Tag Archives: society

Deconstructionist

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To see that I exist, that there is a set of states of energy that can be traced back to the union of two sets of states of energy, one still living…

This “I” cannot justify its existence after playing with a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet, updating an Apple iPad 2 to iOS 6, adding contacts to a Samsung Galaxy SIII and asking if I, all references to “It’s A Wonderful Life” aside, have made sufficient contributions to say I deserve calling myself my father’s son, Richard Lee Hill II.

There are brief moments like these when I ask myself if my blue-eyed, red-haired, freckly-skinned genetic material goes to the grave without any attempt to reproduce myself, then why did I live at all?

Silence follows accusingly, guilt-ridden, mocking, watching others who do and do not reproduce themselves build legacies that live…

Why am I here if nothing matters?

I have accumulated and continue to accumulate toys in an attempt to fill in the gaps of my life where [grand]children should be.

The massive waste in our species’ endeavours that we dedicate to the excess time our social network has given us outside our basic childrearing tasks is phenomenal.

We have become the emperour’s clothes.

I am a prime example.

I should be dead yet I still live, the personification of self-preservation, a set of states of energy perpetuating itself as long as it can.

Devoid of meaning.

A transparent being.

Time to dull my brain with alcohol, a legal means of escape from the torture of living with myself, happy in my comfortably suburban misery with no motivation to escape from the multiculturalism that is smothering me, who is the son of a father who thought that pot-smoking hippies like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are giving our country away.

Dad, what can I do to make things right?  Legalise the recreational use of substances like marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms and LSD to raise them up to the legally-destructive level of alcohol, tobacco and prescription medication?  Show secret videos we have recorded of private speeches that Hillary/Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have given over the years that will destroy international relationships, let alone upset the balance of voters’ opinions?

Dad, I tried to support Mitt Romney, I really did.

But without a child of my own to say that I have preserved the genetic heritage of which you were so proud, having descended from one of the American Revolutionary War heroes, it’s difficult to swallow the bitter aftertaste of the two-headed monster we call the duopoly of the Republican/Democratic political machine that promotes two people I can barely distinguish from one another, Obama and Romney.

Dad, I never supported Bill Clinton.  But I never supported George W. Bush, either.

Our political system has become such a convoluted, commercialised, nondemocratic system that I’ve given up fighting it — we’re just one, big, international conglomeration of interdependent business functions now, a group of nations in name only.

The dogs of war are eating the scraps and I can’t stand the stench of income inequality that our nation has dissolved into, despite it appearing better than many political systems around the world.

I agree the “haves” should not be taxed when they have competed to earn their gains for themselves and their heirs but many of them have become too greedy, driven mad by the spectre of recession/depression hanging over them and the lifestyles to which they’ve grown accustomed.

Look at me, living in the lap of relative luxury, surrounded by piles of useless crap that demonstrates the excess our society generates for our childrearing-free moments.

Has the Great Recession taught the upcoming generation to appreciate life without gizmos just as the Great Depression and WWII taught your mother and yourself to appreciate enriching the mind through education that enhances one’s family rather than mind-numbing distractions that turn us into technological zombies?

Dad, I’m sorry I never gave you a grandchild from me, your older, sole male heir, a son you almost lost when he got dragged into the muck of pop culture for a while as he tried to define/find himself out from under the shadow of your strong personality.

There’s nothing I can do about it now.

All I can do is make sure your wife of 55 years, my mother, is taken care of the rest of her life, however she wishes to live it, until one of us dies first, as I give my wife the time she deserves with me.

It’s not enough but it’s all I have to offer in a country that had grown too druggy, multicultural and unpatriotic for you.

Otherwise, I’d prove the real balance of power by encouraging our nation to go to war with nations that are ill-prepared to handle our massive firepower, economic and popular culture power be damned, while I sit back and enjoy the show on all my useless gizmos, before those nations complete their detente arsenals and ruin the fun we closet warhawks truly enjoy.

Dad, maybe that’s the idea.  Should I use the transition of leadership in China and the discord in the U.S. as well as the turmoil in the old Ottoman Empire to start a good, old-fashioned, patriotic ass-whooping of a war?  I’ve got enough profiteers on my side around the world to make it interesting and a savvy business investment, besides.

We’ll see…

When ifs are won wheat is fun

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Hmm…predictive texting…when ifs are won what is fun?  Wheat sounds better, though, doesn’t it?

If your country was facing a potential economic crisis and your leadership was in transition, wouldn’t you want to find an external enemy to conjure up for the masses to pay attention to?  I would, if I was a Chinese political or business leader or even someone doing business with China.

A cornered rat is a cornered rat, a rodent that is rarely loved, just trying to make its way in the world.

Yeah, that’s the way we can feel sometimes.

Me, I’ve figured out that I never enter a room, especially one with corners.

I find a way to challenge everyone to perform at their best, whatever they imagine their best to be, by holding up a funhouse mirror to them and let them see themselves in an alternate world of strange shapes, sizes and colours.

