Tag Archives: satire

Off The Grid

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“If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.” – Proverbs 34:10

“…and by his light/ Did all the chivalry of England move/ To do brave acts.” – Shakespeare: II Henry IV III.ii

“Put all your eggs in one basket, and — watch the basket.” – Mark Twain: Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

“The goal of war is peace; of business, leisure.” – Aristotle: Politics IV

“Four be the things I’d been better without-/ Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.” – Doroty Parker: Inventory

“I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries “Give, give!” – Abigail Adams, letter to John Adams, 27th November 1775

Be careful, Rick, of that which you ask for yourself.

A hermit living with a person well-connected to the modern workforce, and with whom one shares a refrigerated upright box and a freezer chest will discover that waiting in a queue for hours to purchase a portable generator, petrol and oil occupies leisure time more suited for looking at a clear night sky, seeing meteor light trails above one’s house for the first time in decades, light pollution absent during a regional power outage.

Living on word-of-mouth, relying on my folks in Florida to tell me via mobile phone that the powers-that-be have imposed martial law…uh, I mean a dusk-to-dawn curfew in north Alabama.

Solar power, other than fueling the dome of trees keeping this house cool in summer, is not going to energise chilling compressors very well through the light-filtering leaves, but it will recharge batteries for radios, portable TVs/computers, and mobile phones.

A parabolic/trough solar water heater will produce hot showers on a cool morning.

So, I ask myself, with this opportunity to observe life in the moment without nuclear/coal power plants pushing electrons, what of a family’s daily existence is truly essential.

Don’t need an automatic dishwasher, clothes washer/dryer, microwave oven, toaster, refrigerator and/or freezer.

Don’t need a lawnmower, hedge trimmer, vacuum cleaner or electric screwdriver.

Convenient, yes. Need, no.

Clean water, absolutely.

Don’t need a doorbell that chimes electrically, a phone answering machine, videogame system, large-screen tellie, home intrusion alarm, or clothes/hair iron.

Don’t need an electronic piano/organ, ebook reader, electrified light bulbs, record/CD/DVD players, or AC-powered clocks.

Want them but don’t need them.

Of course, a hermit’s needs differ slightly from a family’s needs.

A hermit doesn’t need a baby monitor, or oxygen machine.

A hermit can create an ant-powered supercomputer to gauge and predict patterns whereas a technology-challenged family can make do with basic mobile phone service to track changes in personal networks.

Enough chatter. Time to reprogram an ant colony and then scavenge for the fuel-hungry monster keeping our frozen/cooled foods at optimally-safe longterm storage conditions for delayed eating gratifications.

Windmills aren’t useful in dead air space.

Meanwhile, sun tea brews in the sunroom and a solar cooker is ready to make a delicious meal. Where’s that Mylar camping hot water shower bag? My wife says she’ll heat water with our coffee pot, electric, o inspired by college dorm hot water problems.

“I’m glad you two are still together: it helps me save on postage.” Ashleigh Brilliant: Pot-Shots No. 528, Marriage series

How many entrepreneurs in this power outage will inspiringly invent and successfully market an efficient home heating/cooling system that is self-contained and/or scalable to efficient neighbourhood levels?

A Life Without Words

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As my life’s end draws closer, I review my life through thoughts organised into symbol sets that many of my tiny species’ members could comprehend.

But the storm that reorganises life on this part of the planet cannot speak a word.

I cannot tell you what I know because what I know has no words.

Untranslatable.

And that’s too bad (“that” being the Internet which cannot express life in real terms, only limited communications in the forms our species is familiar with (and various species partially understand in their unique ways)).

My sister and I sense/see/speak without words. I believe that Monica and I did, too. Very few people have I encountered who’ve communicated with me in like manner.

The moments in between are dry deserts of abject loneliness.

Do i object?

It is the only life this body has known.

Comfortable in the relative silence of an atmospheric disturbance, a natural phenomenon as regular as a lifetime partner’s sleeping/breathing patterns.

