Happiness not for sale here

Nice thing about hanging [out] with lawyers like Michael, judges like Jim, and psychologists/expert witnesses like Roger is…

Well, for example, out of a sample of 500 people on death row, maybe 5 of them are clinically insane and the rest murdered their victims because they were in the way.

A thanks goes out to Bonnie’s daughter for chairing and coordinating this year’s UCP fun[d]raiser, and a round of appreciative applause to the volunteers, Jackson Center workers, caterers, sponsors and generous supporters, public or private, of UCP.

Cheryl was as gracious as ever.

In the midst of hacking the planet, where states of energy are states of energy, it’s good to remember the wonders that states of energy can perform individually and in groups.

Gary and Michael, let’s put your warfighter support idea into viable action!

Time to resolve an ADSL issue with at&t.

Then support UAH, my final alma mater, as no. 1 seed in the South regional NCAA basketball tourney. Go Chargers!

Light Play

A woodpecker digs at the remains of a wreath of birdseed.

Visited Merlin in the animal hospital after lunch today – he was loving and friendly as ever – his old self still young. The veterinarian showed me his removed teeth – I can put them with the one tooth of mine I saved from the Tooth Fairy’s monetary clutches.

Out of a job because of CG artists, and looking for meaningful work, film set construction crews were hired to build replicas of ice sheets atop Mt. Kilimanjaro that also serve as lodging for adventurous suburban hikers. Financed by movie moguls hoping to attract more stable actors than the current stable of actors under contract.

If converging toward singularity is your dream, do you support algae growing on your back deck?

Who am I? I don’t want to know.

There is no why. There is only here.

You is a word that encompasses all states of energy.

What do you do with power you don’t want but need?

Write love letters long after the need is gone.

You are more intelligent/insightful than you know.

How much killing can one person take if we’re all going to die no matter what?

How do we teach one another common courtesy? May we insist we are a peaceful species, too, despite sorrow and uncertainty?

Scratching The Surface

“Doctor, I don’t think he’ll talk!”

“Wait, you fool.  I’ll pull some more of his teeth and then we’ll watch him cry for mercy right before he tells us what he knows.”

“But Doctor, he can’t talk.”

“That’s what my last assistant said and you remember what I did to her, don’t you?”

“Yes, Doctor, after hearing one more of your snide remarks, she quit, married a nice man, got a PhD in construction paper design techniques and became a successful craft hobbyist.”

“The idiot!  She could have been filthy rich and immortally famous!”

“Yes, Doctor, that’s what you keep telling me.”

“Give me the large pliers.”

“Here.”

“Okay, apply the anaesthesia.”

“But, Doctor, I thought you wanted him to suffer pain.”

“What?  Do you think I am a butcher?  This is a living being we’re operating on.  He will suffer later when he sees his beautiful smile is gone.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Here are the upper front teeth.  Put them in that jar.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“I will leave one tooth in the upper jaw and one tooth in the lower jaw just to show I am merciful.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Here are the lower teeth.  Put them in the other jar.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Now, turn off the anaesthesia and we will come back in an hour while he is just gaining consciousness.”

. . .

“Doctor, he is waking up.”

“So, my little friend, are you going to share your secrets with us or must I shove a mirror in your face to show you what we have done to you?”

“Doctor, he can’t talk.”

“What?  You question my methods?  Of course he’ll talk.  I always get these creatures to spill their guts.”

“Yes, Doctor, but that’s only when you slip with the knife while opening up their chest cavities.”

“Aah!  I hear a soft sound.  He’s about to say something, I’m sure.”

“Yes, Doctor.  I hear it, too.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m rubbing the patient’s back.  It’s a trick I learned as a child to get a response.”

“He is groaning, then?”

“No, Doctor, he is purring.  It’s what he does.”

“MEOW!”

“There, he has spoken!”

“Yes, Doctor, the cat is fully awake now.  Can we call his owner and tell him his cat is ready to go home?”

“Not until I find out the cat’s owner’s secret identity.  You are aware that cats pick up their owners’ language and translate it into their speech patterns.  Get the owner on the phone!”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“And this time, make sure the high-fidelity recording system is working.  We will capture a conversation between the owner and the cat and send it to the lab for voice print analysis.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“And I will finally be famous for uncovering the real person who hides with his feline protectors at his secure hideaway tucked into an average suburban housing estate!”