Artists are the same way around the world.  A musician from Trinidad, Nicki Minaj, has shown support for Mitt Romney in her song lyrics.  So, too, in a way, Randy Newman and his song, “I’m Dreaming of a White President.” And, finally, Marvel Comics shows us an alternate universe where Captain America is president of the U.S.

What these artists don’t realise is they are endorsing the very opposite of the satire they create.

It is the sole intent of the opposite sketch to get people to think outside their way of thinking, causing many to ask, “What if…”

That’s why I’ve never mentioned certain pop culture figures in my blog, because mentioning their names, even in the most obvious satire possible, endorses their place in my alternate universe as well as promotes them in the universe we share together.

That’s why we in the popular press no longer talk about certain former political candidates or political officeholders.

As for me, my goal is to make everyone richer in the lives we share together in this moment, getting some of you to promote people you’d never mention in normal conversation.

Satire is making fun of all of us, including the satirist.

Why do I not have a problem with Mormonism when I don’t actively practice a set of beliefs outside of the new slogan, “Business. Science. Competition.”?

Because I am my own god of this blog, a god whose power is Comedy, whose strength is Tragedy, who lives outside of space and time, no different than anyone else who feels strongly enough about one’s self to take charge of one’s thought patterns and align them for self-preservation in a neutral universe.

A god inside a blog does not darken the Sun that holds the solar system together in which the blog resides.  A god inside a blog is a literary device but any religion, including Mormonism, Islam, and others, is a literary device, isn’t it?

Speaking of gods inside their thoughts, it is fun watching the purveyors of mass media scramble to tell stories that support their points of view when they claim to be insensitive to the needs of viewers/watchers/listeners.

How often do we hear stories sympathetic to the aches and pains of world leaders who’ve been labeled cruel, vicious, dictatorial and destructive?  Very rarely.  We’d rather hear about sufferers of terrible treatments.

What about those who like to be dominated as along as they’re provided a narrow pathway on which they walk in fear, their plates and bellies full?  Rarer still.  We’d rather promote people who don’t want to live in fear.

Am I wrong to want people to have true freedom, including the freedom not to hear about lifestyles they deny are real because they take the phrase, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” to mean staying away from those who don’t pursue the same things, no matter how repressive they want for themselves or don’t want for others?

Should cable/satellite/Internet TV companies offer packages geared toward specific lifestyles, rather than a smorgasbord that appeals to some, offends others and is of little interest to the rest?  Do people have to even see the names of channels they want blocked or haven’t paid for when they flip open the online guide?

This is all old territory I’m covering, where we get to peek into the lives of those holed up in private communities (e.g., simply escape to their one-room flats; personal privacy is not just for gated communities), preventing their families from seeing practitioners of lifestyles they do not condone.

The United States of America and similar countries are not just physical states, they are states of thought sets, too, a magical place where we can be whomever we wish to be, imagining a populace with leaders sympathetic to our joys, sorrows, plights and accomplishments, or fighting against them, the populace and/or leaders, in perennial cycles.

Today, I overcame my aversion to entering a house of worship for political purposes in order to cast a ballot against a state initiative to once again play funny money game with tax revenues.  Knowing the conservative nature of the state of Alabama, I’m assuming the initiative will pass but I’ve been wrong before.

Well, the political satire related blog entries come to a close with this one.  I joined major artists in giving the Romney/Paul ticket a backhanded compliment and will let the ball roll on its own from now until the election is over.  It was fun.  Time to look at places farther along the spacetime continuum, talk about how we’ll get there and what it looks like from an anthropomorphic futurist’s point of view.

= = =

Thanks to George, Joyce and Minnie at the voting booth today; Margaret and coworkers at the Marketplace Cafe (hope the wedding goes well on Friday!); Steak-Out; Google Play.

Truly Disillusioned

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[Personal notes — feel free to skip]

I sit and stare at the computer screen while the antivirus software performs a “quick scan” of the hard disk drive after the IE10 web browser software on my evaluation copy of Windows 8 acted funny.

Not that I trust the antivirus software to find anything amiss.

These days, when flood/drought cycles flow over land and our species has a short-term memory problem about scientifically-tested ecological history, I am not as easy to hypnotise into believing that the bits and bytes that comprise the virtual world I pretend exists in order to add electronic words to the pile make any sense.

Better to believe I am insane than believe I can see through solid sheets of molten sand called windows.

Two more tenets of my belief set:

  1. Don’t take myself seriously.
  2. Don’t take myself seriously that I don’t take myself seriously.
  3. Jokes are almost always better in threes.
  4. Time is an illusion.

The quick scan has almost finished running — the antivirus popup/miniwindow shows 94% progress.

Needless to say, I am not chewing my nails or suffering anxiety about the pending results of the quick scan.

Yet, hickory nuts are pounding the roof loudly, waterlogged from an overnight rain event, seeking a closer relationship with Earth, sharing a gravitational love with each other.