All I’ll ever know. Silented SETI listening stations, religion-based persecution/discrimination, intelligence/military leadership swaps and child slavery the forgotten wallpaper of the life I share with you.

The invisible hermit returns to his home unpowered by nuclear technology…humless.

May take a few days to watch my species continue digging an early grave for the current civilisation before I write here again…

If I could simply/easily tell you how …

But it makes so little difference to the galaxy that it hardly seems worth explaining what you already know in your wordless thoughts.

“This, too, shall pass.”

A limb fell from a tree onto the front yard

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On this planet, many activities in the moment.

I do not exist except in the moment.

I walk on well-paved thought trails today, not interested in pushing envelopes or developing new art states.

I cannot tell if anyone reads these words or if everyone who can read reads these words.

No storylines to perpetuate.

The happiness of silence will do.

A voice drowned out by the greenness of new leaves after a lot of water fell from the sky.

Numb.  Ignorant.

Existing with no timescale or socially-interactive technology advancement that matters.

Being, not doing.

One of seven billion will do.

Most of us are amateurs giving away advice and sharing opinions about the work of professionals.

I grew up worshipping warriors in the arena.  Who is now growing up worshipping women with advanced degrees in the workplace, warriors of the word rather than the sword?

I have no place in the modern world.

My time, my set of thoughts given to me by my sub/culture, is gone.

The cycle of life catches us all in its spokes.

We innocently flirtatious middle-aged men are fast becoming relics.

Time to sit back in my forest haven and watch the vines grow up around me, which feed off my breath while I feed off the labour of unseen hands.

The invisible hermit is in his element.

The imaginary sense of balance is settled.

My dream is alive.

Sic as ye gie, sic wull ye get.

May the best ye hae ivver seen be the warst ye’ll ivver see.
May the moose ne’er leave yer girnal wi a tear-drap in its ee.
May ye aye keep hail an hertie till ye’r auld eneuch tae dee.
May ye aye juist be sae happie as A wuss ye aye tae be.

The Scottish Emigrant’s Farewell

Fareweel, fareweel, my native hame,
Thy lanely glens and heath-clad mountains!
Fareweel thy fields o’ storied fame,
Thy leafy shaws and sparkling fountains.
Nae mair I’ll climb the Pentlands steep,
Nor wander by the Esk’s clear river;
I seek a hame far o’er the deep-
My native land, fareweel for ever!Thou land wi’ love and freedom crowned,
In ilk wee cot and lordly dwelling
May manly-hearted youth be found,
And maids in every grace excelling.
The land where Bruce and Wallace wight
For freedom fought in days o’ danger,
Ne’er crouched to proud usurping might,
But foremost stood, wrong’s stern avenger.

Though far frae thee, my native shore,
And tossed on life’s tempestuous ocean,
My heart-aye Scottish to the core-
Shall cling to thee wi’ warm devotion.
And while the waving Heather grows,
And onward rows the winding river,
The toast be “Scotland’s broomy knowes,
Her mountains, rocks, and glens forever!”

Meaning of unusual words:
shaws=flat piece of ground at the foot of a hill
ilk wee cot=every small cottage
wight=vigorously
broomy knowes=hillock clad in broom

Caught in an eddy today

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Thanks to Stephanie and others at Publix last night.

Today is a meditative state, one’s will spinning in a side swirl off to the side of the main current.

Laughing at myself for making up conversation to fill a future story’s chapter excerpt about clicking sounds on a telephone and pretending someone would care enough to record both the conversation and discussion on the telephone.

Making retirement entertaining for self, if not anyone else.

Watching the forest canopy grow dark under thick clouds.

Remembering friends from the past.

Establishing new memories.

Keeping reality to myself, seven letters to call my own.

Feeling rhythms and wondering which ones are worth writing about.

A-U-M-A-U-M-A.

Seeing the Sight of April during April sightseeing

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An elephant in a bull shop – that’s me.

Soliciting funds over the landline for the children’s canine teeth rehabilitation association of psychological dental health associates.

