces from my time here in this community — 27 years or thereabouts — people like Peggy Sammon and Butch Damson.
Ninety-eight years young…
I cannot imagine living so long.
Meanwhile, a house wren hops up and down the window screen, looking for food, digging through the debris in the old, broken, rusted gutter hanging off the rotting eave.
I did not know the man who was buried today.
I felt like a fifth wheel, a stranger inserting myself into the graveside mourning of others.
So, to hide my face from the crowd, I stood behind a pocket camera snapping pics for the daughter and friends in Germany who could not be there while we who were gathered recited prayers together for the deceased.
I am of the walking dead myself, but my friends say Jesus loves me, this I [should] know…
Sorry, that last bit slipped out, a verse from a children’s song.
I did not know the man who was buried today but I was able to join his family and a group of strangers, sharing a subculture full of familiar songs, poems, prayers and rituals.
It was a window opening up the sounds and sights of my childhood.
It was a window of opportunity, listening to the stories about Rudi Schlidt from his closest friends and relatives.
Of course, I can’t hear so well so I’m not sure what anybody said, using their body language and voice inflection to tell me when I was supposed to smile, laugh, cry or do nothing but listen attentively.
Rudi was nearly twice my age when he died.
He made important contributions to the advances of rocket science. He, like many in this town, could easily say, “As a matter of fact, I am a rocket scientist/engineer.”
His wife was secretary to Wernher von Braun, who may or may not be familiar to you. Today, her face still shines with beauty at 91 years of age.
There is more and less than meets the eye, to be sure, but today I simply let the sights suffice to register my presence on this planet another day, amidst those who registered the absence of a friend, [(great)grand]father, coworker and fellow member of the community.
Am I alive? I don’t know. I explore the universe from atop this tiny planet of ours and wonder. That’s all I care to know. The rest is none of my business. Gott behüte.
Auf wiedersehen, Herr Schlidt. From the crowd at your graveside service today, know that you are/were loved. Gott liebt dich. Gott segne.
Tribal tribute
Sat in a church and watched everyone get out their smartphone to make a virtual collection plate donation – my analog childhood fades further…
When 102000+ people were gathered to recite the Lord’s Prayer
So, the world now has proof that the most violent religion is Islam, if global protest headlines speak louder than words, and cult followers don’t have a sense of humour/irony, willing to kill others and die because a few actors were conned into making fun of a religious leader and his god in a video?
Meanwhile, our covert operatives, assigned to no country, used the noise and chaos to slip into place, as always, ready to assassinate at the first word from the Committee, keeping this 3D chess game moving forward into new areas of the protestors’ territory. If a protestor or a person who incited a protestor dies off-camera in a horrible traffic smashup or accidental fall/food poisoning at home, who’s going to pay attention?
Yes, you’re right again, of course. “Assassinate” is such a strong word. Should I have said remove the chess pieces from the playing board, instead?
However, when using the globe as our playing field, we do what we must to accomplish a goal greater than a species or nation ever outlives, changing the anthropomorphic state of sets of states of energy as the need arises.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration will forever be tied to the use of cowardly strategic murderous drone strikes, instead of putting himself and his drone option last, when he should say our military personnel, both those directly employed by our government and those indirectly employed as contractors/mercenaries, are, in person, used to carry out secret death sentences or actively engage in the legal right to proactively defend themselves during war.
In place of a HOPE poster, there will inevitably be found on the side streets of the Internet a picture of Obama looking like BIG BROTHER in “1984” with his finger pointed at you, saying, “Remote-controlled killing is love. A dead citizen is a happy citizen. Coercion is freedom.” All in the name of feeding this storyline, which appears to question the old storyline that stated the latest enemy is Islam, but only in the strictest radical sense, whatever that means in selling headlines more succinctly, a tradition of every country that divides killing into bins: socially-unacceptable murder or organisationally-acceptable restructuring.
Then, on an opposite street will be Romney, smiling, saying, “I do not kill unarmed Muslims without open due process. I love all people, regardless of religious affiliation, bad comic timing or alleged criminal guilt. Only my God can judge you, whose teachings I follow to the letter of the writings I read most often with more conviction than my opponent.”