“If you say so, Doctor.”

“I do not say.  I know!”

Aquarius in Aquariums Mounted in Terraria Firma

Our fortuneteller on staff wants to pass on apologies from the Reagans for causing the large earthquake off the coast of Japan – during a during/after life plotting session coordinated by their astrologer, they were experimenting with changing Earth’s orbit for an event several thousand years from now and tried to avoid affecting people but it’s not an exact science.

Microorganisms are not amused by the news, having lost tens of trillions today with no sympathy from our species.

Personally, I send my prayers and best wishes for acceptance of the pain and suffering in the hours, days and years after this tragic event.  I can only barely imagine what the recovery effort and mourning does to one’s and one’s subcultural psyche.

Makes me wonder why we obsess over television shows about crime scenes – are we so confident that we won’t stop murdering one another we don’t blink an eye when making murder a glorious celebration of acting/marketing/advertising?

Sure makes me question the value of human life.

Spend tens of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars on the investigation and legal pursuit of one murder[er] yet an earthquake and tsunami that kill hundreds of people get less news coverage because they’re not marketable enough (they prove too close to the surface of our thoughts that we are little more than ants crawling across this planet, I suppose; murders within our species we can plan, prevent and/or prosecute!).

In times like these, what can a spiritual leader do for you that friends, family and your guru/sports psychologist can’t?

They say Zeus is ready to take over from Saturn now.

Question is, are you ready?

Has the Dalai Lama prepared for his spiritual transformation?

Have you?

Ear Mail :)

Happy 2nd Anniversary, The Melting Pot of Huntsville!

A nod to Stephen Wysock at Aviagen – may you have another 10 great years with the company.  Happy Birthday to your better half today.

Tonight, while enjoying the company of our server, Malarie (no, not malady or malaria, but named after the character on “Family Ties“), my wife and I observed the goings-on at the Melting Pot.

Friendly workers, seemingly happy.

The owner, Steve Hagins, and his son David in MBWA mode.

Steve’s proud (but not biased, of course) about his son’s second sense when it comes to customer service, able to detect a problem before it’s a problem and find a solution before his father knows there’s a problem.

Steve is well on his way toward handing the business over to his son in the next few years, allowing himself to take a long-term break, if not retire completely.

We remember the opening two years ago.

So does Steve.

After 19 months in preparation, working something like 125 days in a row, Steve was in automatic mode as the Melting Pot was set to open.

Realising his father was near a breaking point, David recommended he take a couple of days off.

And collapse he did.

We’ve all been there, Steve.  We rarely know when we need rejuvenation until someone near and dear points it out.

We’ll be back at the Melting Pot because you put customer Numero Uno.

Speaking of customer service, I am focusing on helping another friend, Gary Shelton, and the product invention he shares with Joe McGinty over at Invetex.  If you’re in the computer rack business and want a little extra security and peace of mind for your customers, give Invetex a look-see.  An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of gold where data and cash flow is concerned.

It’s time for our annual support of UCP during An Irish Evening, hosted at the new Jackson Center.  We’ll bid on some Irish gifts to share with our nephew, Jonathan, and his lovely new fiancée, Tammy, who’re planning an Irish-themed wedding soon.

‘Twill be a chilly evening tonight and I ran out of birdseed earlier this week, a mass of sparrows taking over the birdfeeders and cleaning me out.  Maybe the raccoon in the attic won’t wake me up in the wee hours of the morning.

But Merlin will be at home tomorrow and the missus and I will have our two feline frolickers back under one roof again.

While the French (the French?) want to bomb Libya and the Germans (the Germans?) want to wait, there’ll peace in this household on the weekend.

Somebody tell that loudmouth at the New York Times to shut his trap so we can spread the love of franchising all over the world.

The new liberal way is to make everyone rich enough we can afford to fund our own social services or cause célèbre – no more depending on government assistance for the underprivileged, only for the companies in power, of course.