What if there is a connection between the house roof, the hickory nuts and the antivirus software?

What if there isn’t?

By asking questions about which item does not belong in a list, can I show myself if I am sane?

Was it sane to wait and watch, having an ounce of belief that Obama might have made a difference, seeing that his two best accomplishments were the Affordable Care Act and institutionalised drone killing?

This is progress?

This is why tens of thousands of soldiers died in the American Civil War 150 years ago?

Meanwhile, Chinese military experts expect a sea-based conflict to protect Chinese economic interests because Chinese authorities believe they don’t have to anticipate land-based military skirmishes with their Russian neighbour?

Thank goodness, the antivirus software declared “NO THREAT FOUND.”

I can relax.

Technology has come to save the day, so I can now let autoupdate install the iTunes 10.7 software that flashes me a message via the User Account Control function before making my computer compatible with devices running iOS 6.

It was good to relieve some domestic tension and give Obama his four years to show that skin colour alone does not determine a person’s qualifications.

For that, we have the events of the American Civil War and its eventual outcome to thank.

However, now that we’ve accomplished that goal, let’s look at other more important issues such as defining for a large part of the disillusioned world what their subcultures can contribute to world history better than being crushed by homogenising muliculturalism.

Me, I’m still getting used to the fact that some of my childhood friends from 30+ years ago were/are gay/lesbian/transgender/bisexual, let alone the fact that the U.S. president was “outed” by his VP to support gay marriage.

Force-feeding multiculturalism on the general population has unintended consequences that, if I am to understand our species correctly, leads to battles between us over how we believe we fit into the role our sets of states of energy play in the [un]observable universe.

Another four years with Obama at the helm shows scenarios that I’m not comfortable with — more suppression of groups opposed to government oppression of longstanding subcultural beliefs, including overt mockery of Mormonism, which means a reduction in the economic strength of the people who have lost their viability/trustability as productive members of society.

The U.S. has a large population of unemployed, underemployed, and incarcerated citizens who are quickly losing their belief in the American Dream, a net drag on our place in international worth.

I care about the lost opportunities we have here, right now, that the current U.S. president has been unable to address: those who bought into Obama’s hope and those who didn’t, both having no hope for their futures, many worse off than their ancestors.

Ultimately, we may not be able to address these issues domestically because we are fighting an uphill battle against the negatively growing sine wave of economic history.

However, I love change.  Obama was a change.  Romney will be change.  Nader would have been a great change, too.

The candidate who admits he’s willing to improve our nation’s education/economic status while keeping an eye on ecological sustainability without forcing us to compromise our beliefs is the one I want to support.

If…

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If, in this parallel universe of a blog, we are to start a world war on “global culture homogeneity disguised as a global economy for the benefit of all” beginning at the grassroots level, what is the post capitalist/communist consumption/production model going to morph into?

Are we simply preparing the species for a war to clear excess on our usual endless cycle of economic booms/busts? Can we, instead, look ahead past or even possibly skip war altogether?

Creating an alternate reality/realty to test theories is not only the province of fiction writers but also policy makers, bookmakers, farmers, hunters and quilters.

While we prime the pump for a test of the vitality of angry mob mania on the edge of economic collapse in this space, let us examine the world in a few months/years/decades.

The momentum of high tech development may slow but the relative elitism of the high tech mavens creates its own weather system which sucks in and destroys during the act of recreating its image as states of energy are wont to do in what we call a narcissistic house of mirrors continuum.

Disregard the labels we use like capitalism or communism or any similar officially-sanctioned state function.

Let us look beyond the labels and look at the condition/effect of technology for technology’s sake.

Better yet, let us continue to use the paradigm of sets of states of energy without regard to hierarchy other than the tendency of energy states bonding at multiple macro levels.

How will states of energy change their bonding structures when encountering a counter wave of resistance to commercialized rapid waves of change labeled progress that occur repeatedly in the area of study we call history that fictionalises how we got to this point where we share a moment together understanding the same sets of symbols for which our sets of states of energy were aligned in reaction to previous rapid waves of change we currently see as a normalized part of us?

Who benefits and who does not?

Who is prepared for a global reset?

Many enjoy the freedom of multiculturalism and many do not.

How will this blog introduce the vision of a “passive” solar system with us seeing ourselves as central intelligent units to one that turned itself into an active, living system independent of our species, viewing us as merely one small beneficial part of a growing whole expanding into the galaxy?

We like the distractions that make us seem more important than the planet on which we’ve thrived; however, view us over the course of history of the next 1000 years and today’s debates about global economy changes logged in everyday news fade quickly, just another link in the chain of events of a galaxy creating “consciousness” on the edge of one of its “arms,” much like our Olympian/ordinary cyborgs today have machine intelligence in their prosthetic appendages that are fast becoming more rapid processors than equivalent parts of our congenital nervous system driven bodies.