Would it make more sense if public trials were held for defendants in absentia, who are given time to appear, even via the Internet, to face their accusers before being convicted of murder and sentenced to death by any means necessary, as long as it was not cruel and inhumane, including instant death by drone strike?
Are drones becoming too politically risky, creating the wrong kind of unintended consequences, scaring people and reinforcing rather than changing their subcultural beliefs?
This weekend, I stood in the midst of a group of 102000+ people gathered to celebrate their right to peaceably assemble and watch the three-ring circus we call a modern college football game, none of us expecting to be hit by a drone strike but willing to be filmed with no monetary compensation by dirigible-, crane-, guidewire-, hand- and helicopter-mounted cameras.
At the beginning of the game, on a public/state-sponsored university campus, a man spoke over the public address system to say a prayer before the players started tossing themselves at each other. This week, the speaker happened to lead us in a rendition of Christian text called the Lord’s Prayer.
We also watched the uniform number of Johnny Majors, a college classmate of my parents, retired from active use by the university football team, which brought a tear to my eye knowing one of my parents could not be there in person to join the festivities.
During the break between the two halves of the game, called the halftime show, for some strange reason, the university “Pride of the Southland” marching band included a Scottish pipes and drum ensemble which played both “Scotland the Brave” and “Amazing Grace,” as well as the inevitable “Rocky Top.”
And today, as we left Knoxville, we saw dozens of old muscle/classic cars/trucks leaving east Tennessee, as well as a few stragglers from a large motorcycle gathering heading north from a Trail of Tears ride.
Can I extract trends from these last few data points, wondering where, anywhere and everywhere on this planet, people were reinforcing their beliefs due to recent news headlines?
Me, I’m happy to see people do what they want, as long as they don’t physically harm others.
Then again, I enjoyed the football game, even if my alltime favourite college football team, the University of Tennessee Volunteers, was unable to post the higher score by the time the game ended, when many a player could easily show evidence of physical harm.
So, I’ve got a basic belief of mine to reconsider: freedom to be in the act of “first, do no [physical] harm.”
If nothing else in my beliefs this weekend, there is a sense of poetic justice, where, on the same weekend my team lost its game against a formidable opponent, a team now coached by a man who claimed to love the Vols but left us high-and-dry — Lane Kiffin — also lost. I can’t remember and maybe you can help me…which players with questionable ethics attended the same school? Was it O.J. Simpson and Reggie Bush?
I know our new coach, Derek Dooley, instills a real winning attitude of moral and ethical beliefs in his players as they reach successful goals in their career paths, in and out of the physically-harmful sport of American football.
While straying into sports, I keep having fun with this comical tirade on behalf of a political election campaign, seriously yet cynically satirical (or is that cynically yet satirically serious?), when I need to go on down the trail this storyline was going to take after the last blog entry but I’ve let myself get caught up in eddies and swirls of news headlines again, haven’t I, either way?
Old age, I guess.
Well, I’ve got to help my wife clear space in our space (“our space” is a house, in this case) to make room before we move her mother’s furniture from her sister in-law’s house, the furniture having worn out its welcome, as all guests are prone to do, including family.
Tomorrow, I’ll thank folks for their help this weekend, including Cassie at Bel Air Grill and Silvia at the Airport Hilton, my cousin Cindy and her husband Ron, and more…
Thank goodness I do not live in the ultra-regulated city-state of Singapore, because it considers illegal the flash mob performance of a haka that was as fun to watch as a spontaneous Scottish Highlands bagpipe concert.
When Sleight-of-Hand Gets Out-of-Hand Hands-Down
What’s the point of having a mercenary army at your fingertips if you can’t use it to achieve your goals?
Me, I’ve been here before so it’s time to remove myself from current events, letting people figure out how many ways the Iranian government, along with other partners, uses smoke and mirrors to achieve longterm goals.
Ever wondered why some people who call themselves white find a way to lament that their ideas and history would be so strong that, like a rare earth magnet, they attract people of all colours, shapes and sizes to want to experience/share/carry on the ideas and history, too?