Between requests from the Committee and the MORTIE network, I barely have time to meditate on making my heart skip beats in order to vary the syncopated rhythm that body uses to record these words.

A thanks to Veronica at Hale Springs Inn’s McKinney Restaurant, James at the Acropolis Four Stars Grill and a Citgo petrol station.

I wonder about a white Ford E250 van with Georgia state/Gwinnett county tag BLU 8683 – why did its wheels/tires seem so wobbly?

Do you forward your landline phone to a mobile phone in order to track outside callers who think they can hide behind unknown/fake Caller IDs?

Time to rest my brain behind the flat screen that displays this blog to me.

My wife and I are emotionally drained, with more to go.

One of us needs to maintain a modded, modern modicum of sanity.

I’m glad you can’t see my correcting of bad typing today – otherwise, you might believe my wife is the sane one.

Of course, I know she is.

Congrats to our flower girl (25 years ago), Rachel, for her fifth child getting baptised by sprinkling yesterday, as well as the young man who did, and the young people who made their public confession of faith in my wife’s hometown church.

Hard to believe Hannah’s little brother, Daniel Boyd, has grown into a church elder leading the Sacrament, and raises a little boy of his own now.

Silence today, listening to the echoes of extinct beasts prowling nearby primordial boreal forests.

Meditation, sleep – what’s the difference?

For one example, recent dreams have been a lot more vivid than recent meditative thoughts.

To be – that is the difference.

Why is Doonesbury endorsing Donald Trump for U.S. President? After all, we know the veil of satirical reverse psychology is a hidden means of promotion. Guess we know who Trudeau will vote for in 2012.

April, we want our egg bread in two weeks. Have we known you for three years now? How is it we grow old und you stay young like Stella?

Dragonflies and leafed-out trees call my name.

G’day, mates!

Up next: the April 1975 church newsletter of Rogersville Presbyterian Church…

Black Vulture Doing Time

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My sister and I can jump out of a perfectly good airplane flying thousands of feet above the ground but we can’t walk to the top of a rickety old fire tower.

Rhonda pines for the wolf that died of stress, she told us while feeding the deer, one which gored another to death, nature being what it is, even in locked pens.

Dinner at Amis Mill Eatery, served by Michelle, finished the day’s funnery.

Then back to my mother in-law’s house to spin a metal snake down the washing machine drain pipe to clear out a linty/muddy clog.

My sister almost stepped on a green snake as we hiked to the top of Bays Mountain and the radio tower trail turnaround.

A mother and daughter wore “Emory & Henry” T-shirts after they drove 30 minutes all the way from Virginia.

‘Tis fun to be ignorant touristy day hikers, chatting about life and photographing nature in spring.

Raspberry moonshine with the alcohol content “cooked” makes for safe and delicious dessert syrup, I’m told.

The planetarium show was great for kids, sparking my wife, sister and me to use iPad/Star Walk to look at the night sky in a field between the Amis Mill and my wife’s old home place.

My homemade/DIY daypack made of plastic bags and blue ribbon worked well today, reminding my sister to say there are a lot of homeless people in Asheville, NC. Heightwise, she stood on the Rock of Ages at Holston Presbytery Camp just fine this week.

As midnight approaches, I can say I’ll sleep well before rising for Easter service, sharing pews with regulars and C&E members.

G’nite, Anne Elizabeth. G’nite, Janeil Ann. Good night, John Boy. Good grief, my sore feet, which broke in a pair of Columbia hiking boots.

Thanks to everyone working at Bays Mountain Park and Planetarium, keepers of Kingsport’s precious jewel.

Thanks to David for the loan of an electric drill and Melinda for the offer of turkey, ham and dessert for lunch – sorry, my dear, but we didn’t get back until 9:30 p.m. tonight.

Time to get the clothes out of the dryer, fold/roll them and go to bed.

Today was a good day to die but glad I’m alive and well enough to talk about what happened.