More ifs as they develop…

Reposted post of the day

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21 Ways Rich People Think Differently

Business InsiderBy Mandi Woodruff | Business Insider – 9 hours ago

World’s richest woman Gina Rinehart is enduring a media firestorm over an article in which she takes the “jealous” middle class to task for “drinking, or smoking and socializing” rather than working to earn their own fortune.

What if she has a point?

Steve Siebold, author of “How Rich People Think,” spent nearly three decades interviewing millionaires around the world to find out what separates them from everyone else.

It had little to do with money itself, he told Business Insider. It was about their mentality.

“[The middle class] tells people to be happy with what they have,” he said. “And on the whole, most people are steeped in fear when it comes to money.”

Flickr / C. Pajunen1. Average people think MONEY is the root of all evil. Rich people believe POVERTY is the root of all evil.

“The average person has been brainwashed to believe rich people are lucky or dishonest,” Siebold writes.

That’s why there’s a certain shame that comes along with “getting rich” in lower-income communities.

“The world class knows that while having money doesn’t guarantee happiness, it does make your life easier and more enjoyable.”

2. Average people think selfishness is a vice. Rich people think selfishness is a virtue.

“The rich go out there and try to make themselves happy. They don’t try to pretend to save the world,” Siebold told Business Insider.

The problem is that middle class people see that as a negative––and it’s keeping them poor, he writes.

“If you’re not taking care of you, you’re not in a position to help anyone else. You can’t give what you don’t have.”

Getty Images3. Average people have a lottery mentality. Rich people have an action mentality.

“While the masses are waiting to pick the right numbers and praying for prosperity, the great ones are solving problems,” Siebold writes.

“The hero [middle class people] are waiting for may be God, government, their boss or their spouse. It’s the average person’s level of thinking that breeds this approach to life and living while the clock keeps ticking away.”

4. Average people think the road to riches is paved with formal education. Rich people believe in acquiring specific knowledge.

“Many world-class performers have little formal education, and have amassed their wealth through the acquisition and subsequent sale of specific knowledge,” he writes.

“Meanwhile, the masses are convinced that master’s degrees and doctorates are the way to wealth, mostly because they are trapped in the linear line of thought that holds them back from higher levels of consciousness…The wealthy aren’t interested in the means, only the end.”

I Love Lucy screencap5. Average people long for the good old days. Rich people dream of the future.

“Self-made millionaires get rich because they’re willing to bet on themselves and project their dreams, goals and ideas into an unknown future,” Siebold writes.

“People who believe their best days are behind them rarely get rich, and often struggle with unhappiness and depression.”

6. Average people see money through the eyes of emotion. Rich people think about money logically.

“An ordinarily smart, well-educated and otherwise successful person can be instantly transformed into a fear-based, scarcity driven thinker whose greatest financial aspiration is to retire comfortably,” he writes.

“The world class sees money for what it is and what it’s not, through the eyes of logic. The great ones know money is a critical tool that presents options and opportunities.”

7. Average people earn money doing things they don’t love. Rich people follow their passion.

“To the average person, it looks like the rich are working all the time,” Siebold says. “But one of the smartest strategies of the world class is doing what they love and finding a way to get paid for it.”

On the other hand, middle class take jobs they don’t enjoy “because they need the money and they’ve been trained in school and conditioned by society to live in a linear thinking world that equates earning money with physical or mental effort.”

8. Average people set low expectations so they’re never disappointed. Rich people are up for the challenge.

“Psychologists and other mental health experts often advise people to set low expectations for their life to ensure they are not disappointed,” Siebold writes.

“No one would ever strike it rich and live their dreams without huge expectations.”

BarackObamadotcom via YouTube9. Average people believe you have to DO something to get rich. Rich people believe you have to BE something to get rich.

“That’s why people like Donald Trump go from millionaire to nine billion dollars in debt and come back richer than ever,” he writes.

“While the masses are fixated on the doing and the immediate results of their actions, the great ones are learning and growing from every experience, whether it’s a success or a failure, knowing their true reward is becoming a human success machine that eventually produces outstanding results.”

10. Average people believe you need money to make money. Rich people use other people’s money.

Linear thought might tell people to make money in order to earn more, but Siebold says the rich aren’t afraid to fund their future from other people’s pockets.

“Rich people know not being solvent enough to personally afford something is not relevant. The real question is, ‘Is this worth buying, investing in, or pursuing?'” he writes.

11. Average people believe the markets are driven by logic and strategy. Rich people know they’re driven by emotion and greed.

Investing successfully in the stock market isn’t just about a fancy math formula.

“The rich know that the primary emotions that drive financial markets are fear and greed, and they factor this into all trades and trends they observe,” Siebold writes.

“This knowledge of human nature and its overlapping impact on trading give them strategic advantage in building greater wealth through leverage.”

12. Average people live beyond their means. Rich people live below theirs.

“Here’s how to live below your means and tap into the secret wealthy people have used for centuries: Get rich so you can afford to,” he writes.