Do they not see that the best way to prevent a worldwide war is to mix people together into a homogenous whole, where no one area on Earth has the exclusive right to foment war on behalf of out-of-date ideology?
In the meantime, any government in transition has a weak spot — it’s up to the dragon slayers to find the spot and act.
Are you willing to attack an indigenous mob and face further negative connotations/consequences in global mass media coverage?
When is a drone a liability rather than an asset?
How does a world police force maintain order when the crowd is mentally and physically armed against the force of police?
Which is the most violent ideology — Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Pantheism, Agnosticism, Non/Atheism, Capitalism, Confucianism, Communism, futbol, chess, disc golf or quilting?
Which is least violent?
Remember the three tenets of the new slogan in this blog: “Business. Science. Competition.”
And now, finally, after months…no, YEARS of waiting to reveal the next step, the natural progression, of the direction of this blog, let us move behind the curtain and see what’s really going on in the parallel universe where these symbols have no meaning.
In a conversation with my group of diverse friends…
Finally, some real entertainment news for the U.S. election season to wake me up from the doldrums! I knew my friends would produce stupendous headlines to keep me from nodding off into the morning bowl of oatmeal, drool running from mouth down the sides of the tablet PC scrolling international news because the tickle of my chin hairs felt like a finger swipe as I snored.
I spoke to a few sets of friends to get their take on what they’d like to see, the news behind the news…
In Republican-friendly news publications today, a documentary purported to have been recorded while Obama’s father was alive reveals that the ultimate plan of the Obama family was to work covertly with the bin Laden tribe to give Iran the capabilities to build a nuclear bomb, destroying Israel once and for all.
In Arabic-language news publications today, the Islamic leaders who, Allah be praised, believe that no man can purely be of two religions, asked their followers to prove, once and for all, whether Obama should have to demonstrate true loyalty to his professed religion, Christianity, or loyalty to the religion of his father, Islam, Allah be praised.
In science news today, a group of first graders asked President Obama to read a passage of one of his autobiographies to show where, in his youth, he was first inspired to want to put politics ahead of a promising career in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
The construction industry today announced a new plan to work with the Obama administration to boost business, including support for several legislative acts that reduce government spending to prevent the U.S. from receiving a lowered value from a bogus rating agency by eliminating all environmental, labour and other regulations that slow construction and force businesses to give highly-inflated wages, safe working conditions and allegedly competed contracts for government construction projects but, instead, will include enough bribes…graft…off-the-book fees to fill the government’s coffers without increasing taxes or imposing the need for ethical policies and procedures.
The Society for Creative Anachronisms announced a new category called The Crusades that re-enacts the European kings’ actions to placate their people in honouring popular religious practices such as Catholicism and worship of popular political figures like Obama by staging a series of Muhammadan protests in the old Ottoman Empire, making the U.S. military and its allies perform the role of the Crusaders by defending U.S. interests in north Africa and the Holy Land.
Zionist websites today decried the mistake of electing Obama president of the United States, seeing their worst fears realised as Obama makes a ploy to solidify himself as leader of the Muslims, perhaps even declaring Islam as the only true world religion, indicated in his obvious snub of Netanyahu as a pretext to announce Iran as a nuclear power in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that Israel may or may not have also violated.
Apocalyptic Christians started gathering at a secret commune in preparation for the end of the world as predicted would take place when war broke out in the Middle East, dragging the major world powers into mutual destruction.
The spirit of Carl Sagan sighed today while he waited breathlessly to see if his forecast for a nuclear winter would finally come to pass.
Baseball fans, clueless about world events, placed their bets on which teams would take the final wildcard positions before the regular season ended, a few wondering if Obama had a favourite team in America’s game.
Apple fanboys the world over sliced and diced the news about the latest cookie cutter phone labeled the iPhone 5, praising and condemning the new phone’s hardware specs at the same time that news about political uprisings and Obama’s responses/rebuttals scrolled by on their screens during Internet throughput tests.