Obama tricked everyone (or was he tricked?) – now that he’s a millionaire, he’s a Republican wolf in Democratic sheep’s clothing like all the others on the list of “I’m wealthy and I’m not giving up my hard-earned cash” adherents to Reaganite Randianism – the whole healthcare/welfare thing was a typical politician’s ruse until the purse was full.

And I wonder why my presidential vote is counted but never counts…

Someone suggested we bomb an airliner over Libya and call it Lockerbie’s Revenge – be careful what you wish for ’cause I guarantee your wish will be what you want and not what you need.

If only I could tell you what you don’t really know…

The usual suspects in the lineup.

But we can still break free.

Wild beyond our wealthiest dreams!

Послушайте, пожалуйста. Вы говорите по-русски?

I was researching the construction of suspect-looking houses in my area of the country and found out that many of the building contractor names were stolen from dead people’s Social Security numbers freely available on the Internet.

Вы понимаете по-английски?

By no means does this blog entry imply who may be putting dead people’s good names to use, dubious or otherwise.

Что значит по-английски identity borrowing?

However, it is a two-way street, is it not?

До свидания.

I’m posting every day in 2011!

Title: I’m posting every day in 2011!

I’ve decided I want to recognize how much I blog by participating in some random blog challenge called postaday2011. Rather than just thinking about doing it, I started back in the 2000s on blogger/blogspot.com.  I will be posting on this blog at least once a day for all of 2011.

I know it will be easy, but it’s also fun, inspiring, awesome and wonderful. Therefore I’m promising myself to pretend to make use of The DailyPost, and the community of other bloggers with similar goals, to help me along the way, including asking for help when I need it and encouraging others when I can.

If you already read my blog, I hope you’ll encourage me with comments and likes, and good will along the way.

Signed,

treetrunkrick

The person with the most toys lost

By having trillions at my disposal, I have nothing.

I got what I asked for.

I wanted nothing for myself and now I am happily free of want for myself.

Although my wife and family have needs that I meet.

It is the only way one can truly rule a universe, gaining absolutely nothing for oneself.

It is not easy.

Resisting temptation has its day baking me dry in the sun, making me parched and willing to drink anything to stay alive.

The last of my wants – to stay alive – is the most difficult to overcome.

Billions of cells preprogrammed to seek life, sometimes at odds with fleeting thoughts asking why being alive is such a big deal.

If social anxiety is truly a form of hidden strength, then is wondering what I’m doing while I’m alive the secret to giving life to a universe of states of energy?

It appears to be so in this moment.

How much do I give myself over to a pure path of poverty in order to help those who can only find their way on a path of prosperity?

What, then, is prosperity?

How much is enough?

How do we plant seeds in billions of parents that sprout into many ways of teaching their children to appreciate moderation, accommodating myriad sub/cultures?

The strong personality that insists the path of excess is the one true path is also part of the whole picture.

How do I deal with that?

Questions form their own answer.

Happiness, Rick, stay on that path.

The species can be saved from itself by itself if it has the right tools and technology to facilitate full comprehension of future impact of one’s actions in the moment.

Finding fun ways to be serious.

Operation “Operation”

There is a game I placed in the thoughts of computer programmers a long time ago, back when mainframe computers filled buildings the size of factories, all to output plotted business solutions.

Computer programmers used to have a world unto themselves, monks/nuns praying at the altars (computer terminals) of the gods (CPUs, PC boards and memory).

Technical manuals were intentionally filled with unintelligible jargon to raise the barrier of entry into the enclaves filled with racks and cables.

Now, anyone with a little time and determination can crank out an application, or app, for computers and smartphones.

What about the game?

It’s the world’s longest technological hide-and-seek/tag.

[Politicians and religious leaders have played the world’s longest game of hide-and-seek/tag so long we’ve forgotten when it started.]

Every new generation of computer engineer/scientist/tester/hack has reinvented the game to match its clashing subcultural upbringing.

Buried in lines of code is a character that has wandered the technological trails looking for the ultimate program.

A virtual character staring in the faces of programmers and looking over their shoulders.

I have inhabited this character’s role for many a year, challenging and cajoling, tagging a programmer and running away to hide around the corner, just out of sight.

No programmer has yet won the game.

I’ve rigged the game so it’s nearly impossible but not improbable that there will ever be a clear winner.