“The rich live below their means, not because they’re so savvy, but because they make so much money that they can afford to live like royalty while still having a king’s ransom socked away for the future.”

richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com13. Average people teach their children how to survive. Rich people teach their kids to get rich.

Rich parents teach their kids from an early age about the world of “haves” and “have-nots,” Siebold says. Even he admits many people have argued that he’s supporting the idea of elitism.

He disagrees.

“[People] say parents are teaching their kids to look down on the masses because they’re poor. This isn’t true,” he writes. “What they’re teaching their kids is to see the world through the eyes of objective reality––the way society really is.”

If children understand wealth early on, they’ll be more likely to strive for it later in life.

14. Average people let money stress them out. Rich people find peace of mind in wealth.

The reason wealthy people earn more wealth is that they’re not afraid to admit that money can solve most problems, Siebold says.

“[The middle class] sees money as a never-ending necessary evil that must be endured as part of life. The world class sees money as the great liberator, and with enough of it, they are able to purchase financial peace of mind.”

Kim Bhasin / Business Insider15. Average people would rather be entertained than educated. Rich people would rather be educated than entertained.

While the rich don’t put much stock in furthering wealth through formal education, they appreciate the power of learning long after college is over, Siebold says.

“Walk into a wealthy person’s home and one of the first things you’ll see is an extensive library of books they’ve used to educate themselves on how to become more successful,” he writes.

“The middle class reads novels, tabloids and entertainment magazines.”

16. Average people think rich people are snobs. Rich people just want to surround themselves with like-minded people.

The negative money mentality poisoning the middle class is what keeps the rich hanging out with the rich, he says.

“[Rich people] can’t afford the messages of doom and gloom,” he writes. “This is often misinterpreted by the masses as snobbery.

Labeling the world class as snobs is another way the middle class finds to feel better bout themselves and their chosen path of mediocrity.”

Flickr / Wei Tchou17. Average people focus on saving. Rich people focus on earning.

Siebold theorizes that the wealthy focus on what they’ll gain by taking risks, rather than how to save what they have.

“The masses are so focused on clipping coupons and living frugally they miss major opportunities,” he writes.

“Even in the midst of a cash flow crisis, the rich reject the nickle and dime thinking of the masses. They are the masters of focusing their mental energy where it belongs: on the big money.”

18. Average people play it safe with money. Rich people know when to take risks.

“Leverage is the watchword of the rich,” Siebold writes.

“Every investor loses money on occasion, but the world class knows no matter what happens, they will aways be able to earn more.”

Flickr / Ibrahim Iujaz19. Average people love to be comfortable. Rich people find comfort in uncertainty.

For the most part, it takes guts to take the risks necessary to make it as a millionaire––a challenge most middle class thinkers aren’t comfortable living with.

“Physical, psychological, and emotional comfort is the primary goal of the middle class mindset,” Siebold writes.

World class thinkers learn early on that becoming a millionaire isn’t easy and the need for comfort can be devastating. They learn to be comfortable while operating in a state of ongoing uncertainty.”

20. Average people never make the connection between money and health. Rich people know money can save your life.

While the middle class squabbles over the virtues of Obamacare and their company’s health plan, the super wealthy are enrolled in a super elite “boutique medical care” association, Siebold says.

“They pay a substantial yearly membership fee that guarantees them 24-hour access to a private physician who only serves a small group of members,” he writes.

“Some wealthy neighborhoods have implemented this strategy and even require the physician to live in the neighborhood.”

Getty Images21. Average people believe they must choose between a great family and being rich. Rich people know you can have it all.

The idea the wealth must come at the expense of family time is nothing but a “cop-out”, Siebold says.

“The masses have been brainwashed to believe it’s an either/or equation,” he writes. “The rich know you can have anything you want if you approach the challenge with a mindset rooted in love and abundance.”

From Steve Siebold, author of “How Rich People Think.”

What I went through with my mother in-law in 1997…

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…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?

Overheard in a theatre

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Sadly, I guess the times of my passive-aggressive father are over.  In his day, I doubt we would have heard someone make such a bold, impolite, immoral statement as, “Well, yes, Bill Clinton cheated on his wife, but he was the U.S. President, for Christ’s sake.  Of course, it makes sense that he still represents the Democratic Party.  ‘W’ was a whore man himself before he conveniently found Jesus and cooperated with the Muslim Saudis in selling out American oil interests.  He ‘conveniently’ still represents the Republican Party, too.”

So many cynical observations about promiscuous politicians and teachers, so little time to tell them.  Thank goodness, the film “The Campaign” was enough to tie me over for a while and fill in for such a bleak political election campaign season here in the ol’ US of A, where neither of the two primary candidates for U.S. President can talk about why the American economy is doing so poorly due to their being owned by the same worldwide corporate lobbying interests.

The last two paragraphs are examples of the influences on my youth, which I am trying hard to remove from my set of operational memories.