Film producers announced the formation of a corporation to start preproduction on a movie titled “Trading Places 2,” where Eddie Murphy, now a retired multimillionaire, is conned into trading places with an out-of-work scientist who has a Nobel Prize in Physics, which the producers hope will inspire the next generation of kids to forgo a career in business for a STEM career much like the original “Trading Places” inspired kids to trade a life of street crime for a life of Wall Street crime, leading to the Great Depression by logical extension.
A student of history stirring the melting pot
After observing the past, present and future, I have decided, in case it’s my last chance to vote for a white, heterosexual, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant candidate for U.S. President, to cast my ballot in November for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
I don’t agree with all of their politics but, as a student of history, I see that there’s still a place in international business for the voices of white males having Northern European ancestry who made positive contributions to the idea of a democratic republic with capitalistic tendencies (i.e., the United States) and demand more of the working class than a fallback position on publicly-funded social support programs in tough times.
It is also my way of honouring my parents, whom my mother reminded me this weekend have been Republican supporters since the days of Dwight Eisenhower.
The best way to reform a group is from within, less so from the position of the fringe groups or political parties I’ve supported in the past.
A corporation is not a citizen but a citizen doesn’t always know what’s right for competitive business practices, either.
There is a thin line between predation and competition to define more clearly.
As the world absorbs and reflects the principles espoused by dead white male European philosophers regarding capitalism and communism, I will support positions of whomever is popularly elected as long as those leaders understand the basic premise that a set of states of energy which has found a way to build stronger bonds with states of energy around it will also stumble upon a method to recreate a version of itself which competes against other sets for building stronger bonds, regardless of one’s preferred set of anthropomorphic origin stories.
My slogan: “Business. Science. Competition.”
I am competing against a version of me 1000 years from now that doesn’t care about characterisations or labels like white, heterosexual, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant candidate for U.S. President.
By voting for Romney, I realise I support the concern that establishing a stable population dependent on government support is anathema to the future where I need cooperative competition in the marketplace for resources to get our species off its collective hindends and heading out into the cosmos.
I cringe to think about a version of myself sitting at home, unemployed, receiving government funds, unconcerned about efficient distribution/competition, and serving as an anchor holding down progress while buying the cheapest, if not the highest-qualty goods available, because of limited income, lack of employable skills/education and/or no motivation.
Our species on this planet has a window of opportunity for active exploration and settlement of other celestial spheres but do we really need a social safety net to maintain and expand that window opening?
What is a social safety net? Governmental organisations like NASA? Department of Defense? Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid? Department of Education? Department of Health and Human Services? Department of Transportation? A government with three separate branches of power — judicial, legislative and executive? How about a bare-minimum government that provides “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”?
By voting for Romney, I’ll give the Romney/Ryan Republican Party ticket one more chance to get the balance between the private and government sectors right, preventing U.S. business from creating its own downfall, and protecting it from international versions of financial nuclear bombs without drowning U.S.-based businesses in noncompetitive laws, rules and regulations. If Obama is reelected, I expect the same from his administration working in cooperation with other government public business entities around the globe.
Then, I’ll return to voting for the Nader-type candidates for U.S. President, to keep both major U.S political parties semi/quasi honest (or at least hope to get them to incorporate nonpopulist planks), as impossible as it sounds, because I know that corporations and other nongovernmental organisations for whom we work, or which we hopefully create ourselves, are fueling the engine of our economy now as much as ever, so voting for a national political party to represent my corporal self, no matter the candidate’s racial heritage, is participating in nostalgic belief in the good ol’ days when “we’re the government and we’re here to help” had positive rather than negative connotations, whatever we choose to believe the good ol’ days to have been.
A strong national military defense is certainly a deterrent globally but I’ll take a little more, stronger, defense of my financial nest egg these days, now that I’m closer to retirement age than I am to my first year of earning a decent wage.
All while wishing that our species has better longterm goals than mine — putting Earth-based lifeforms on spacecraft while we still have a locally-stable sector of the galaxy to travel, populate and set up tourist traps.
At the end of the day, do I care about any of what I’m writing here in this blog entry if I am childless, spend most of my day with two aging cats, have no legacy to protect and only philosophical issues to turn into short stories via a habit of blogging daily to entertain myself while staving off the boredom of a 50-year old man who has seen enough of life to know there are fewer surprises to expect and less he wants to put up with?