Yawning Yawing Awning Awes

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Elisabeth, Ashley, MattressFirm. Josh, Crystal, Shoe Carnival. Good Friday Lenten service, Rev. Rose, Rev. Willis, Area Church Council Benevolent Ministries. Boat Yard Methodist Episcopal cemetery. Johnson Hilliard, Eastman Chemical Company, Cemex. Tuesday Morning, Georgia. Crossroads Methodist Church children delivering Easter cards and plastic eggs to nursing home residents.

Without access to email, what are the piles of readers’ comments not saying to me?

As part of the antiterrorist task force constantly testing defensive positions by setting two sides against each other offensively, I am.

Am I allowed to reveal more of what you will not comprehend when I first tell you?

Follow two children, understand their sub/cultural vocabularies, their network of states of energy, then observe them entering puberty and later having children.

Follow and observe those children’s children into adulthood, knowing and anticipating their sub/cultural responses and response rates (i.e., their bodies’ natural rhythms).

As the adults become involved in secretive activities, see if you can guess what their secrets are by the change in their “public” response rates.

The holes and gaps tell you all you need to know.

The silence of the universe is deafening.

Watch the hard-to-break habits of retirees.

Opportunists bound and abound.

Echoes contain messages hidden in electronic spaces that create numerical sequences for diverting scrambling cramming students of offroad mudders.

Plant musical decoding phrasing in plane eggdropping bomb sightseeing.

Should only baritone personalities sing baritone voice parts?

Has your sub/culture trapped you in your postsecondary debt, planting your feet in rooting compound when you want to fly away?

Seashells and eggshells. Mobile phones that look like calculators. Calculus books that look like flat files. Beds that look like sofas. Irrigating ear canals and irritating filmy hand sanitisers.

Cougars and panthers and fight songs.

Unofficial cannonball road rallies.

Labels.

Bingo.

Disconnected from whatever reality is supposed to be in another context.

Ending in loose, lazy word combinations and sentence structure.

Talking to alien energy frameworks using global networks of street light lumen variations.

Ossiferous and Tangential Man

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I received a report from the Womyn Who’ll Rule Them All (W2RTA) subcommittee last night.

According to female covert operatives embedded in northen Africa and the Middle East, the centuries-long struggle to overthrow the male-dominated religiososociopolitical structure is nearing completion.

They move forward toward electing themselves a leader who will convert the old polygamists to slaves serving the New Motherland.

“For millennia, our foresisters led worship of the female earth mother goddess,” Nesa’abkeldelah said in the soft, confident tone of a well-trained member of the High Sisterhood. “We allowed the men the opportunity to rule, just to prove to them their short-term leadership mentality, like their habit behind bedroom doors, was not good for our species. It is time we took our rightful place again and restored the true balance of nature.”

Male leaders in Syria, Iran, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Libya deny their current domestic population disturbances are gender-related.

U.S. and EU advisors in Libya would not comment for this story, although several of them were seen reading Mother Earth News and wearing distinctive female goddess figurines on necklaces.

Local rumours imply all the advisors have hidden tattoos and hot-iron brands of the High Sisterhood trademarked symbol.

When reached for comment, Hillary Clinton would not address the 1990s-era magazine profile that stated she was the man in her relationship with Bill or a recent newspaper article that said she is the man in her relationship with Obama.

Libyan leader-until-death-do-us-part Moammar Qaddafi and Syrian president Basha Assad said they were willing to show more of their feminine side but refused to wear Western-style women’s clothing, insisting that desert robes were not excuses for men to wear dresses.

Through his soothsayer spokesperson in a seance, Yassar Arafat said that he often wore women’s undergarments beneath his PLO clothing, giving him a better understanding of his people’s struggles for respect and legitimacy. In fact, he wore a scarf atop his clothes to honour his mother.

Menachim Begin and J. Edgar Hoover were not available before this post-post-deadline story was finally posted on the worldwide news wire after Amazon fixed its decades-old data center problems.