It is while we prepare the storyline to ease over to another planet (thanks, in part, to the friendly folks at Need Another Seven Astronauts (NASA)), where we will talk about life in the universe that does not center on our species, as puny as it is in comparison to the history of helium or cilia or syphilis/gonorrhea.

I am in a mischievous mood, wanting to make fun of others for the sake of making fun of others with no purpose in mind other than to entertain myself here, rather than in my thoughts alone.

Have you ever sat in a dark theatre, felt a constriction in your chest, the left side of your body going numb for just the briefest of moments, and wondered, “Is this it?”

I can feel it again right now.  Maybe it’s just a muscle twitching after I swept the driveway yesterday.  Or indigestion.

I hope so.

I really would like to sit and laugh quietly for many days longer.

If not…well, it was a good ride.

“It.”  Hmm…

“It” is nothing more than my life, a diversion for other sets of states of energy programmed to reproduce.

I never reproduced.

Scientific studies indicate that reproducing at my age is a recipe for heightened risk of autistic children who would drink out of plastic bottles made with BPA and filled with high fructose corn syrup, take antibiotics and become obese, and, finally, succumb to the onerous labels of “BIG” — BIG farms, BIG Pharma, BIG…you get the picture, if you subscribe to the notion that it’s an “us vs. them” world.

I never met BIG.  I don’t know “them.”  They are just words to me, diversions from a goal one gazillion years in the making, looking back 1000 years from now to see what we’ve accomplished.

Milestones, not accusations.

Actions, not passive disagreement.

A colleague of my father jokingly called my dad an imaginary engineer because of his master’s degree in industrial engineering (even saying so to my father a few days before he died), which always irritated my father.  Now, an industrial engineer is in charge of the largest company in the U.S. by stock value — Apple.  Who gets the last laugh?

That’s the thing.  If this moment is my last one, do I want to have my last thoughts focused on a clever joke or expanding the life of this planet into the cosmos?

I don’t want to spin a passive-aggressive take on a reworked warmed-over punchline.

I sure don’t want to be remembered for simply being clever.

I don’t want to be remembered at all.

This universe is it, all I’ve got, the only verifiable theory of life as I know it.

If I don’t give my minute/tiny/invisible/forgettable place in life a serious thought, who will?

If I don’t have my father around to argue with that the world is not falling to the Nazis and Communists all over again, to whom do I direct my attempt to make peace with my father and our generational gap?

If I don’t have my mother in-law around to convince that the United States is not about to go into another Great Depression (or worse) because a man who is too young (and black) is the U.S. President, to whom do I say that it’s not just white people and old people who care about the American Dream of [democracy and/or capitalism] and freedom for all?

It was a tough decision to say I would never vote again because I care about the higher ideals of our country and our world.  The everyday arguments of this time, of my generation, are perennial — that’s why I don’t care about them.

My visions are hundreds and thousands of years in the making, carrying on a long tradition passed on to me by others, regardless of the current form our organisation of life (i.e., civilisation) may look like.

War and the desire for peace are perennial.

Using available resources until they are depleted and worrying about the consequences are perennial.

That’s why I don’t care about them or the ways we beat our chests like good primates in unison about our alignment with issues such as these.

In the big picture, our species is unimportant.

We aren’t going to agree with the big picture until something else comes along to change that view.

Even then, we’ll argue that our ancestors — the keepers of our origin stories — were right and we’re the center of the universe.

So be it.

You can keep perpetuating those stories in whatever form you like, if it makes you feel better as you procreate.

As long as you keep in the wee spot at the back of your thoughts that you’re working for a larger cause than our species.

I use “cause” cautiously and facetiously because it implies more than what a single blog entry in a continuous storyline is supposed to be about, bringing up imagery of the influences upon my youth again, when this is solely about the way the universe works non-anthropomorphically.

Enough for now in this chapter.

More as it develops…

Organisational Skill Assessment

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Before I compose a hand-drawn animation sequence with the Bamboo Capture graphics tablet and fill my future with out-of-date electronic debris, I finish sorting through the piles of debris that constitute the bulk of written material which emanated from this set of states of energy called me.

Watched a commencement speech by Laurie Anderson [I thought, for a public performance multimedia artist, her acting was rather stilted], which has prompted me to click my way to a website and order a copy of the book, “How to be idle,” which in turn opened my eyes to the reams of office paperwork stacked in boxes around me.

Here’s one from 03/24/98:

Kiersey Temperament Sorter Results

Your Temperament is Idealist: NF
Your variant temperament is Healer: INFP

Any Personality Test, including the Sorter is just a rough indicator of temperament.
You might want to look at different temperament descriptions to verify the results and learn about other types of people for comparison.

I+6 N+16 F+12 P+14

David M. Keirsey
keirsey@mail.orci.com

At that time in my life, the department manager was all about fitting us into jobs that matched our personalities.

What she didn’t account for was a chameleon like me, a people pleaser who assesses the wants and desires of the people around him and blends in, hiding his personality behind layers and layers of masks, revealing himself to a select few.