Tag!  You’re it!  I dare you to find me again!

hahahahahahaha

T’eories, Theories and Kyrie

On the personal Internet music station today:

Songs composed by Claude Goudimel and his contemporaries.

Did I not tell myself 2011 would be a difficult year for me?

Where in the cycles of repetition do I place the inconstant self?

A man of the cloth told me that all the answers to life can be found in the work of holy religious writing.

I’ve read many a religious text and found they usually pose more questions than answers, leaving a space between the silence for the unanswerable to give meaning to individual lives that seek meaning.

For those who do not seek, ready paths have been trailblazed, beaten and clearly marked for easy passage.

There is no right answer.

John Cleese once found meaning in the form of income for entertaining those in the business realm.

Can I give myself such meaning, too, and feel unique knowing that I am bringing my self’s sense of humour, although repetitious like any other, to those who may not have heard and/but/or may appreciate the comic approach to learning more in the world of modern barter exchange?

Beef up dry presentations with humour-tinted insight?

All I’m going to do is die.

Every one of us has a fun side that may seem extraordinarily quirky but is the same as others who are just as reticent to speak their “crazy” thoughts.

Otherwise, we wouldn’t have comic strips, late-night comedy talk shows, stations on the tellie dedicated to humour or websites galore expounding on serious but funny subjects.

These blogs are my textual comic strips, twisting philosophy and religion into satirical braids, leading us toward a future wrought with uncertainty but having fun running blind and headstrong into the unknown, no matter how laid-back or high-strung we may fear we be.

At almost 49, my biological clock is beating me over the head.

The path branches here in 2011 and I must choose.

Follow the loops that are long enough to make me forget I’ve commented on the same scenery repeatedly, or…

Step onto a path covered with undergrowth that hides a layer of ice on which I must tread and never know if it is too thin to hold me up or thick enough to stomp upon when I feel like making a scene.

Meanwhile, asking myself why I fear that I will stop being myself in making a new choice although I have never stopped being myself, even when I have immersed myself in the waters dancing to someone else’s tune.

This is the year of my 25th wedding anniversary and it appears a large portion of the money set aside for an anniversary celebration will be spent improving the health of a 12-1/2 year old cat.

Sure, my wife has a job but, by not touching my retirement savings, I am essentially flat broke, having sworn a private oath of poverty in 2007 in order to spend years clearing my thoughts of 45 years of unusable, accumulated civil dust and debris, working an odds-and-ends job once a year to make a little money (e.g., census taker, teacher, technology tester and website creator).

The Ides of March are upon us, in this, my pivotal year of 2011.

You’ll never know how many of these words are real and how many are figments of your imagination.

In other words, these words are the future.

All I can do is continue being me, composing jazzy bluegrass riffs and odes to Renaissance melodies.

The game show “Jeopardy” upped the stakes – the clues will now reference previous clues, both for current shows in progress and previous shows.

“Kris, it’s your turn.”

“‘Step to the Right’ for $2000, please, Alex.”

“In the first round, third column, ‘Time Warp Again,’ the $400 level, the fifth word in the answer is an anagram for this question.”

“I don’t remember.”

“‘What is “nag a ram”?’ The word anagram was actually part of the answer, if you remember.

Kris, it’s still your turn.”

“‘Jump to the Left’ for $1600.”

“On July 16th, 2003, the Final Jeopardy answer was Anna Magdalena Bach.  Name the only person who got the answer right.  For a $5000 bonus, name the total amount of daily winnings for all three participants.”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry you don’t remember, Kris.  After all, you were voted ‘most likely to succeed’ by the Jeopardy Fan Club Forum.  Anyone else?  No?  The answer is ‘What if there was no winner because that day’s last five minutes was lost due to a video glitch?’  It’s the only day that ever happened, famous to most Jeopardy fans watching today’s show, I’m sure.

A little nervous, Kris, aren’t you?  Bet the fans at home are filling the forum with posts giving you a new nickname you’ll never forget.  Fame is fleeting, Kris, so enjoy whatever they’re saying about you now because, with time, they’ll forget about you.

Few people can tell you the name of the host of the original Jeopardy.  I’ll be forgotten soon myself but enjoyed the ride as a spy and propagandist for the Canadian government.”