On the entertainment front, the Baldwin brothers are often proudly seen shopping for this season’s stiletto pumps they wear on moose-hunting exhibitions with Merkel and Jillard.

This is Jose de la Hessler-Chan-Wolezski, the ever-vigilant journalist/correspondent spy, reporting on Earth Day for Sky & Telescope magazine.

Tune in next week to read about fashion tips to consider on your holiday trip to the International Space Station, featuring Hu Jintao and Richard Branson showing off the latest Vera Wang tresses.

Remember, you don’t tell me what I want to hear and my network will make sure you fail the newspaper test with flying colours.

Keep looking skyward!!!

Danger: Explosion Hazard. Do not use in the presence of flammable anesthetics!

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Riverfront Seafood Company.

Sitting by the Holston, upriver of I-26 bridge and Netherland Inn, first dinner with mon ami, my spouse, after two weeks of my mother in-law telling me the (her) end is near and baring her soul to someone before she dies.

In my final year of secondary school, a career aptitude test said I should be either a priest or a chemical engineer.

The latter career choice didn’t work out as planned.

And now I find myself receiving confession, unable to repeat the deepest spoken thoughts of my spouse’s mother because the living should be able to keep their innocent views of their beloved friend/family member while they’re alive, even after she’s gone.

A request to hunters:

If you pursue beings that mate for life, kill the pair and spare the one from a remaining life of loneliness.

In the small world department, our server, Leif, from Detroit, met his wife who was a bartender at Rush Street restaurant (where I worked 30 years ago while dating my wife) who served Leif a pint “shot” of Jagermeister the first time they met.

Although now separated, remaining friends, they share the love of their eight-year old who can read at the eighth-grade level.

Thanks to Heather at the Colonial Heights Dollar Tree and friendly folks at the automatic/express car wash next-door; Rebecca, Cindy, Martha, Melissa, Sharon Huff, Dr. (not Gate City mayor) Mark Jenkins and beauty shop hair stylists; Kingsport Fire Dept.; City of Bristol Rescue Squad; Betty Denny and her granddaughter Ashley (hope your dog’s inner ear infection clears up); Betty’s pastor at Marvin’s Chapel Methodist Church on Boone’s Creek Road; Spotless Car Cleaners; Rev. Robert White; Joerns Easy Care 2002 bed; LG LCD TV; Prevail adult care large washcloths; Jolene at MeadowView Eye, Ear, Nose & Throat Specialists for rushing the hearing aid repair; Rogersville BP petrol and full service shop; and whomever else I forgot.

Question to self: is it really the end for her, as physically healthy as she is?

Do I take her confessions to me with me to my grave?

When my wife is gone, I hope I won’t have long to live because I trust no one else alive with the totality of my spoken/written thoughts, not even you, dear blog, spread across the anonymous multilanguage word trails of the worldwide web.

Humour will go with me to my last breath, one final sarcastic sigh escaping my lips.

I like the line, “Journalism is not a profession but an art because anyone can do it,” but not everyone can do it well.

How many species understand loneliness?

I meant craft or craftiness, not art, in the quote above, didn’t I?

I did? [rofl]

If you sacrificed your dreams to have kids and you hoped your offspring fulfilled your dreams but didn’t, what else is there to look forward to but the afterlife you’ve been promised?

Judge not lest you begrudge.

Every journalist is a spy.

Every spy lies.

Therefore, does every journalist lie?

I retired in 2007 for this? I’m tired. Time to stop rambling.

Go Cart On Steroids

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A list of people/organisations to thank floats on silken spider threads in the wind, seeking a spot to make web connections.

The web of thoughts in this aging brain looks to clear the dust, lint and dead skin cells that slow the route to a spider’s hold on life.

A tabby cat takes a scent inventory of a truck that pulled up into a neighbour’s graveled backyard.

A steady heart, 60-70 bpm, indicates a life without 30-60 minutes of aerobic exercise a day.

Naptime, while people do whatever they do to define their hold on life.

For me in this moment, a little drool and heavy eyelids define my life exceedingly well.