I told the manager I’m not who she thinks I am and she responded that was a normal reaction to the test results from an INFP like me.

Later, I learned that she gave the same response to everyone who questioned the test results.

I wasn’t questioning the test results.  I just wanted her to know that the test results indicated my exteriour in relation to giving her the test results I thought she wanted to see.

For instance, let’s say I find out my college History professor is a dopehead and adherent to the philosophy of Timothy Leary… I make sure my term paper for the class, a review of a book about socialist utopias, contains plenty of illicit drug references and hippy religious conversations.

My goals are not your goals.  My goals are outside of the time and place in which we encounter one another, so it doesn’t matter to me about the profit targets you want to reach or the edifices you want to build in your names.

Ideas and images associated with temporal moral and ethical practices are imaginary, as far as I’m concerned.

We either reproduce our genetic material or we don’t.

Everything else is fiction about how we decide to protect our reproductive organs until we’ve produced progeny that need our protection.

Me, I have only these works of art — the sketches and writings that were birthed by me with your influence, a part of the universe, upon me.

I have no genetically-related or adopted children.  The closest I got were the nieces and nephews who [might have] looked up to me as an adult member of their clan/tribe.

They are adults now.  My influence upon them diminishes as they decide how to protect their reproductive organs until they’ve produced progeny that need their protection.

One of my hidden goals was to live long enough to be a great-uncle.

I held up my step-niece’s little one-month young girl in my arms, making me the great-uncle I wanted to be ever since I was a little boy and looked up to my childless great-uncle and great-aunt who seemed to have extra spending money my parents never had, despite the great-relatives’ middle-class wages as a postman and office secretary, respectively.

I have grown tireder as I’ve aged, exercised less and eaten minimally-nutritious chemically-treated foodstuff.  I no longer want to be a model for others or someone to look up to.

It’s time to slow down and concentrate on the dreams and desires of the personality behind all the masks…

The boy who saw macabre nightmares come to life when his favourite politician of all time, Richard Nixon, resigned.

The boy who looked down at his plate of spaghetti and thought he was eating a dish full of bleached worms covered with red sauce to hide their little heads screaming for mercy.

The boy who heard the grass talk to him.

The boy who sailed the universe at night when no one was looking.

The boy who knew that stone gargoyles and cast-iron mailboxes were like three-dimensional photographs of a reality hidden inside other people’s heads, finding an outlet, me wondering where they came from before they appeared in people’s thoughts.

The boy who earned his Eagle Scout badge and went on into Explorer Scouts, later to become a Unit Commissioner, an adult role in Scouting, because he never thought he had gained his father’s love and trust, constantly seeking, seeking, seeking approval up until he reached his adult age of 18 where he received a full college scholarship via the U.S. Navy ROTC program, accepted at both Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech, but realising he no longer had to seek his father’s approval and flunked out on purpose.

I had become the man I never thought I’d be able to grow up to be.

I never was my father and never will be.

I am me.

My hidden visions, the alternate reality that I carry in my thoughts as I interact with people who seem to like to embrace the inconsistent reality of [sub/ex]urban lifestyles and belief systems, are crawling out of me and into the world in which we meet and greet one another cordially.

They are not perfect.

They are not commercialised, plastic products for mass production and insane profit margins.

I don’t even care if others steal, borrow or marginalise my work.

My work is not me but my work came from me so I associate myself with my work but I do not tie my self-worth to what I’ve written, drawn, danced, sang or sewn.

This is the only moment in which I live and I claim this moment as mine, declaring myself absolutely insane in comparison to the insanity of boxed stuff that we only call food because the pretty picture on the outside tells me it is.

Unlike Madison Avenue marketers, I don’t have to make money from my creative redefinition of ordinary life.

I can, have been and will be me, willing to use the excess capacity of our species’ social structure that produces a buffer zone outside of basic survival to express myself here and elsewhere, on paper, in blogs and wherever I feel I want to breathe what always has to be my last breath because the next one is not guaranteed.

On to the graphics tablet, building upon my first animation!!!

As an independent filmmaker said,

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.” ”
—Jim Jarmusch, The Golden Rules of Filming[

In the mouth of madness, a voice of reason

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How can I, an uneducated servant, give meself over to this online world of blah-blah-blogging, lollygogging, tongue-wagging nonsense?

I am but a simpleton, they tell me, hidden behind old shells of hatched cicadas.

I am probably a harmless fungi — “fun guy” — an improbably possible retelling of the myth of Neal Cassady.

A nymph or larva, a crazy buffoon.

Me pals call me the Alliterative Illiterate.

I tell ’em I ain’t no feckin’ joke.

I got me dreams.

I got me visions.

There ain’t no reality.

Them books is what did us all in.

Made us talk like this, full of shite statements about stuff we know nothin’ ’bout:

“The highest ideal of our schools is to produce good citizens.  Good citizenship calls for an understanding of the great problems which a democracy such as ours must face.  The good citizen does not expect to be an expert at solving every problem; but he at least may know that certain important problems exist and he may establish sound principles on which to base his thinking with reference to them.