What motivations do I have left if the only thing to excite me today is the thought of turning on or turning off readers by saying the flavour of ice cream I eat every four years makes more of a superficial difference than a deeply meaningful one to a person who’s tasted all the flavours and concluded they’re pretty much the same, separated by varying patterns on the ice cream cone to break the monotony?
Does it matter if in my thoughts I have a singular vision of what Earth-based lifeforms will look like in 1000 years that makes all of our concerns today seem miniscule by comparison?
Oh well, enough talking to myself here today. Time to roll the rubbish bin back to the house, eat lunch and take a nap.
Quite frankly, on days like today, at 50+ years of age on a beautiful, sunny, warm Monday in a quiet suburban neighbourhood, it is difficult to motivate myself to care about anything more than finding a comfortable place in the house to plop down my body and escape into a dream world uninterrupted by feline companions, one day closer to the end of the set of states of energy known as me, the world of my youth practically gone (or on reruns in TVLand rebroadcast on media streaming devices) and thus me as an adult expansion of my youth-built core almost gone with it, leaving those who care about living to divide up Earth’s resources amongst themselves.
Today, I disappear into the dot at the end of a sentence and that is sufficient to say I was once here as thoughts recreated in electronic bits represented as words in a blog entry formed by pressing fingers on a wireless keyboard communicating with a desktop computer attached to an ADSL line talking to a DSLAM connected to the Internet (which itself is a network of routers, servers, and switches, wires/fibers passing/storing energy states we label 0 or 1, also known as bits – the circles, cycles and spirals never stop, do they?).
Zzzzzz…time to talk to myself in my sleep.
The Headline Games
Working with my colleagues in policy thinktanks funded by large governments public businesses like China and Russia, I wanted to prove that no nation takes itself completely seriously.
We put together a few future stories in our ongoing pasttime of the Headline Games.
What is one of the atheistic countries with the most self-absorbed leader on this planet? North Korea, of course.
What is one of the most martyr-themed, theocratic countries on this planet? Iran, of course.
Then, let’s play a round of the Headline Games to maneuver the two countries to make a deal with each other.
That way, we prove that a theocrat will bed with an infidel with no chance of conversion but plenty of blasphemous profit to benefit them both — spreading atheism and false idol worship in equal measures; an atheist is never so happy as to make love with a theocrat and have pocket change to spare on activities that have nothing to do with glorifying/worshiping/serving a god.
All governments public businesses, you see, are fungible.
One is the same as another.
We may argue the finer points of freedom — whether one may practice one’s beliefs in public or in private only — but let us not split hairs over spilt milk.
The water did not pass under the bridge, it took the bridge with it in a flash flood, much the same as the role of living under the auspices of a public business we call entities like China, Russia, Luxembourg, the United States or the Cherokee Nation.
In the business of globalisation, we allow the protectors of their subcultural practices to carry the banners bearing their beliefs; however, we expect them to behave correctly, conforming to the international business standards to which they all must bow and pray at the end of the day, regardless of the god(s) they do or do not claim is/are responsible for their origin stories.
We in the leisure hours of playing the Headline Games ply our trade, regardless of the tools we use (you) to accomplish goals we want to share with you but you would not understand, having no knowledge of the communication methods your society has not matured enough to learn (yet).
Humour is a given, a public key to unlock the mysteries of the mysterymaking business.
Let us look at the emperour’s new clothes and old hat tricks to show you what we mean…
What I went through with my mother in-law in 1997…
…I go through with my mother in 2012.
My mother in-law was 80 years of age when her husband died. My mother was 78 when her husband died.
In both cases, as in any longterm relationship between two people, the survivor learns new forms of daily decisionmaking.
My mother in-law depended on her now-deceased son and living daughter (my wife) to help her make decisions after their father died.
My mother depends on my sister and me to help her make decisions after our father died.
When my father in-law died, my wife was almost 35.
When my father died, I was 50.
In between: fifteen years of wisdom gathered through life experiences, some shared between us, some accumulated individually.