“The last opportunity that millions of our citizens will ever have to consider some of these problems in a formal way is in the secondary school.  Here education for the many ceases.  And even for the smaller number who go to college it is well that at the age when they begin to form positive opinions a definite opportunity should be afforded to consider the great questions of society, industry, and government.  And so we have in many schools, and shall have in many more, a course known as Problems of Democracy.

“Such a course should consider not only the problems of government, though these may well be looked upon as connecting links by which to bind together all the interests of the American citizen, but also the great questions of social and industrial relationships which are in every way as vital as any questions of government.  Indeed, government exists because we have social and economic problems which cannot be solved without its aid.”

— R.O. Hughes, Peabody High School, May, 1922, Problems of American Democracy, Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania, USA]

I ain’t no scholar.  I never was published by no major book club or put in the Reader’s Digest for thoughtful arogrammatic bathroom readin’.

I’m au jus’ me.

But I’m smarter’n I look and wiser, too.

I ain’t no wise guy or good fella, if you know what I mean.

What I’s got is connections.  Lots of ’em.  More’n you got.

It’s time to pull a few strings, measure a few dirt coffins and go ’bout my business like you ain’t here watchin’ me.

Hey, it’s family.

You know that.  Many of you’ve been here wit me before.

I’m the knucklehead what injured himself on the field of sports, cuttin’ short my professional career and fallin’ back on the ol’ neighbourhood to support me habits and get you to pay for yours.

I’m the invisible guy behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer rig or workin’ the forklift at the warehouse behind your favourite big box store.

You don’ see me, I don’ see you, even if we’d done business together sometime.

I got this crazy notion you gotta hear me story ’cause it’s gonna change our futures like there’s no tomorrow.

I had just walked through the nasty, clean air of the No Smoking Zone, joinin’ the friendly chaps on the back dock for a couple of drags on fags when up walked this dame in cut-off jeans and a camo tanktop, draggin’ the remains of a giant squid behind her…

Yeah, it started just like that…

But you gotta wait until tomorrow to hear the rest of the adventure because, strangely enough, it ain’t happened yet!

See what I mean about crazy?!

Bury the Curmudgeon, not the Man

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In business, as well as real life, we make decisions based on evidential test results.

In real life, we made decisions based on opinions, dreams, imaginations and occasionally facts.

So it is with grieving the loss of my father in the rest of my natural life.

He lives on here — in recorded memories and anecdotes, photos and videos, audio files and books — the cybersphere.

I mentally cried in my thoughts up until yesterday, making it…oh, about two and a half weeks of heart-wrenching solace and mourning.

Now, I live with him as a reminder, a silent, unspeaking totem on an imaginary column standing invisibly behind me.

The good and the bad, the kind-hearted elder and the stern disciplinarian wrapped in fading memories.

In other words, I personify the genetic and nurturing elements of a man toward his son, his eldest child.

My father’s influence upon others started at his birth, with most, if not all, who nurtured him now gone, too.  His best friend of 73 years still lives, his neighbourhood playmate, classroom buddy and adult confidant.  His wife of 55+ years — my mother — is quite much alive, although in mental pain as she reconciles the loss of a dear friend and husband, the father of her children.

I am no longer a child.  Bigger problems than the loss of a parent push in on my thoughts but they are not more important.

How do we tell readers that the situation in Syria is merely a place for the national production of weaponry to turn a tidy profit, loss of lives a necessary component of the process?

There’s always some hotbed of violence we can use to our species’ economic advantage.  More people die from person-to-person combat between people who know each other — gunshots, knife stabbings, choking, burning, poisoning — than all terrorist attacks combined.

After all, “terrorist” is a label we reserve for “them,” not amongst ourselves.

The brother who stabs me is not a terrorist — he’s just a close relative with an anger management issue and a drinking problem — unless he gets the attention of the media ahead of time and becomes notorious, shooting off his mouth about socially-unacceptable concepts and ideals.

But we know all that already.  New crops of journalists, editors and publishers seem not to — they just as easily fall prey to the idea of perpetuating extremist thinking for a profit that also divides the political opinions of the majority of Americans, for instance.

Anyway, I digress.

After a discussion with the Committee, I’ve decided to share with you more of the products coming out of our laboratory and into a grocer’s market near you:

  • DNA tracking devices disguised as cereal flakes and coffee beans/grounds
  • Chemical hypnotic material mixed into charcoal briquets that are released at high temperature, used at backyard BBQ events to turn whole crowds into well-organised mobs when the need arises
  • Bacteria in ice cream and other products in the frozen goods department that activate at body temperature, lodging in people’s bodies at strategic locations; can be turned into cancerous growths with a certain level of mobile phone radio signal strength exposure.

Well, that’s all for now.  The use of comic literary devices is all about timing.  We’ll save the rest of the items for a more perfect moment.

Happy eating!