Fifteen years of social changes/progress, including new technology (think about how much the Internet has changed in 15 years), new businesses, failed businesses, climate change, fashion cycles, pop music tastes, entertainment choices, medical science advances, etc.
Are we more or less tolerant of Iranian atheists/humanists? Liberal Quakers? Non-heterosexual relationships? Physical/mental challenges? The unemployed? Cute cat videos?
Is there room in your life for a late night TV talk show host with a robotic skeleton and cloth-horse costumed actor(s)?
Would there have been such a creature 15 years ago? Could he have been a reformed Scottish alcoholic comedian? Do such creatures exist in real life today?
I learned a new phrase today: conformity to tomorrow (from book, “Without Apology: The Heroes, the Heritage, and the Hope of Liberal Quakerism” by Chuck Fager [which I read, quickly, in the book section of Unclaimed Baggage Center]):
“Conformity to tomorrow: …consists in a moderate opposition to the existing political power, together with the espousal of the ideas and doctrines of the most sensitive, the most visionary, the most appealing trend in society. This is a trend which, from the sociological point of view, is already dominant, and is the one which should normally be expected to win out….In this way, the political stand has the appearance of being independent, whereas in reality it is the expression of an avant-garde conformism.” (Jacques Ellul, a French Reformed theologian and sociologist, 1972A, p. 123.)
I would toss musical acts like Rage Against The Machine, political groups like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, and economic movements like the EU handling of the PIIGS into the realm of avant-garde conformism, as well as most official social protest groups not included in terrorist lists for “wanted: dead or alive” drone attacks.
We always have to have enemies toward whom we formally direct our confusion/fear-based hatred.
But, as usual, I digress.
Earlier today, at a roadside restaurant called Carlile’s in Scottsboro, Alabama, a town where a plentiful plethora of people met for camaraderie and shopping bargains, my wife and I held a wonderful discussion with Autumn, mother of three boys aged 7, 6 and 2, the first taking the role of the responsible eldest (“Mom told you not to do that”), the second a quiet child who puts up with the physical shenanigans of his two brothers, and the youngest, the rowdiest one of the bunch.
Autumn, raised by her grandparents, lost them both nine months apart five years ago. The emptiness inside is slowly, very slowly, wrapped up in new friendships and new experiences we call the passage of time.
When she wants to turn to her grandparents for guidance, they are not there and she feels an instant pang of pain.
Although she has a beautiful tattoo of a heart on her arm where every one of her three boys first rested and for whom she tattooed their names, she would never tattoo the names of her grandparents or the name of her husband on her body because the reminder of their losses, in plain ink visible under skin, would be too much to bear (beauty is not the only thing that’s skin-deep).
She, like all parents, believes deep down that her kids will outlive her, their futures bright.
To those who’ve lost their children to congenital conditions, I give you my sympathy. No one wants to survive the death of offspring with a promising future.
My wife outlived her parents and her only sibling.
I have outlived my father but not my mother and my only sibling.
As this storyline grows more complicated, my life and the lives of my family members are intricately intertwined.
Not a loss, not a gain nor a zero-sum game is life.
The sets of states of energy are constantly in flux.
Every waking moment is an opportunity to learn.
Is new technology an enabler of your relatively expensive entertainment addictions or an avenue of opportunity for increased wealth? Does it increase the credit or debit side of your account ledger? In other words, do you go into debt to play games and watch videos?
These and other questions lead us to thought trails about the costs and benefits of a globally-connected economy, where plenty of leisure is available to the masses.
If this laptop computer and these blog entries are using up CPU cycles for the sole purpose of entertaining myself, is that okay?
What about the urgency to act, the desire to change our society significantly so that spare CPU cycles are used to ensure survival of Earth-based lifeforms here and elsewhere as long as potential energy states are available to support them in this part of the universe?
Does it matter if the majority of our species believes in self-centered activities?
What are a few decades compared to 1000 years?
What is 1000 years compared to 200 million?
Can we really know the future, no matter how much we bunch together to conform to one vision knowingly, unknowingly, voluntarily and/or coercively?
All for the sake of family, whatever that means to you/me/us?
treetrunkdings 